How To Survive a Computer Crash With Minimum Loss

A data backup for your computer is so important. The last thing you need is for your computer to crash right before your CSET exam. I see this play out over and over again before every CSET exam. There are a few things you can do to insure a smooth recovery if you do have one.

Power Backup

Make sure that you plug your computer and monitor into a UPS Battery Backup unit to protect it from power surges and outages. For about $40 you can buy a nice battery backup system that will give you about 5 minutes to finish your work and properly shut down your computer in the event of a power failure. Go to http://www.upsforless.com/ to purchase one. Power surges that damage components inside a computer are the number one cause of computer crashes so make sure you have a UPS Battery Backup unit in place.

Hard Drive Data Backup and Recovery

Next, you need to have a data backup in place for the data stored on your computer’s hard drive. The idea is to use a data backup for when your computer crashes, then to recover the data from the backup when you get your computer fixed or just buy a new computer. Western Digital sells some great backup drives called My Book. Dell offers My Book backup hard drives as an option with all new computers they sell but you don’t have to buy a new computer from Dell to get one. You can purchase one for any computer that has a USB 2.0 port. For about $100 you can have a huge 160 GB backup hard drive that plugs in to your USB port. Go to http://www.wdc.com/en/products/index.asp?cat=8 to purchase one.

Online Data Backup and Recovery

There is another excellent option for backing up your computer and that is to use an Internet based backup service. Some people are nervous about having their private files backed up on a server connected to the Internet, but major security precautions are in place by companies that provide this service. To date I have not heard of one person who had their private data stolen from an online backup service. The industry standard is to use secure data encryption – Data is fully encrypted in transit and in storage with SSL and 256 bit AES encryption to ensure complete security.

A 10 GB online data backup will cost you about $10 per month. This form of backup is gaining in