Tips & Tricks

Backing up your PC

Listen to this week's Tips & Tricks segment as broadcasted on JQ99.

Are all your photos, music, and documents at risk if your hard drive were to crash? There are many ways to backup your computer. There are several things to take into consideration when deciding which method is best for you.

When we do a customer assessment, we categorize one’s backup by red light, yellow light, and green light.

Red Light

  • Not performing a back up at all.

  • Anything that requires you to perform a manual backup. For example, backing up to a DVD. There is too much risk that it will not get done.

  • Any type of backup that uses of flash/thumb drive. These drive could break and easily get lost.

  • When the backup copy is not offsite in a secure location.

Yellow Light

  • An automated back up to an external hard drive.

  • While automation of the backup is great, your backup copy still resides in your home or business. This is a danger in the event of fire, theft, etc.

Green Light

  • Online backup services allow you to set it and forget it.

  • The backup process is automated based on a schedule.

  • All your data is offsite in a secure data center.

  • If a backup fails you can be notified by e-mail or a message on your computer.

We recommend Mozy backup. They are owned by EMC, a Fortune 500 company, that is a leader in data storage. Setup is easy and it is a very cost effective way to backup your data. Pricing for Mozy Home is $4.95 a month for "unlimited" backup. If you pay for a year in advance you get 1 month free.

SPECIAL OFFER FROM COMPUTER HOUSE CALLS - Click on the link below and use offer code "December" to receive a 10% discount with a 1 year sign up.

Mozy Unlimited Backup - $4.95/Month

Mozy offers backup for businesses too. For a business with a server there is a $6.95 a month license fee, plus 50 cents per GB of data backed up. Also, for businesses, there are some better ways than just backing up files and folders, so if your server crashes you can be operational again in no time at all. Contact us for additional details.

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