Backing up data

The Importance of Backing Up Data:

Backing up data is a very important tool to prevent data loss. We all live very busy lives and the data we have on
our computers and other devices may not be replaceable.The good news is with cloud services, and scheduling
backups on your computers can make the process simple and we can help. We get in many customers who
come in with a computer that maybe starting to lose data or is not running right due to a virus, malware or failing
hard drive. The first thing I ask is if your data has been backed up and most of the time my customers say no.

At sleepwalker computer systems, we recommend using more than one form of backup. As an industry standard,
it is good to have three forms of backup. The first being a cloud service where your data is safely stored on a
cloud service. This can be Google drive, apple iCloud, Microsoft OneDrive. There are also cloud backup services
such as Back blaze, Carbonite, CrashPlan, Dropbox, and others. These are generally automatic if you set them to
backup on a schedule which is recommended to safeguard your data. You should also set system restore points
from within windows itself to revert to an early time in you’re your computer starts acting up, you can restore back
to a point before when it was running correctly. Your second form of backup should be an external hard drive or flash
drive. I generally recommend an external hard drive because flash drives are easy to misplace, and you will not be
able to find them when you need them. But this brings me to the third backup which you can use the flash drive for.
Many people like the convenience of a flash drive and it is good to have it as a third backup device in case you can
not find the backup hard drive. So, what can you do to check the drive health of your PC? We recommend doing
regular scans for viruses and malware. Also running hard drive check tools such as Crystal Disk info to check your
hard drive health and it is very easy to see if your hard drive is having issues. This is called a hard drive SMART
check. It will list items such as drive hours and if there are any errors reported on the drive. It also gives a color
which gives a quick guide to let you know to get your computer to us to get the hard drive replaced before you risk
losing data. The colors are as follows, Blue is good, Yellow for caution, Red for bad. I recommend if it is any color
other than blue, bring the computer in to get the hard drive replaced, This tool can be downloaded from
http://crystalmark.info for free. Also, we recommend using crystal disk mark to see the speed of the hard drive,
especially a mechanical hard drive. This tool can be downloaded free from https://crystalmark.info and If you find
it is reading below 100 MB/s, then you may want to get the mechanical hard drive replaced as it is reading slow
and slowing down your computer. These mechanical drives can be upgraded by us to an SSD which is a much
faster storage solution and will speed up the performance of an older desktop PC or older laptop.
Remember, data loss can be prevented by running these free tools. Remember a PC needs maintenance checks
just like a car. At Sleepwalker computer systems, we are here to help keep your computer running right so you can
sleep at night. Give us a call if you have any questions, we are here to help.