(MENAFN- Al-Anbaa) When Josh Smith's boss got his computer stolen out of his car, he simply went to the store, bought a new one, and plugged it into his backup drive.
"It even brought up the web page he had looked at the day before," says Smith, editor of Notebooks.com, who lives in Findlay, Ohio.
Setting up a backup system is so easy you would think everyone does it, the way we sync our phones to the cloud so that our lives do not fall apart every time a device takes a dunk in a toilet. But most of us do not put these safeguards in place.
It only takes a little bit of preventive medicine to make sure your laptop or desktop computer can be restored if something happens to it. Here is what you need to know:
While the cloud is great for backing up data, Smith recommends a hard drive backup that you keep in your house - maybe even more than one, in case something happens to the first one. This will not only restore your data, but also your software programs and any other preferences, like web browsing bookmarks.
All it takes to get a backup going is to plug in a drive. On a recent-issue Apple Inc machine, the computer will automatically ask if you want to run Time Machine. Depending on your Windows machine, you may need to identify your pre-installed backup application and start it.
Go with the automatic set-up. "Backing up manually is a pain, and you'll miss files," Smith says. "It's good to find a solution that's seamless. Then you don't have to remember to do something every week."
Basic 1-terabyte models start around $60. A 2-TB drive runs about $100, but drives can often be found with significant discounts. You do not need a specific Mac or Windows drive, as most are compatible, just something sturdy and handy that you will actually use.
As for cost-savings, you might be able to avoid hiring somebody like computer consultant Laurie Duncan, owner of Mac Samurai in New York, to painstakingly rebuild your system. And you are also protected if any of the cloud services you are using goes out of business or changes hands and terms of service.
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