Is it necessary to make regular backups?

Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008 | Computer Usage

Do not neglect making backups when you use your laptop – it is as important as putting on a safety belt when you get into a car, or washing your hands before you eat, or locking the door before you go to bed.  In many cases you may get away when you ignore these things, but one day, when you least expect it, you will be caught.

Take the fable of the cage bird and the bat to heart.

A singing bird was confined in a cage and only sang at night when all the other birds were asleep.

One night a bat came along and clung to the bars of the cage and asked the bird why she was silent by day and sang only at night.

“I have a very good reason for doing so,” the bird replied.  “It was once when I was singing in the daytime that a bird catcher was attracted to my voice – he set his nets for me and caught me.  Since then I have never sung except by night.”

“It is no use doing that now when you are a prisoner,” the bat said.  “If only you had done so before you were caught, you might still have been free.”

The moral of the story: Why do you have to be caught before you will listen?

Many people have been entrapped by not making backups.  Learn from them. Establish a realistic backup routine for yourself.

Tags: usage

2 Comments to Is it necessary to make regular backups?

Albie
Tuesday, 23 December, 2008

Backup…I know how to do it and also WHY I am doing it…to ensure my data is intact… and that I got enough copies in case of……

Once a week I backup ALL data on a 250 GIG removeable HDD. Just to make sure it is a backup of a backup, I do it on my laptop and on my second ws as well.

But the real “catch of the day” is to backup your DAILY work … that I am doing on a 16 GIG Memory Stick.

Albie Backup 10×10 GIG

Mark
Sunday, 4 January, 2009

Regular backups really helps one to reconstruct what you had before when the current device goes down. The questions I would like to ask is, how many backups must one make to secure one’s data? When does the “old” data become clutter? What happens when even your backup fails?

A futurist one day made the statement about the poor reliability of modern day storage of information. Look at how long the cave paintings have lasted. None of our hard drives or flash sticks can do that. How do we preserve both the historical and the modern?