Easy steps to back up your data on Mac and PC

Backing up data is not only for enterprises and businesses. 

If you use a Windows machine or a Mac, you need to make sure that your documents and media files are safe. 

While mobile devices give the illusion that nothing wrong can happen by synchronizing contacts, photos, and preferences into a mystical place and restoring them as needed; our laptops and desktops require more attention. 

Back-up solutions vary from manual and time-consuming to automated and "cloud-y." However, the process is more important than the medium. 

Most IT experts recommend having multiple backups in different locations, and for good reasons. A USB drive or an external drive can unexpectedly fail, a physical location can get damaged or burglarized, and a cloud-based solution can be unavailable. 

By using multiple backup destinations, your risk of losing everything is squished down to infinitesimal. 

Mac

Apple’s Time Machine allows you to back up your whole machine (including preferences and apps) regularly to external storage. If this is not convenient enough, you can browse changes between backups and restore individual items as needed. 

Making use of this powerful tool is essential while creating your backup process. You may, for example, use Time Machine backup with an external drive that you plug in once a week and then keep it locked somewhere safe. 

Suppose you wish to make the process more convenient: you can set up a NAS (Network Attached Device) that is always available on the network and have the backup done regularly without your intervention. 

Even if you use an external drive, a NAS, or both, it's also a good idea to back up some of your files to cloud storage. There are several online services that you can use; below, we list a few that are cost-effective:

iDrive
Backblaze
Carbonite
PC

Similarly, some built-in tools for backup on Windows will allow you to back up your entire machine once (Image Backup) or create regular backups for your files only. 

Running an image backup of your machine every once in a while, will allow you to recover your machine preferences, software, history, and files. Since this is a manual task rthat requires storage space, we recommend setting a reminder regularly and overriding the old backups as needed.

For file backup, you can either use the built-in tool of windows [Control Panel > All Control Panel Items > File History], or choose one of the below free software: 

SyncBackFree
EaseUS Todo Backup 
Iperius Backup Free

These tools would help you back up your files automatically to an external drive, NAS, or Cloud Storage Provider like:

iDrive
Backblaze
Carbonite

But do make sure to clean up your machine regularly to avoid filling your backup storage with unneeded clutter. Check our ITWORKSME blog about digital decluttering here. 

Whether you own a Mac or a PC, you can also use an online storage provider like:

Google Drive
Microsoft One Drive
Dropbox 
Box 

These services keep your active files safe by automatically synchronizing the data from your machine to online storage, creating multiple versions of the modified files, and giving you access to your data from any other device in case of hardware failure.