Five Reasons Why You Need a Windows Backup Program

1.    Viruses – There are any number of viruses on the internet right now. Some estimates are that they are in the millions and you probably have a fair share of them doing damage on your network right this minute. Viruses don’t always come in emails – they come in freeware, shareware, and adware. They also attack your network when someone clicks on the wrong website – it can be that easy.

2.    Hardware Malfunction – Computers were not designed to last forever and the average lifespan of a modern laptop is only fourteen months! That is because we compute so much more and so much harder than we used to, and the drives and other components were not built for this much work.

3.    Competitors and Ex-employees – If you think that all problems that occur on your computer are accidental or due to the failure of software or hardware, then think again. Right now, someone is probably trying to get into your system, to do a little spying, give you a little virus, or erase some juicy information. Do not underestimate the power of ex-employees who are often the biggest threat of a company.

4.    Disasters – These are sometimes natural disasters (floods, tornadoes, earthquakes), but they are sometimes man-made, and those can be the worst. When your building catches fire and all of your computers are drowned by a burst of fire sprinklers, or when a power-surge fries an all-important server, you will have nowhere to go if you don’t have a backup.

5.    Humans – Perhaps the most important reason why you need a Windows backup to be running right now and in perpetuity is because of what we all do every day. We delete files that we shouldn’t have. We overwrite good information with bad information. We think that installing a new piece of software or even an update will help us out, and it only corrupts everything that we have. We really are our own worst enemies when it comes to computing.

Where to Backup

Just having a Windows backup program is not enough – knowing how and where to back up all of your data is also important. In the past, a tape drive was the standard way to backup information, but not anymore. If you want to use a Windows backup, then you basically have three choices:

-    Backup to “the cloud”, which is a server located in a different location, run by a separate company.
-    Backup to a private backup company online.
-    Backup to your own media, but in a different physical location (i.e. another building)

Most companies are finding that Windows backup programs that allow them to create various types of backups (including disk images) to the cloud are by far the easiest to use and allow you to rest easy, knowing that you can’t possibly destroy what is out there.

Using a cloud backup system is extremely easy, usually costs a small fee per month, and there is nothing you have to do once it is running – just set it to run and you will always have a backup.