|
Tips &
Tricks Busy Professionals Can Use to Simplify Their Lives
Compliments of Ribary & Associates, LLC
www.tiaribary.com
April
2006
protect yourself from headaches -
back it up!
Recently
I returned to my car after a quick bite to eat and discovered that not only had my
car been broken into, but my laptop had been stolen! As a business owner, my
computer is my lifeline to my clients and an important part of my daily routine.
Without having taken the proper precautions this would have been a disaster
rather than just a frustrating inconvenience.
To
prevent the complete loss of your data, remember to:
-
Never
leave your laptop where others can see
it. If you must leave it in your vehicle, be sure to put it in your
trunk or under a seat. And, always remember to hide your items away prior to
your destination to ensure that those who may be hanging about where you
parked your car do not see what you are doing. If neither of these are a
good option, take your laptop with you.
-
Make
sure that you backup the data on your laptop or desktop computer on a
regular basis. ‘Regular basis’ means different things to different people,
so when determining how often you need to backup your computer ask yourself
“How much data am I willing to lose?” and then be sure to set a reminder to
yourself to backup your system, or better yet, make it automatic. The best
way to ensure a consistent backup is to program your computer to
automatically backup at a set date and time (thankfully I have my data
automatically backed up to a server).
Backup up your data
There are
many options available including external harddrives, however they may require additional diligence on
your part to ensure that you are backing your system up on a regular basis. For
information on external hard drives you may wish to review PC World’s “Big
Drive Backup” or CNET’s “Best
tools for backing up your PC” articles.
I personally recommend Smartsync Pro as an
easy to use, inexpensive software you can pair up with an external drive. It
will allow you to backup data to an external drive, automatically.
If you'd
like an on-line backup system (which would have the additional benefit of
off-site backup), the information below should be helpful, courtesy of my colleague, Kristy Schnabel of
It’s Virtually Done. Kristy recently
shared this great information about on-line backup services with her network, and
it's so important, I'm sharing it with you! The information below has been verified accurate as of the time of
this newsletter distribution.
Data Deposit Box (http://www.datadepositbox.com/)
This
product is recommended by
PC World. At 1 cent per
MB of storage per month, this is a great option if you only have a small
amount of data to backup. Data Deposit Box utilizes a desktop client that
backs up your data when your computer is idle. A colleague of Kristy’s likes
their service.
@Backup (http://www.atbackup.com/)
Kristy has several colleagues that use @Backup and like their service,
however, she found it to be too expensive for how much storage capacity she
needed. For 1 GB of storage, @Backup charges $149.95. If you are like Kristy
and have more than 1 GB you would have to choose their 5 GB of storage plan
which is $499.95 per year.
XDrive (http://xdrive.com/)
During a free trial of Xdrive, Kristy found that not only were her files
taking a long time to upload, but upon contacting their customer service she
did not receive a timely response. While in hindsight her uploading problems
may have been related to her firewalls, due to the customer service’s lack
of response she was unable to get the assistance she needed to correct the
problem. However, PC Magazine does include XDrive on their top 5 choices for
online backup services.
EZBackup (http://ezbackup.com/)
For a
home office of 1-5 users and up to 4 GB of storage space, EZBackup charges
$19.95 per month. Kristy found several challenges with this particular
backup system including that their pricing plan did not match up to her
storage needs, their customer service hours are geared towards east coast
customers and while they assert that they are PC Magazine’s editor’s choice
for backup systems, she was unable to find the published article to confirm
that boast, which concerned her.
IBackup (http://ibackup.com/)
This
service was in fact an
Editor’s
Choice by PC Magazine. Their economy plan is $9.95 per month for up to 5
GB of storage. A respected colleague of Kristy’s uses this particular
service, so she gave it a try and found that she was able to upload with
ease and received good results from contacting their customer service (which
is west coast based).
Whatever
backup method you choose, be sure to test the backed up data by restoring a file
to your computer. Remember, backing up your system is not only to ensure against loss due to
theft, but to ensure that if your computer were to stop working due to a virus
or hardware failure, you would still be able to access your data.
If you
would like assistance with setting up a backup system, please
contact me. I would
be happy to assist you or direct you to another who can.
Happy backups!
Tia
Ribary, Professional Assistant
Our
intention is to provide helpful information specific to an office environment,
and at times we will provide other community or resource information. If you do
not wish to receive future tips, please e-mail remove@tiaribary.com. Do you have
feedback? We would love to hear your comments. Please e-mail comments@tiaribary.com
or call 503-810-3794.
| 
