What is a data backup and why do you need it?

25 May 2022

These days most of us keep personal documents, treasured family photos and much more on our smartphones, tablets and computers, but what happens when something goes wrong?

If you’ve ever lost any data – or even felt that moment of panic at momentarily misplacing digital files – you’ll appreciate why it makes sense to ‘back up’ everything you care about.

And if you haven’t experienced the dreaded data loss, it’s time to learn all about protecting that important information on your electronic devices so that it can be easily restored should the unthinkable ever occur.

WHAT DOES BACKING UP DATA MEAN?

A data backup is essentially a copy or archive of whatever you value on your devices – including documents, pictures, address books, media files, emails, spreadsheets, financial databases, and even operating systems or software programs – and saving it all to a secure separate location (such as an external hard drive, a removable USB flash drive, or a Cloud server) where it is preserved for future recovery in the event of a data loss.

There are various ways to back up data and you certainly don’t need to be an IT wizard, but if in doubt there’s no harm in asking a friend or relative to guide you through the process.

HOW DOES A BACKUP HELP YOU?

Making backups of collected data is practically essential when you consider the potential ramifications of losing the whole lot forever. Backups not only protect against basic human error – like permanently deleting a file or folder by mistake – but also disasters out of your control including virus attacks, server crashes, file corruptions, and hardware or power failures, not to mention losing your laptop or having your phone stolen.

In these instances having a backup will almost certainly save you time, money and a great deal of stress. In other words, data backups matter because without them you risk a little bit of bad luck turning into a fully-fledged crisis.

HOW OFTEN SHOULD YOU BACK UP DATA?

A worrying number of people – 30 per cent of the population, according to World Backup Day – have never backed up their device. Unless you’re prepared to learn the hard way, this is definitely a category to avoid.

You can’t be too careful when it comes to critical information, but generally speaking your most important data should be backed up at least weekly (or monthly at worst). Ideally you would perform some sort of backup once every 24 hours, whether manually or automatically. Automatic software options are available for backing up data at periodic intervals.

DATA BACKUP TIPS

Here are a few simple pieces of advice for effectively backing up your data:

• Perform a backup as often as possible.
• The more places your data is backed up, the better.
• Data storage is relatively inexpensive, so it makes sense to back up everything.