Family and Friends, please pay attention – Backups
Family and Friends, please pay attention. This is very important and could save you a lot of frustration and emotional heart breaks.
People’s lives are stored on computers and devices. Every one takes digital photos, and most people save them on computers. Some do not even do that and just leave it on phones. I want you to think about this for a minute. Where are your wedding photos and video’s? What about your children’s important moments like school performances, sporting events and birthdays? What about the photos of loved ones, boyfriends, girl friends, husbands, wives and parents.
I hope I have your attention and have you thinking now. So hear me out as an IT professional. Most people do not make backups. The people that do make backups use manual methods that are not consistent; myself I am just as guilty. My Time keeps reminding me it has been 43 days as of when I write this of my last backup. (I am actually safe because I use iCloud as well).
Two reasons off the start why this is not good enough if you are one of those people that thinks they are backing up.
- It is manual, you will eventually forget to do it, or get complacent because nothing has happened and stop doing it.
- This hardly protects you, except for if you accidently delete a file or your hard drive crashes or you lost your laptop.
The concerns are, natural disaster and your home is destroyed. Think wild fires for small towns, floods near rivers, a house fire, earth quakes and super hero’s from space fighting it out on your lawn. Ok I admit I watch to many marvel movies. The greatest concern these days is ransomware viruses. These are viruses that infect your computer, encrypt all the files and they demand payment to restore it. A regular external hard drive plugged in USB is not immune to this at all. It will become part of the encrypted mess thus, your backups are gone too.
The only solution is to have two kinds of backups, one that is offsite and the local one to be inaccessible to the user. It is such a small price to pay to preserve such a important part of your life.
Now I work for a IT company and we offer protection for a very affordable price. But this isn’t about bringing business to the company I work for. I want my friends and family to be safe so I will tell you what you need to do on your own but would encourage you to use my company. If not for yourself think about parents and grand parents that are not tech savvy that could use our help.
Step 1: Get a network attached storage device. They care called a NAS. If this is your only method of backup you should get one with two hard drives. If you will be using offsite backups as well then you can get away with a single drive but it is not recommended.
Step 2: Configure the device with a login account with a secure password.
Step 3: Configure backup software to connect to it via this secure login. The software is totally free for Windows Computers, and Mac’s have many options to. DO NOT set this up as a drive to use for yourself. It is only for backups. The second you make it a mounted drive you lose protection from Viruses.
Step 4: Setup internet backups in the cloud. I can provide this for a very cheap monthly price and our data center is located here in BC, so nothing is going out of the country. But you can also use Dropbox, Apple iCloud, Microsoft OneDrive and so on.
I really don’t care which of the cloud providers you use, each have different strengths and weaknesses. The NAS box I recommend has the ability to sync up to these services directly as well making this process automated. FYI my company offers as much storage for the same prices.
So that is my rant, think about how important your files are, besides pictures work files, documents and receipts and other things. You might be thinking I am safe, all my photos are in my facebook. Well that is true until you get banned or hacked.
Single Drive NAS box that can also connect to online services like DropBox to automate offsite backups
Prices are as of the posting of this, they can change in the future and is a guide only. Small shipping charge for sending completed units, NAS box plus Hard Drives setup. Setting up the backup system which is done remotely over the internet has a small charge as well.
Qnap 1 Bay, I can do for $230 plus Tax (No Hard Drive)
http://www.ncix.com/detail/qnap-ts-131p-1-bay-personal-cloud-94-137848.htm
Qnap 2 Bay, I can do for $275 plus Tax (No Hard Drives)
http://www.ncix.com/detail/qnap-ts-231p-2-bay-personal-cloud-fe-137847.htm
Hard Drives, for the 2 Bay NAS you need two Hard Drives.
1 TB Ironwolf Hard Drive, I can do for $85 plus tax
http://www.ncix.com/detail/seagate-ironwolf-st1000vn002-1tb-sata-15-135300.htm
2 TB Ironwolf Hard Drive, I can do for $120 plus Tax
http://www.ncix.com/detail/seagate-ironwolf-st2000vn004-2tb-sata-e6-135301.htm
3 TB Ironwolf Hard Drive, I can do for $148 plus Tax
http://www.ncix.com/detail/seagate-ironwolf-st3000vn007-3tb-sata-d1-135302.htm
4 TB Ironwolf Hard Drive, I can do for $182 plus Tax
http://www.ncix.com/detail/seagate-ironwolf-st4000vn008-4tb-sata-15-135303.htm
6 TB Ironwolf Hard Drive, I can do for $285 plus Tax
http://www.ncix.com/detail/seagate-ironwolf-st6000vn0041-6tb-sata-f9-136977.htm
8 TB Ironwolf Hard Drive, I can do for $365 plus Tax
http://www.ncix.com/detail/seagate-ironwolf-st8000vn0022-8tb-sata-e9-136979.htm
10 TB Ironwolf Hard Drive, I can do for $500 plus Tax
http://www.ncix.com/detail/seagate-ironwolf-st10000vn0004-10tb-sata-4e-134127.htm
The recommended software for Windows computers I suggest is Veeam Endpoint Backup. It is free but you do have to register with a real email address to get the download link.
https://www.veeam.com/windows-endpoint-server-backup-free.html
Lastly, you can use corporate level high protection Antivirus for a fraction of the price, I can make it available to home users. You do not get the managed service for this price, which is central monitoring by our security department for problems. Nevertheless, this Antivirus has special capabilities that help protect from ransomware viruses. However, nothing is perfect so the most important thing is backups.
You can watch the video of this antivirus here at https://www.computerworks.ca/webroot-secureanywhere/
The filter add on for the Internet Browser does a good job keeping users safe. The file monitoring it does on unknown files and roll back capability of changes my by those unknown untrusted files is the strong point of why its better to use a paid product over free antivirus that comes with Windows.
I can offer this for $60 a year per computer, for more then 3 I can offer a small discount.
If you have read all this, good on you. If you do not want to use my company for your personal security needs then by all means use what I have posted above to secure yourself. At the end of the day I want my friends and family and the friends and family of my friends to be safe. I provided retail links to the recommended devices and hardware, my suggestions for setup is listed. The free backup software is linked and some people already have lots of online storage already and can use it for backups. If you do want this professionally setup and to use the services the company I work for by all means contact me.