How do I Backup my Data?

Backing up your important data is something we highly encourage all of our customers to do. There are several ways to back up your data and many of them are fairly easy. As a reminder, Velocity Micro claims no responsibility for lost or damaged data. The customer is solely responsible for backing up their data prior to any service performed by Velocity Micro.

The first and easiest method of data backup is to simply buy an external hard drive and copy over important files on a regular basis. A 1 TB drive should be enough for most people, but larger capacities are available. Some external drives, like the Western Digital Passport, offer RAID 1 for even more data redundancy to create automatic, real time backups.

Speaking of RAID 1 (Mirror), RAID 1 is also a good countermeasure against data loss. Drives in RAID 1 have the exact same data, so even if one fails you still have a backup. RAID 5 and RAID 10 are also good for data backup but require more drives and should only be used with a dedicated RAID card. Setting up a RAID array for a system that did not initially come with RAID can be tricky, so we recommend contacting our support team first for assistance. Please note that RAID 0 (Stripe) arrays offer no protection against data loss. Since each drive only has half of the data, if one drive goes bad all of your data will be lost.

The second method for data backup is using a cloud service. These include cloud storage solutions like Dropbox or Onedrive, which require you to manually save whichever files you’d like backed up to those online folders. These options offer limited storage for those who use the free version but do offer larger capacities and backup options for premium users.

One other alternative is a fully automated cloud based backup solution. These can be configured to back up files and folders according to a schedule or whenever changes are made so the backups are always seamless and instant. Plus, by not having files backed up locally, you’re eliminating the risk of data loss from a catastrophic event like a flood or fire. There are several solutions out there, but we’ve found Carbonite to be the best balance of features for cost. Click here to download a free trial version.