Where does your data reside? Where does its backup reside?
If your answer is “I don’t know,” then disaster WILL probably happen. If your device – phone, tablet, laptop or desktop – suddenly breaks completely or is lost or stolen, you will be looking for a backup. Where is it? How recent is it?
Backups are typically in one of two places. For standard laptops and desktops, an external hard drive should be first choice for backups. It’s fast, it’s local, it’s inexpensive, and it can be fairly obvious when it’s working. Depending upon your computer and the backup device, the backup software varies – Windows Backup, Apple’s Time Machine, Seagate oftentimes provides Memeo. You have to learn how to tell when backups are successful, AND learn how to perform a restore of a file.
The second place commonly used is online. Many paid services abound. Some of the more popular choices include BackBlaze, Mozy, Carbonite, SOS Online Backup. The one big disadvantage to all of these services: if you have a massive amount of data to backup or restore, it can take a long time…
For phones and tablets, are you synchronizing your contacts and calendars with another device? If so, that means that other device has a copy of its data. Doublecheck though! For example, I’ve had clients turn on iCloud on a phone and tablet – but using different accounts – so the data could not sync…