Maniacally hitting the save button as you type a document, then that sinking feeling when you realise you’ve lost hours of work. Your computer decides it’s done being nice to you and won’t turn on. All of us have experienced at least one of these scenarios. The 31st of March is World Backup Day, and it reminds us to keep our work, memories, and carefully curated music libraries backed up in case of the unforeseen.
With more and more of our daily interactions going paperless, it seems irresponsible to be caught without a backup plan, or at least a backup device. From USB flash drives to external hard drives, there is no shortage of spaces for you to make sure that the important documents and photographs that you have procured remain safely accessible if your computer tries to go all Hal from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Let’s face it: nobody wants to be sitting up at three in the morning retyping a spreadsheet – that’s no way to live – so having a drive plugged into the computer that you regularly backup to seems to be a pretty good choice.
There are, of course, great online tools that accomplish this as well, like the Cloud, Dropbox, or Google Drive, but some people are still uncomfortable with leaving important documents on the web, which is understandable. Having a physical device onto which you can put copies of important documents and photographs that you would not like to lose is the new ‘Hey! Let’s keep a file, or stick them in a photo album!’ and, of course, takes up much less space. The beauty of backing up means you can also clear space from your computer’s hard drive so that it’s not clunky and slow.
Securing the files and data that is important to you and freeing up hard drive space is great, and don’t forget if you back up you can always restore too. Taking the time to back up your computer and the files that are on it may seem a little tedious, but think of the time and heartbreak you are saving yourself in the long run.
Rest assured that all of your documents are where you would like them to be and that you can restore your computer should anything unforeseen occur. Grab a device and be your own backup!
