You have probably seen it on Facebook, Hey guys lost my phone yesterday, please inbox me your number all over the place! (The next time you see this post, please link this article right into the comment box.)
Losing your phone or laptop can be distressful. Replacing such gadgets can be quite expensive. But there is one thing that is almost impossible to replace: DATA. It is increasingly notable that most Kenyans do not take data backup seriously.
In 2011, I started an online backup business that enabled users to automatically backup their data on their laptops and desktop computers offering a space of up to 500 GB on a budget of less than Kshs, 5,000 per year. We did our market research to hundreds of potential users and everyone had a need for the backup product. But once we rolled out, we couldn’t even make one sale!
Kenyans are not pro-active, we are reactive. We look for solutions once tragedy strikes, so we learnt.
We had to shut the business. Some may say we were too early for the market. But soon, some of the people we approached to get the service had a need for the service once their machines were stolen or crashed.
Here are some tips that will help you backup data on your phone and on your computer.
1. Make a habit of creating folders on your machine
One of the biggest problems in data management is knowing where you various documents are. I have seen many people with a thousand and one icons of documents all over your home page. Firstly, keeping your documents in folders will help you track them easily. Secondly putting your folders in the D section rather than on your desktop ensures that if you machine crashes, you will still have all your documents in D.
Folders make it easy for programs like DropBox and Google Drive to backup. Once you have documents in folders you can choose which folders you want to continually backup. This ensures that you only set up the backup plan only once. If you add documents to selected folders, they will be backed up automatically, once your machine is connected to the internet. You do not have to always remember to backup.
2. Let DropBox and Google Drive be your friends
Dropbox gives every user a free 2GB for your photos and documents. Google Drive gives every user 15GB free. If you have a Gmail account, it means you already have a Google Drive account. All your email storage space is counted in the Google Drive folder. If you are a small business owner you can get 100GB for only Kshs 2,000 a year!
For DropBox you can get extra backup of 100GB for around Kshs12,000 per year. This might change since Google has dropped its storage prices. Other services that have been tried and tested are Livedrive.com and SugarSync.
For businesses I would prefer Google Drive because for only Kshs 12,000 per year you can get a whooping 1TB storage. Now that is huge.
Learn more about Dropbox and Google Drive in the video below
3. Automate data backup for Dropbox and Google Drive
If you are afraid of using a lot of bandwidth in backing up your documents, the two services have a drag and drop capability to save documents which means you will always have to manually backup your files.
Their automation is what is good. If you have light files like text documents, photos and power point presentations having them on automation saves you a lot of work. You only have to set it up once and it keeps on backing up way after you forget you installed them.
4. Scan your hard copy Documents
Now that we know how to backup our soft copy documents, one kind of documents are always forgotten: Important hard copy documents. This includes, your identification card, school card, birth certificates, passports, land titles you get the drift.
When these things are in need most people go to the piles and piles of paper work in their houses. These are very vulnerable. Your house or office could catch fire, thieves could steal or displace them, chances of flooding. Anything can happen to hard copy documents.
Get into the habit of scanning these documents and saving them up on Google Drive or any other document storage of your choice. You would not need to always photocopy the documents, meaning you can leave them safely at home and just use the scanned copies. This also gives you an option of having coloured copies of your documents all the time!
One thing we do not think about it, what happens if something bad happened to me? What if I perish and I have hidden important documents all over the place. When you scan and save copies of your documents you can easily give access to them to your loved ones just through their email. If anything ever happens to you and they need certain documents, it is in their hands in a click.
5. Download easy to use Contact backup apps for your phone
There is one thing that kills our networking numbers. With one swoop, you could be contactless. Some of those contacts could open great doors for you. There are a million and one contact backup software.
Super Backup is one application I would recommend. They have a free version and a paid version. The easy user interface will help users backup their contacts, SMS, Call Logs and many more. With smartphones it’s no longer about contacts.
Contact Backup is another app that will make it easier to restore contacts on your smartphone. It uploads your contact files on Google Drive and/or email, making your Google Drive the one stop shop for all your documents.
If you have a not so smartphone, the best bet here is to use Safaricom’s back up service. It only costs one shilling per week! Just make sure that all your important contacts are on your SIM card. Safaricom will not backup contacts on the phone.
With phone backup apps, I would suggest that you upload 2 versions of your contacts backup. It is not surprising that some of the output might be corrupted by some of the software.
With most of these apps you will have to do a manual backup. Paid apps will do automatic backups for you. But if you want to use free backups, put a reminder on your phone to remind you every month to backup your contacts.
And Finally
Even if robbery will not take away your prized possession, then it might fall, get damaged or crash. You need a backup plan. You cannot have a medical insurance, life insurance and forget to have a backup plan for your documents.
Be smarter than you smartphone. Be faster than your 8GB memory machine. Back up your documents right now.