Are your bits and bytes in order?

Is all of your data protected? Acronis calls for a spring clean in data housekeeping

SCHAFFHAUSEN, Switzerland, April 15th, 2013 -Now is an ideal opportunity for a spring clean, particularly when it comes to data housekeeping. As more and more people build digital collections of music, photos and videos of friends or family, it's becoming increasingly important to prevent data loss. Here are some tips and ideas from Acronis to ensure people have reliable availability, access and security of data.

Action item number one is to start creating a full backup. It doesn't have to be complicated or expensive and can be created in a matter of minutes with a USB hard drive and easy-to-use backup software. Future backups can be done once a week on a fixed day and run in the background without any noticeable effect on the computer performance.

Every user should be clear about their backup process. Do they use full, incremental or differential backups? Different backup scenarios should be deployed depending on the frequency of the data protection or the required recovery time point. For incremental backups, only files that have been changed since the last backup are included. A differential backup secures only those files that have been changed since the last full backup. It is important a full backup is performed at regular intervals so the user does not risk interrupting the chain of incremental or differential backups and compromising the entire backup process.

When it comes data housekeeping, every user needs to ask: Are my documents, photos, videos and music protected against all eventualities - from accidental overwriting of a file through to damage of the entire disk? If you want to play save and be able to access data en route, cloud backup is a useful enhancement to local backup. A subscription to the Acronis Cloud gives users access to their secure data from a web-based interface at any time and from everywhere. And they can also exchange files with other users.

Backup is not just a matter of manually backing up all files to an external disk because this will merely cause a huge amount of work in case of failure or loss of the PC. In addition to reinstalling the operating system and any programs, all settings and configurations would need to be re-entered. Any browser bookmarks would also be lost.

The solution is to create an image backup, an identical copy of the whole disk. If the hard drive is destroyed, the image can be restored to a new hard drive with exactly the same data and settings as before. With the Acronis Universal Restore technology included in True Image™ 2013 by Acronis®, users can easily and simply restore to any hardware, regardless of the brand or model of the new hard drive or other installed hardware components.

Users should ensure their backup plans include all data that needs to be secured. What about photos, videos and music on mobile phones and tablets? Often multimedia files or contacts from mobile devices are not included in the backup routine. If this is the case, users can ensure they are by storing them in the cloud or synchronising them with their PC.

Even if users are aware of the scope, location and relevance of their data, it's worthwhile taking a good hard look at the backup itself. Is it created correctly, does the recovery work properly, can they access individual backup files? Backup software such as True Image™ 2013 by Acronis® can provide users with a wealth of information on existing backups, including backup types and results, and help to validate their backups.

As Alex Fürst, country manager DACH and Eastern Europe at Acronis says: "Almost everyone has irreplaceable memories on his electronic devices. If you make sure you have secured all your data, you can be confident no picture or video gets lost."

For more information on how Acronis can help secure your data, please visit: https://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/.