Arya was working on his computer. Suddenly, there was some problem and the computer shut down. No matter how hard he tried, he was not able to make it work again.
Sadly, he took the computer to a repair shop. He was told that the fixing will take about 2 days.
When he got home, he told his sister about his computer. Obviously, he was very sad.
“Why don’t you use my laptop for two days?” his sister offered to help.
“But didi, all my files are on that laptop. How will I work, even if you offer me yours to use?” Arya wailed.
Didi smiled, “My dear, I copied all your files on our hard drive storage. All your files are safe. All you need to do is download them from there, and continue your work. When you are done, I will save a copy of the file on the hard drive again.”
Arya could not believe his ears! “Did you know I was going to lose my laptop for some time? How could you prepare for this didi? How did you know?”
Now, it was didi’s turn to laugh. “No, my dear. What happened to you can happen to anyone. So, every day, I store all the files of our home computers on the hard drive. So that, if anything happens, we only lose some of our work, not all of it. Taking a copy of your files on another storage is called taking a backup.”
Understanding Backup
A backup is when we copy all of our files to another storage. This back up is used if we lose all our data because of some accident or unforeseen circumstances.
Backups should be taken by individuals, but they are always taken by organisations to keep their data safe.
A backup can be taken on another hard drive (storage) within the organisation, or the files can be stored on a storage device that is connected to the internet. When the files are copied to a computer that is connected via the internet, that is called a cloud backup. In this case, the files can be copied or downloaded using the internet. So, even if the outage has happened in Delhi, people from Mumbai can start working on the files by downloading them.
The other feature of a cloud backup is that it can be anywhere at all. So, if Philippines is expecting a tsunami, the files can be stored on a server (computer) that is located in USA. This way, even if the computer systems in Philippines are physically damaged, the files and data are safe.
Obviously, the risk of hacking is higher in a cloud storage than in a physical hard drive backup.
So, does someone in office stay back every night to copy files to a back up drive?
No. There are programs that do this automatically now. Even individuals can set up an automatic back up to a cloud storage program like Dropbox or Google Drive. This way, all their files will be automatically backed up online.