Backing Up Your Computer: Cloud, External Drive, or Both?

The most heartbreaking calls I get are about lost photos and files — a wedding, a child growing up, years of work — gone with a dead hard drive. Data recovery sometimes saves the day, but it is never guaranteed and never free. The customers who never end up in that spot all have one thing in common: a backup. Here is how to set one up without needing to be technical.

The simple rule worth remembering

Keep your important files in two places, and make sure one of them is not physically in your house. A single copy on one drive is one failure, theft or spilled coffee away from gone. Two copies, one of them off-site, covers almost everything that goes wrong.

Option 1: An external hard drive

• Cheap, one-time cost — a good drive holds years of photos and files
• Fast, and you keep full control of your data
• The catch: it lives in your home, so a fire, flood or theft takes it with the computer — and a drive left plugged in can be hit by the same ransomware

Option 2: Cloud backup

• Your files live off-site, safe from anything that happens at home
• Updates automatically in the background once it is set up
• The catch: a monthly or yearly cost, and the first backup takes a while over home internet

What I actually recommend

For most people in Lake Country, both: an external drive for quick local backups and a cloud service for the off-site copy of the truly irreplaceable stuff — photos and important documents. It sounds like a lot, but once it is set up it runs on its own. If you would rather not wrestle with it, I will set the whole thing up during any service visit and show you how it works in plain English.

Already lost something? Stop using the drive immediately and call (604) 817-1069 — the sooner a failing drive is looked at, the better the odds of recovery. I serve Lake Country, Kelowna and Vernon.

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