You know the old saying in real estate which tells the 3 most important things, right? When asked what are the three most important things when it comes to selling a home, business or property, the successful realtor always gives the same three answers: location, location, location!

Bringing that same thinking to the computer world, the question would be: “What are the three most important things about computing?” For the majority of techs like myself, the answer would be: “Back up, back up, back up!”

3 Important Things In Computing: Backup, Backup, Backup

Example: just last week, we received a phone call from someone who stored all their important business-related information on an external drive. He had accidentally dropped the drive off a counter onto the floor. When he tried to use the drive afterwards, it was deader than a door nail. He called to see if we could help and he mentioned that this important information wasn’t backed up anywhere.

In today’s computing world, where almost everything is done and stored in computer documents and pictures, backup is essential. Not just any backup, by the way. You need backup you can rely on. That’s why external drives are NOT the place to store backups of your data. Here at KCC, we only use external drives to move data from one device to another or as temporary storage when we are working on a customer’s computer.

What do we use for backup? Carbonite – online, encrypted backup that keeps our data safely backed up in case of a catastrophe. Because of our many years of using Carbonite, relying on them and having successfully restored deleted files from them, we have become Carbonite partners. If you sign up through us, we get to keep an eye on whether your backup is working and we can warn you if it’s not. (No, we can’t see any of your files – remember, your files are encrypted. We can’t read them and neither can Carbonite.) Plus, we make a buck or two if you sign up through us.

Still, even if you don’t use Carbonite or you don’t sign up through us, you need backup. Please don’t let another day go by without it. (I could tell you dozens of horror stories similar to the guy dropping his external drive onto the floor.)