There is nothing worse than working on a project for a couple of days and then all of the sudden your hard drive dies on you. Even though it may not seem like it, a hard drive dying on you is something that happens quite often. This is something that happens all of the time and you need to be prepared for it. There are many ways that you can go about backing up the important data on your computer. You can use a second internal hard drive, an external hard drive, CD or DVD disk, and of course a USB thumb drive. These are the hardware options that you can use but there are plenty of software options as well. The software options that are available will help you organize the backing up of your data on these devices. But the software will not only back up your data on these devices but also on an online server as well. We will go through a list of the best software options to back up the important data on your computer. Once you choose one of these pieces of software, then you will find that you will be able to rest easier knowing that your hard work has been securely backed up.
The first software option that you can use to back up the data on your computer is the Norton offering. It will take incremental backups of your computer and place the files online. It will also back up your email messages as well. The back ups are set to be automatic. This means that you do not have to worry about missing any data that you would normally need to back up. When you first set the program to run, you will tell it which files and folders need to be backed up. Once you do that, it will read any changes in the file and commence to placing them on a server if it detects any changes. The Norton brand name is trusted when it comes to the security of your computer and they do not let you down in the area of back up as well. This software comes highly rated and well reviewed.
Another piece of software that you can use to back up all of your important data is Dropbox. This software is free unless you want more storage than the free version offers. Then you have to pay between $9.99 and $19.99 a month. This software is less of an automatic solution than the other ones but it has a great version system and allows you to retrieve the data on any computer that you own. Once it sees that the data has changed from when you first backed it up, it will automatically change the data on the other computer as well. This means that all of your data is always up to date.
You can make sure that your data is always safe by using either one of these software solutions. You do not want to take the chance that all of your hard work will be in vain.
When you have a web site online then there are several things that you need to do so that you can make sure that it is always operational. If it is not always operational then you need to make sure your downtime is cut to a minimum. The first thing that you should do is to make sure that all of the software that you are using on the web site is up to date. When a company releases a minor update to a piece of software, then most of the time it is for security reasons. If you want to avoid your site being taken down by hackers then you need to make sure that you apply all of the updates. But before you do that you should make sure that you back up your web site safely and securely. Also, backing up your web site is another way that you can make sure that your downtime stays low.
If you are someone who knows their way around tech then you probably already know how to back up your web site. But if you are someone who is new or may not know everything that there is to know about server software then you might be a little lost. You will probably use the CPanel board to collect a back up of your web site. That is fine but it is not the best way to be able to examine your file structure. By examining your file structure you are able to guarantee that you are getting everything that you need and leaving the bad things out. If a hacker was able to put a piece of malware on your server, then you would not be able to see it through the normal CPanel back up process. So you should use an FTP client to back up your data with.
In case you do not know, FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol. It is an old school technology that will allow you to go into the file structure of a server and download or upload data from there. With an FTP client, you will be able to easily see the entire file structure and notice if anything is there that is not supposed to be. Once you see this, you can delete the malware from your server and then commence to downloading the backup data. So if you ever need that back up data in the future, it will be right there.
If your server allows it and you are worried about someone packet sniffing your credentials out of the air, then you can use SFTP. This is the same as FTP but it comes with a SSH component to it. This will allow you to pass data over the air securely without hassles.
As you see, backing up your data is very important. And if you need to do it, then there are ways that you can do it securely so that you and only you will be able to get the data.
There is a new service that everyone has been praising and it’s called Dropbox. So far, it is the best example of what the power of the cloud can do. It is one of the few good cloud services that is brought to you by a company not named Google. There seems to be a lot of confusion when people use the term cloud. It is not anything magical that is hard to figure out. It mostly means that you have brought a service that is typically done on the desktop onto a server. Even though the term “cloud” has been used a lot lately, the actual ideal of the cloud has been around for a long time now. When you use your email service online, then you are using a cloud based piece of software. But with the drop in cost of both the hardware and the software to set it up, more and more start ups are starting their services on the cloud. And Dropbox is one of the best of the bunch.
When you use the Dropbox service, it is like you are adding another hard drive to your computer. Dropbox is a data hosting service that allows you to place your data on the cloud. The service is unique in two different ways. The first way is that the data that is saved on their host servers is actually encrypted and is stored multiple places unlike your hard drive. So when you access the data, you have a secured connection. And if anything goes wrong with their servers, they have the data stored in more than one place so it will not be lost. Also the service is unique in the fact that it allows you to store your data on several computers at the same time. To do this, you have a special shared Dropbox folder. Any files that you place in that folder are automatically sent to their servers. After it is sent to their servers, it is then loaded up to the other computers that are logged on to your account. Those other computers will get that same files as well. Now if you go to use the other computers, then you will be able to access the files since they are already on there.
Now that you see what the service can do, it is probably real easy to see why you should use this service to back up your important data. Not only will you have the safe security in knowing that your data is being backed up on multiple secured servers, but also that it is being encrypted as well. This is a big plus for anyone who is worried that their important data may be lost. With dropbox, the likelihood of that happening is very low.
So if you have important data, then you might want to think of using a service such as Dropbox to secure it.