Just What Is a Backup?
Hi everyone. Leo Notenboom here for askleo.com. I’m surprised it's taken me this long to actually
address this question. So what does it mean to make a backup? God knows, I talk about it
all the time. And it is so important and so fundamental to protecting your information
even your security that it is an important thing to understand. It may be that you already
have this down and that's fantastic, but it's important enough that I want to cover the term.
I want to actually lay out just what it means when I talk about a backup. A backup is a copy.
By that I mean you have a file or a photograph or a something and if it's in only one place
then it's not backed up. You have only one copy of that thing the moment you make a copy so that
you have the thing in its original form and another copy of that same thing somewhere else
you've got a backup. It could be as simple as copying your photographs from your phone
to your PC. It could be as simple as having your photographs uploaded to the cloud. Anything
that makes an additional copy of whatever it is we're talking about
is considered a backup. Remember if it's in only one place it's not backed up.
That means that you have exactly only one copy of that say photograph if something happens to it
it's gone forever. You cannot get it back. There is no duplicate copy of it somewhere else.
You've lost it permanently and forever. This is why I harp so much on backing up.
So many things can go wrong, be it with photographs on your phone, be it your camera,
be at your computer. There are just so many ways that information can be lost, and it is so easy
to make bit for bit identical copies of that information
that backing up is one of the fundamental things that everyone really needs to understand and do.
Now a backup is a copy. But a backup is a copy somewhere else. The reason we say that is
imagine, for example, you have a photograph on your phone. If you make a copy of that photograph
on your phone well it's kind of a backup but not a very good one because if you lose your phone
you've lost both. That's one of the reasons we also say a backup is a copy put somewhere else.
So when you back up the photographs from your phone you copy them to your PC.
Or you back up the photographs on your phone by having them automatically uploaded to the cloud.
That way not only is there a copy but it is somewhere else. If something happens to the
first place, be it your phone or your computer or something else, then that other place that
contains the backup copy is unaffected. Now in the generic sense “somewhere else” is kind of
subject to interpretation. Like I said, yes making a copy of the photograph still on the same phone
is kind of sort of a backup but it's not a very good one. Another good rule of thumb is that the
further away the backup is from the original the more you are protected from. So for example, the
copy of a photograph also kept on the phone on the same device well you'll still lose the phone and
you'll lose both copies. If you copy it to your PC you can lose the phone and it's still on the PC.
However let's say something happens. A fire takes out your house your PC and your phone. Well both
copies are gone. If you had put that copy further away, like maybe in the cloud or in a backup disk
stored somewhere else, then you would have been protected from those other things having happened.
So one of the great rules of thumb is: the further away the better. In a pragmatic sense say you're
working on a word document. You hit file save as, and you give it a new name. That's a copy but it's
in the same place. It protects you from some things like making changes to the document you
didn't intend to make. After making that copy you can revert to the copy. Great. But if something
happens to your hard disk well you know that both copies are gone. If on the other hand when you do
that “file save as” you save to an external drive? Great. You've got all of the protections of the
first one, in other words if you make a change to the document later that you didn't intend to make
you've still got that saved copy that has the original document and it's on a different hard
disk. So something happens to your computer that doesn't affect the external drive you've still got
your backup. Another approach “file save as” on to a OneDrive folder. Now you've got both
of those scenarios covered. You've got a copy from before whatever changes you didn't intend to make:
you've got it on a different disk in case something happens to your PC. In fact
you've got it somewhere else entirely so that if something happens to your PC, your external disk,
your house or whatever, it's still there in OneDrive in the cloud. The further away the more
you're protected from. Now you'll notice I did kind of sort of say, yep we made a copy on the C:
drive and we also made a copy on the external drive and we also made a copy on OneDrive.
How many copies do we need? Well you really only needed that one that went to OneDrive,
but something could happen to OneDrive too. When in doubt more is better (within reason of course).
But if you're ever questioning whether or not you should make a copy, I should probably make a copy,
a good rule of thumb is what's referred to as the rule of three. Or the 3-2-1 rule. Three copies
on at least two different media types with one stored elsewhere. That protects you from
a variety of different problems no matter what happens. Chances are one of those three copies
is going to remain available to you. The biggest takeaway I want to give you from this video is
simply this: if it's in only one place it's not backed up. You risk losing it permanently
forever. Please do what you can to make copies. Back things up, so that when (not if) but when
something goes wrong you won't face losing your important documents photographs or whatever. For
links related to the article on which this video is based, for updates, for comments and more visit
askleo.com/131290. I’m Leo Notenboom. This is askleo.com thanks for watching.