Archives - Backup


National Cybersecurity Awareness Month: Cybersecurity in the home – 3 steps households can take

October is often strongly associated with Halloween and Autumn weather, but here in the U.S., it’s also known as National Cybersecurity Awareness Month (NCSAM). NCSAM marks a great time to get up to speed on the latest trends in cybersecurity and make sure your household cybersecurity is the strongest it can be. The COVID-19 pandemic […]

Don’t take a chance with old hard drives

Do you have lots of important data – family photos, copies of official documents, etc. – stored exclusively on a computer hard drive? If so, it’s time to diversify. The average HDD sees a sharp rise in its risk of failure after only 4 years. It’s best to store important data in an external drive […]

Make multiple copies of your important data

You certainly don’t want a system crash to destroy your most important documents and photos. Maintain redundant backups of your data across many different media types. Consider cloud-based backup as well as external HDDs or thumb drives or even newer solid state drives (SSD). The 3-2-1 rule is a good general framework for backing up your data: […]

Don’t get rid of a hard drive without really erasing it

When you remove something on your computer hard drive, it’s not really gone, just inaccessible through the normal user interface. To really get rid of it, you’ll need specialized software that overwrites the deleted data multiple times. Also, keeping your old drives in storage instead of throwing or giving them away will also lower your […]

Don’t forget about old devices

When you upgrade your phone or computer, be sure to complete a thorough data cleanse of your old ones. Performing a factory reset isn’t sufficient to wipe all information from a device. Instead, invest in a dedicated program or app that will truly clear your personal data and account information from a device. This is […]

Hard disk drives don’t last forever

If you use an external HDD for backup, be mindful of it’s lifespan, it won’t last forever. HDD failure rates rise abruptly in the fourth year and beyond, so if you’re wary of losing a key backup, make sure to have other drives in the mix and/or use a cloud-based backup solution.