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Every year 43% of computer users lose irreplaceable files… how about you?

by Chris on Oct 1st, 2009
in Tags: Backup, Data, Hard Drive, Real Estate, www.mozy.com
Posted in Software, Text

So, you have spent a good deal of money on your computer and you are very happy with it, until one day…..nothing.  Hard drive failure.  No worries, you do back up your computer regularly right? Right!?

Unfortunately, for a lot of Real Estate agents out there risk management is an after thought.  We spend enough time worrying about how to use all of this equipment, we don’t like to spend more time thinking about what to do when it breaks.  Reality is, your life is on that machine.  Pictures of your kids, family, your music collection and obviously your business.  Not only that, but usernames and passcodes too! Think about the years of data that is accumulated and the importance of keeping this data safe. If you don’t know where to begin in making sure you never lose a $1.29 song, a priceless photo or an important document, read on.

There are two main ways of backing up your machine and preventing disaster, each with positives and negatives.

We are going to start with the traditional hard drive.  Storage space is so cheap these days that you have no excuse not to back-up.  You can currently buy a 1TB external hard drive for less than $130!  Most drives that you buy will come bundled with a back-up solution software in the box.  Most are fairly automated as well.  You just need to set up things like, preferences, for when you want to back up automatically and if you want to back up everything or just certain files.  If you are a Mac user its even easier!  Just plug any hard drive into your Mac and a program called Time Machine will appear and it will start backing up automatically.  Done deal.  An excellent site to refer to for reviews of a decent drive is www.cnet.com.  They are a trusted source for reviews of pretty much anything electronic.  However, they don’t cover Real Estate solutions, that’s where Tech Savvy Agent comes into play.

Ok, ok, so what are the negatives to setting up a local solution like a hard drive?  A number of terrible things can happen and can put your business on hold.  Unfortunately, things like fire or theft can render the previous solution inept.  Here is where option 2 comes in.

With internet connections faster than ever, online backup has become more and more popular and extremely cost effective too!  Most services will backup your entire machine for somewhere around $5 a month. www.idrive.com will back up 2 terabytes for free!There are a number of other good solutions out there too like www.carbonite.com, www.mozy.com and www.ironmountain.com. These solutions are hassle free ways to make sure your business and personal life stays on it’s feet.  Most solutions will back up your computer on an “after hours” schedule that you can modify.  Simple.  Staying safe isn’t as confusing as you may have initially thought.  Internet backup does take a lot longer than the hard drive solution but, once you get the initial backup out of the way it is fairly painless.  If you are still on slow internet connection or (gulp) dial up, you need to move on now.

That’s Tech Savvy Agent’s quick overview of backing up and staying safe.  Perhaps our Tech Savvy agents out there can post about their favorite solutions and why.  Lets spread the knowledge!