Our Services

 

 

 

 

Seattle Laptop, The Laptop Experts!
Over 50,000 Laptops Serviced!

Backing Up Your Laptop's Data

A Short Article on Backing Up Data  


Seattle Laptop Repair - MacBook Repair in Seattle There are many different ways to back up the data on computers, and laptops. How we do it here at Seattle Laptop is very simple. The administrator makes a folder on a drive on our secure network, and then names the folder the date, and the computer being backed up. For example 121206quickbooks would be the name of the folder we back up our quickbooks data to. (when I back up our quickbooks accounting software, I usually back it up to two different drives on two computers other than our server just in case) We then copy the data needing backed up into this folder, whether it is our company documents, templates, database, or quickbooks file. This method of backing up is very easy, since we have a secure network, and it is easy to delete the old backups when they have been replaced with more recent ones, saving hard drive space.

The secret is to put all the data that needs constant backups in one folder. I suggest using the My Documents folder for everything. You can just copy the whole folder to an external hard drive, a hard drive on your network, or burn it to a DVD or CD. It does not take long once you get used to doing it. Just remember burned CD's and DVD's have a problem going bad after being stored for a number of years, so this method is not 100% failproof. If your data is extremely important, I suggest backing it up to multiple devices, disks, and online.

When you begin to accumulate a lot of music, videos, or pictures there is an easy way to be sure it gets backed up without using huge amounts of disk space, or dozens of DVD's. 

One way of backing up large amounts of pictures, or music, and saving disk space on the backup drive is to use 2 folders. One folder for pictures or music that has been backed up, and one folder for new pictures, or new music. Back up all your music, and all your pictures. When you add new pictures or music to your laptop, put it in a folder called New Music, or New Pictures. Back them up, and then move the  music or pictures to the Music or Pictures folder. This way you are not repeatedly backing up large amounts of pictures, or music multiple times. Just backing up the new ones.

For small amounts of data there is a number of ways to easily back it up hourly, daily, or whenever it is convenient. You can burn data to CD's, plug in an external hard drive, or just copy it to a USB thumb drive. You can also upload your data to an online backup like Mozy.com, or Carbonite, or others.

We hope this article has been helpful. When customers come into Seattle Laptop that have experienced a failed hard drive, or corrupted Windows it can cost quite a bit for us to recover their data. This can easily be avoided by developing a backup system, and sticking to it. We have found ways to easily back up our data every single day (actually more than once a day) that works. 

Every night at 1:00 A.M. my important data is backed up to my online server. The first thing I do in the morning is back up my data again while checking my banking, and email. If I have a problem it is easier to use the backup I just made than downloading it from my online service, even though I feel comfortable knowing I have 2 backups made every day with practically no effort. 

If you have any questions about finding easy ways to back up your data feel free to call us at Seattle Laptop. Regardless where you live, we will be more than happy to help you with any, and all of your laptop needs.



Seattle Laptop Inc. 7525 Aurora Ave N. Seattle WA 98103.    Call 206-784-4215

We are open:
11 - 4       Tuesday - Sat
Closed -    Sunday - Monday