Back, Back, Back it up.

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During the week while working at a tech repair shop, I get asked questions like,” I think I deleted my pictures.” , ”My iPhone is locked out.” , ”I think I have a virus on my computer, now I don’t have any of my personal files.”.  All these questions and more get asked of me on the regular. One of my first questions I ask the customer is “Do you have a backup saved somewhere like the cloud or an external hard drive?”  Unfortunately the answer is more times than not “No”.  At that point I try to stress to my customers that backing up your data is the best way to not lose those pictures of your kids growing up, or all the contacts in your phone.  No one wants to go through the hassle of losing precious data. 

There are some easy ways to keep your data from being erased or corrupted.  I will be discussing phones first then move over to the computer realm.  So for phones they have some apps that can help you out in this regard, first of which is Google photos.  With Google photos you can set the app to automatically back up to your Google drive so you can access your pictures anywhere you can log into your Google account.  Another app is Contacts Backup + Transfer (currently on iOS but checking to see if it is on android), this app is highly rated and allows you to back up your contacts from your phone that can be text, emailed, or airdropped.  These two are your best bet when it comes to pictures and contacts.  You can also use the backup system that is baked into your phone’s OS.  Go into setting and at the top of this page you should see a search bar.  From there you search backup and then click on the first one that says backup, and Bob’s your uncle, you can set up a schedule to have your phone back up.  

Now time for desktop PC’s and Mac’s, these tend to be a little easier to back up and have them ready to use.  First thing you can do is go out and buy an external hard disc drive(EHDD), from there you can set your computer to back up onto the EHDD.  You connect the EHDD to your PC, type backup in the search bar that is at the bottom left of the screen for windows users, once the setting window pops up you will be greeted with backup.  From there you will click the toggle to turn on automatic backups, then click on more options.  You will be greeted with a backup options screen, in the overview you should see size of backup, total space on backup USB, and last backup.  Just leave the frequency that the PC backs up and keeps the files for.  Then click backup now and you are off to the races.  Now when it comes to Mac their backup system is called time machine.  Plug your EHDD into your Mac, from there you will be promoted(if this is the first time that you plugged it into your Mac) if you want to use this drive to back up with Time machine.  Click the box that says “Use as Backup Disk.”  This will automatically open Time Machine, it should ask you if you want to erase this disk, if you do not get this just click on the select disk and choose the EHDD.  By this point it will prompt you to erase the disk.  You want to click Erase, when it is done erasing the disk then click Back Up Automatically.  You are set!!!!!!

Now that you have a back you are set for when the next disaster hits, this means you are ahead of a majority of the people.  Remember that a good recent backup can save hours of time wasted and headaches.

Back, Back, Back it up!!!

References:

Windows 10 How to Backup files folders and setting using File History:

How to set up and use time machine to backup your mac 2020: