More and more, our lives have gone digital and no one ever thinks about backing up their digital life until it’s too late. We’re quickly filling up our hard drives with digital photos, music, videos and documents, and in doing so we’re flirting with digital disaster.

Think about it: Your computer crashes, your phone is lost or stolen, or some other misfortune strikes and all of your precious data is gone. In a millisecond your family photos, home movies, years of work, and digital music collection could vanish forever. It could cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars to have a data-recovery service attempt to get the lost data back, but there’s no guarantee they’d be successful.

This is a disaster that doesn’t have to happen.

With today’s advancements in external storage and backup solutions, backing up your digital assets has never been easier or faster. If you need to restore something, you won’t have to rummage through a stack of CDs/DVDs with an external hard drive solution. The good news is that getting started on a backup program is simple.

In this blog post, we’ll go through five ways to back up your digital life, as well as the various backup solutions available.

5 Steps to Back Up Your Digital Life

Step 1: Backup Plan

The first step is to create a backup plan. This should include what data you want to backup, where you will store your backups, and how often you will perform backups. We recommend that you backup on a daily basis or, at a minimum, weekly.

Step 2: Backup Tools

The second step is to select the right backup tools. There are many different options available, so do some research to find the ones that best fit your needs. Use a solution that’s easy to set up and provides automatic backups.

Step 3: Perform Backups

The third step is to actually perform the backups. This step is critical – if you don’t actually do the backups, then your data won’t be safe! This is the benefit of a ‘set and forget’ automatic backup option – you never have to remember because the system does it for you.

Step 4: Test Backups

The fourth step is to test your backups. Testing your backups sounds like a pain, but it’s actually pretty easy. All you need to do is restore your data from the backup and make sure everything is there and working as it should be. If something goes wrong, you’ll know right away and can take steps to fix the problem.

Step 5: Review Regularly

The fifth and final step is to regularly review and update your backup plan. As your digital life changes, so too should your backup plan.

Don’t procrastinate! Unfortunately, the need to back up data is often a lesson learned from a bitter experience. Don’t let it happen to you. By following these five steps, you can ensure that your digital life is safe and sound – no matter what happens!

Backup Solutions for You to Consider

There are many methods for backing up your computer, but not all of them offer the same degree of protection or ease of use. The ideal computer backup is one that protects your data from all of the major risk factors, is simple to use, and allows you to recover exactly what you want without too much hassle.

Cloud-Based Backup

Cloud-based backup and disaster recovery solutions have become increasingly popular in recent years, and for good reason. They offer a number of advantages over traditional on-premises solutions, including greater flexibility, scalability, and affordability. Perhaps most importantly, cloud-based solutions can help to ensure that your data is always available, even in the event of a catastrophic failure. In other words, by storing your data in the cloud, you can protect it from just about anything. Whether it’s a natural disaster or a simple power outage, your data will always be safe and accessible when you need it.

Downside? There is no downside, this is one of the safest and most secure way to back up all your files.

External Hard Drive

External hard drives offer a convenient and reliable way to back up your files. Unlike cloud-based backup services, which require an active internet connection, external hard drives can be used offline. This means you can back up your files even if you don’t have an internet connection. If you’re worried about losing your data if your computer crashes, rest assured that an external hard drive can be safely disconnected from your computer and stored in a safe location.

On the downside, external hard drives do have space limitations, and are susceptible to disasters like flood, fire, and theft.

Thumb, USB or Flash Drive

USB or flash drive backups have a number of advantages over other types of backups. They are relatively small and portable, so you can easily take them with you if you need to. They are also relatively inexpensive, so you can buy multiple drives and store them in different locations. USB or flash drives are also easy to use, so you can quickly and easily back up your files.

While this backup type is easy to use and cheap to buy, it is also easy to lose. The downside is the same as the external hard drive; storage limitations, and susceptible to disasters.

You may also want to use a combination based on your situation. If you’re travelling or having a working holiday, smaller storage that’s easy to carry when you are working offline might be the perfect solution in that moment.

Whatever you choose, with so much of our lives now stored in the digital realm, it’s more important than ever to have a solid backup plan in place.