How to Back Up Your Computer and Phone Before It's Too Late

Frank Bravo 0:06
Hi. I'm Frank. Bravo, and welcome to your Tech Makeover, the podcast that gives you tips and tricks to help simplify and get more out of technology in your life. Today we're talking about computer backups. They seem easy enough. Copy some files from one place to another. Put them somewhere safe. Rinse and repeat every so often. Like I said, easy enough, right? People who know me know that I'm fanatical about backups. I never want to be in a situation where I lose a file. I've recorded this podcast about a dozen times now, and each time I do it, I think, well, you know, maybe I should add other piece to it. So let me tell you the story. Over the years, I've had the opportunity to test my own backup plan. There's nothing worse than being greeted with a flashing question mark on your Mac, or a windows boot area with a good backup. These are just a bump in the day. The last time I had an issue after replacing the hard drive, I was back in business. Later that same day. Backups are different than archives, though. An archive is a copy of a file that's not on your machine anymore. You may want to clear out some space on your computer, so you copy the file from the computer to an external drive, and then you delete it. A backup is when you have more than one copy of that file. So my backup strategy is based on three, two, one three copies of the data on two different local devices. Think like different hard drives and one of them being in a totally different location. The reason I like the second copy locally is it makes restoration or putting those files back on the computer. Like I mentioned earlier, a lot faster than having to get a true remote backup. In my case, for my Macs, the first copy is the file that's actually on my machine. It's the one that's saved to my hard drive. The second copy is in Time Machine. Apple's built in program that continuously backs up your hard drive into an external drive. Like a lot of Apple products, it's pretty easy to set up. You plug the hard drive in and it asks you, do you want to use this as your time machine backup? And you say, yes. And the rest is pretty much automatic. Every hour or so when your machine is on the software, does the backup of any changed files on the machine. The third copy I have, which in my case is in the cloud, is with Backblaze. I've used a lot of different online and cloud backup programs, but by far Backblaze is the one I've been the most happy with. Its inexpensive and it just runs in the background, constantly backing up files. It also allows for unlimited storage, which is not always the case. Technically, I also have a cloud based backup in Apple iCloud, but that's a little more complicated. So in a future episode, I'm going to talk about services such as iCloud and Microsoft OneDrive and how they relate to backups. For archiving, I have an archive drive attached to a separate machine that also gets backed up through back blaze Backblaze. It's actually a little more complicated in that the files live in multiple places on that machine, but blah blah blah. That's way, way more than you want to know. The bottom line is, I have at least two copies of those files in my archive as well. For my PC workstation, it's almost the same. Other than that second copy, since I don't use that machine daily, I make copies of any files I work on and put them in my Dropbox or Google Drive. Those files are then synced to my Mac and then they get backed up from there. For clients with PCs, I've used a variety of different backup software that works similar to Time Machine. Most come with the hard drives when you buy them. In my professional life, where I manage terabytes of data, I'm just as fanatical about my backups. In one instance, we have four servers that each have a copy of the files on them. Each of those servers have their own backup, and that backup then gets backed up to a fifth server, which also gets backed up. Paranoid? Yeah, maybe a little, but backups are cheap insurance to make sure that important files and images on your computer are safe. If there was ever a disaster on the main copy. And by doing some pre-planning, you can make sure that your files are safe. So do you have a backup plan? If so, I'd love to hear from you. As always, if you have topics or other things that you'd like to hear me talk about or cover, please feel free to contact me via email at Frank at your Tech makeover.com. That's it for now. Thanks for listening to your tech makeover. If you haven't already, make sure you follow the Facebook page at facebook.com. Your makeover. That's where I'll put some links about episodes and other information that might be helpful before you go. I also wanted to remind you to subscribe to the podcast on your favorite podcast platform, so that you don't miss an episode. You can also check out your tech makeover, where you'll see more information about this episode and some of those links as well. If you want to find more information out about me, please visit Bravo com. Until next time, I'm Frank Bravo, and this has been your technique over.