If you’re using the internet and emails, your PC can be vulnerable to viruses. It can also be vulnerable to crashing and breaking – all technology breaks, it’s a fact of life. And if your PC breaks and won’t switch back on you can lose everything that’s saved on it. Companies usually have an IT support services team who help them recover files if a disaster happens and everything gets lost, but if it happened to you at home would you know what to do?
If something accidentally gets deleted you can try doing “System restore” which takes your PC system back to a previous time or date. To do this, go to your Start menu and search for System Restore – it’s easy and the system will walk you through the process.
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However, the best cure is prevention, and luckily protecting your files isn’t difficult. This first step is using strong passwords and changing them regularly to minimize the risk of hacking.
Using some sort of external storage that saves your files outside your computer means they will be saved in two places, so if your PC breaks you have everything stored on another device as well. Memory sticks are easy ways or saving, particularly small files. Buying an external hard drive isn’t very expensive and these have more memory space so they allow you to back up lots of files such as your music library.
Even simpler than this is the option of emailing files to yourself. They are then stored remotely on the email host’s server so you can access them from anywhere. Beware though – if your email gets hacked or something happens to your email provider the files will be lost, and highly technical people in computer technology jobs will probably warn you against using this as a method of backup. But as a temporary measure or for small, non-critical files it is an option and means you don’t have to carry any storage devices around with you to access the files.
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There are other options called “cloud” services which store your files in a remote location so they are saved and you can access them anywhere. If you use Windows 7 or Vista they have options available such as Windows Live SkyDrive, but there are other independent providers so do some research as it varies depending on how much space you need and what type of files you’re storing.
Author Bio:
Katy is a blogger within digital marketing with experience within the IT sector and an interest in user experience and helping people make the most of technology.
