Your data is important. While we work magic in many ways, recovering data from failed hard drives is difficult, at best, and often impossible. The only way to protect your data & minimize downtime is to ensure you have a good backup solution in place. We’ve discussed this before, but it’s so important we want to discuss it again.
We have found the best way to backup data is to use an external hard drive, preferably a network hard drive. Network drives are inexpensive, easy to configure, reliable & fast. We recommend them in all cases – Macs, PCs, even Servers.
While most network drives are identical, we recommend those made by Buffalo. They offer many excellent features & are very compatible. They come in a variety of sizes (250gb, 320gb, 500gb, 750gb, 1tb, 2tb, 4tb) to accommodate for all different kinds of storage needs. They also provide an excellent means to share files among multiple users in a household or small business. These devices can also be configured to backup to each other – for maximum data protection.
On the Mac side of things, we highly recommend using Leopard’s (10.5) Time Machine. It’s an excellent program (thanks, Apple!) that makes automatic backups on a regular basis. It can even be used over a wireless connection. Though many of you are probably still running 10.4 or 10.3, have you considered upgrading?
On the PC side of things, we highly recommend using a backup program called Cobian. It’s freely downloadable from snapfiles.com. It offers great flexibility – allowing you to choose what you want backed up, and when.
If you’re really concerned about safeguarding your data, look at an online backup service like mozypro.com or mac.com.
