How necessary is it to back up your devices? That is a personal question – ask yourself whether you would be upset if all the data on your device was lost. If all you do on your device is email and browsing, you may not need to worry about backups. In most cases your email is retained on a server in the cloud, e.g., Shaw, Gmail, iCloud, and what is on your device is just a copy. What you do on websites is also typically all saved somewhere in the “cloud”.
But what about documents – are there documents (Word, Excel, PDFs) saved on your device that you would hate to lose? What about photos? Even losing your Settings can be a significant inconvenience.
The good news is that there are many inexpensive (and sometimes free) options for backup, that are not hard to implement.
In the past, often an external hard drive was used for computer backups. That is still a viable option, but the important thing is to back up regularly. If the hard drive is always connected to your computer, then it is a matter of scheduling the backups to run automatically. If not, you need to remember to connect the backup drive periodically, e.g., using a calendar reminder.
For iPhones and iPads, backup to iCloud is automatically enabled. This generally fits within the 5GB of free storage space. This doesn’t automatically include your photos. For Android phones and tablets, similar cloud backup services are available, e.g., from Samsung, depending on your phone provider.
For Macs, the Time Machine software that comes with MacOS is a great choice for backups. It saves not only the current version of your files, but also previous versions. It requires an external drive. Having a Time Machine backup also makes it very easy to transfer all your content to a new Mac. For PCs, the File History feature of Windows, when enabled, provides similar backup functionality.
You can also set up your Mac to automatically mirror your data folders including Documents, Desktop, and Photos to iCloud. The free 5 GB plan is insufficient for this, you will need to subscribe to the 50 GB or 200 GB plan. Similarly, on a Windows PC OneDrive can be used to sync selected folders to Microsoft’s cloud; you need to have a paid version of OneDrive or a paid subscription to Office 365 to have sufficient space in the cloud for this method.
Windows also has a feature going back to Windows 7 called Backup and Restore. Unlike the other two methods, this saves everything, including the Windows OS itself, to an external drive.
There are also several commercial backup options available for Macs and PCs.
If you are mainly interested in backing up your photo library, Google Photos is a good option. When you enable syncing to Google Photos on all your devices, your photo library can be accessed from any of your devices. Google provides 15 GB of free storage, which may be enough for smaller photo libraries. Additional cloud storage is available for a small monthly fee. For Apple users, iCloud Photos provides similar functionality, except that the 5 GB of free storage they provide is not enough for any user.
If you need help to choose or to implement a backup option, the IT Doctors can assist.