by Contents
What is a backup, and how to use it?
Few people backup files daily. Most back up occasionally or don’t back up at all, cursing the world when a system failure results in total data loss. Viruses and system errors on the PC or dropping your favorite smartphone into a river can leave the owner of the devices without valuable information: from work reports to photos of your favorite cat.
Let us tell you what a backup is, will this action help if you like to play Bollywood slots online and your computer often freezes, and why it is important to consider saving your files?
What is a backup?
Backup is “backup” or “support”. In the PC and smartphone world, a backup translates to a copy of data created to save information in case it is lost, damaged or deleted and dropped your smartphone in water. While it’s drying off in the rice, you can connect to a backup storage location and pull out all the information you need.
You can back up everything: files, documents, databases, websites, and PowerPoint presentations. It is essential to store copies of data on different media: hard drives, removable drives, and cloud storage. System administrators often create separate servers that act only as a data repository.
There are several types of backups:
- A full backup includes all data, which can take more space and time to create.
- An incremental backup retains only the files that have changed since the last full or incremental backup, providing a faster copy creation.
- A differential backup also saves only changed files relative to the previous full backup, which can simplify the data recovery process.
- Making backups is often relatively easy and requires very little time. This action can take about 5-10 minutes for regular PC or smartphone users.
What does data backup protect against?
Backing up your PC system and backing up your smartphone data or website protects against various threats and risks that your data may encounter. For example:
- Hardware failures. Hard drives and servers, smartphones, and other devices that store data don’t last forever. Hardware failures can be caused by physical damage, read/write errors, and power failures.
- Data loss. Who hasn’t accidentally deleted something essential or tried to move a Windows folder to the Trash because it’s too heavy and needs more room to play? User error, accidental or even malicious deletion of data can lead to the loss of important information.
- Viruses and malware. Viruses, Trojans and encryption ransomware (ransomware) attacks can cause severe damage to your data. Or the data of grandmothers and parents, who are “on your computer” and download everything or access suspicious sites without your knowledge.
- Fires and natural disasters, theft and stealing.
What data needs to be backed up?
We’ve figured out why you need a backup. Now let’s see what exactly needs to be backed up.
- Documents and files. Text documents, spreadsheets, presentations, images, and video files that are valuable to you.
- Databases (DBs). DBs contain structured information such as customer and financial data, inventory lists, and other critical details.
- Websites and blogs. It’s essential to back up their content, including databases, configuration files, and other items, to restore your web presence in case of problems or errors.
- Mailboxes and contacts. It is essential to back up important messages, communications, and other information from your email client or web presence.
- Configuration files and system settings. Backing them up will help restore them in case of malfunction or failure.
- User profiles and data. If you work in an organization or on a computer used by multiple people, it’s essential to back up user profile data, including settings, documents, bookmarks, and other personal files.
FTP
An FTP (File Transfer Protocol) backup backs up data using File Transfer Protocol (FTP). FTP is a standard protocol to transfer files between computers on a network. Usually, this type of backup involves copying files from the local system to a remote FTP server that serves as the target backup storage. System administrators often use it.
Snapshot
Snap is like a snap of the fingers, and the shot is a “snapshot”. It is a snapshot or, in the case of backups, a backup that captures the state of a system or data storage at a particular time. Instead of a separate copy of all files and folders, a Snapshot backup creates a snapshot of the system that includes the state of all files and data at a particular point in time—often used in virtualization, data storage, and operating systems to provide quick and reliable backups.
Cloud
Cloud backup is the process of creating and storing backups of data in remote cloud storage. Instead of using local physical storage devices such as hard drives and thumb drives, backup data is sent and stored on remote servers provided by the cloud provider.
HDD
Backup HDD (Hard Disk Drive) means creating a backup copy of the data stored on your hard drive. It should include an SSD – solid-state drive, actively replacing the buzzing hard drives in modern computers.
HDDs and SSDs are storage devices on a computer or server. Creating an HDD backup means copying all or selected data from a hard drive to another storage device, such as an external network or cloud storage. An HDD backup includes all files, folders, programs and settings stored on your hard drive and allows you to recover this data if your hard drive is lost, damaged or fails.
CDP
Continuous Data Protection (CDP) Backup is a data backup method that provides real-time, continuous data protection. Unlike the backup methods discussed earlier, which are performed at specific points in time, a CDP backup continuously records data changes on the fly. CDP backup is usually used in mission-critical systems and applications where even a small amount of data loss is unacceptable. However, it is worth noting that implementing a CDP backup may require additional resources, such as network bandwidth and storage capacity. It doesn’t make sense to do this type of backup alone, which is why large offices do it.
