Light-O-Rama Backup

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Each year we see messages from folks who have had a computer failure and lost all of their Light-O-Rama data. The simplest solution to avoid this situation is to have a Light-O-Rama Backup plan. This plan should include onsite and offsite backups.

In this article we’ll review 3 Light-O-Rama Backup plans.

External Drive

The first option is to make a copy of your data files to an external drive attached to your computer. This incredibly basic backup method would prevent data loss in the event of a hard drive failure.

At the end of each programming session, you’d just copy the data from your hard drive to the external drive. You can copy it to the same location on the drive each time so that you know where the data is. If you wanted to get fancy, you could store multiple copies in multiple directories.

Saving your files to an external drive is an easy solution. However in the event of fire, theft or malicious software, you could still lose data.

The solution?

Offsite Backups

There are two offsite Light-O-Rama Backup options that you should consider.

Online Synchronization

Obviously any backup solution needs to be as easy as possible or else you might forget, right? What if we said that there was a way to have your data automatically saved online as soon as you write it to the disk?

With Dropbox you can store your files in a specific folder on your computer, and that folder will always been updated. As you work on your hours long programming session late into the night, each time you hit save, you’ve automatically saved another Light-O-Rama backup file. It’s literally that easy.

Online Backup

I know what you might be thinking. Wouldn’t an online synchronization be the same as an online backup? It’s one of those Yes and No type answers.

Dropbox only works on one directory that you define. Thus anything in your “Dropbox” directory would be backed up.

With online back up from Backblaze however, you can have your entire hard drive backed up. With configurable scheduling from Backblaze you could have it set to backup your system continuously, once a day, or whenever you hit the backup button.

Summary

Both local and online backups have their advantages. One of the biggest advantages to an online backup is the protection against fire, flood or theft at your home or business. If you have a copy of the data online, you would only need to access the service where your data is stored and start the restore process.

The two offsite backup methods are highly recommended. Please take a moment to look at Dropbox or Backblaze. We think you’ll like them. It should be noticed that these are affiliate links, and we may earn a commission, or receive other compensation when your purchase via the links on our site.

The local option has many benefits over online backups. Those times when a hard drive crashes, and you don’t need (or want) to deal with getting everything from the storage provider, local backup option is easy to restore from. If you have a limited data connection, then a local copy might be preferred.

However, the downside to a local backup is the risk of fire, water damage or theft. In each of these cases your data could be gone forever, making recovery from it much more difficult.

Go Backup!

Either way you go about it, you need a backup of your data. Remember, any backup is better than no backup. Also know that no backup is worth it’s salt if you haven’t tested it. Be sure you know how each method works so that you can restore your data quickly and be back up and running.