Q & A: What do you use to back up files?

Question:

Do you back up your files? What system do you recommend?

Answer:

Summer is a good time to work on this because you don't have a major holiday to deal with and can take some time to tune up various systems in the church office. We all know the importance of backups for our work in church communications, however--just because we know we should, we don't always do them as often as we should. However, after having lost my share of important files, I now have three systems in place:

The three I use include:

1) Jump drives for when I am working on a book, publications, graphics project--I like to immediately back up important material. I don't always do this, but I try.

2) Separate hard drive: Again, I frequently back up important projects as I'm working on them on a small, but very large in capacity hard drive. This is what I tell my husband is that it is the "grab if the house if on fire" piece of hardware. I use this, even though I have an online backup system that I'll tell you about next because, first of all the backup system takes time--some files don't fully back up for a day or so. Second, I'm an old lady, not completely trusting of "the cloud." I like a tangible storage system. I use an older "Buffalo" drive, but there are newer, cheaper, bigger ones out there--just ask any tech person for a current recommendation.

3) Carbonite:( http://www.carbonite.com/en/ )I really like this program. It isn't free, it costs $59 a year (quite reasonable). What I like about it is that it works continuously in the background. I do the ones previously mentioned, but not nearly as often as I should and I sometimes forget important things. I don't have to do a thing for Carbonite to work--other than sign up. It's very easy to restore files and to transfer the system to a new computer (which I recently did).

The one thing to keep in mind with Carbonite is that the backups can seem a bit slow--but as I said it works in the background and doesn't seem to interfere with other online work. Be prepared when you first sign up for it because if you have a lot on your computer, it can take over a week--with your computer on 24/7 for it to do the initial backup. After that things seem to go quite smoothly.

What hardware, software or system you use isn't important, but here is what is

You must have an off-site backup system.

No matter how great your system in your home or church office, unexpected tragedies, weather events, and all kinds of things can happen. If a flash flood happens or a fire or an earthquake or whatever else, you might not have any time to grab your backup drive and run. You might not even be in the church office.

That is why a system like Carbonite is so useful--the backup is safe no matter if your computer and entire office is under water or burnt to a crisp.

One other important thing--be sure to email yourself--or store with a friend in another state or both the access codes to your online backups. Once again, as we've seen from the many current natural disasters, things can happen to destroy an entire community with no warning. You want to be a good servant and care well for all that is entrusted to you.

We are promised eternal security, our computers aren't

How good it is to know that no matter what tragedies happen to homes, churches, data and computers, that if we know Jesus as our Saviour--we will make it home to heaven. Secure, loved, eternally protected far beyond the guarantees of any earthy software online or off.

If you aren't sure of your eternal security with Jesus, you might enjoy reading:

Have you closed with Jesus?