IT Tech Corner - Back It Up!

The importance of having a backup of electronic data cannot be overstated. You don't need it until you need it, but when you need it, boy, you better have it.

I tell my boys that the first thing we need to do when they start playing a new app game or using a new program to design a Minecraft mod is to learn how to save their progress. There's nothing worse than seeing the pain in someone's eyes or hearing their mournful cries at the loss of their new digital creation. There's been a time or two when I've discovered a new cool set of keystrokes that deleted my PHP or CSS file with no recovery and I had to go into my backups to at last avoid starting from scratch.

Every device these days offers ways to make a backup, either locally or to the cloud. While backing up to a cloud may produce anxiety, it is generally a safe thing to do and will save you a lot of time the next time you get a new device or have to perform a factory reset on your phone (not based on a true story, from Saturday.) When you run a backup on your phone, you can choose which things to backup. While you probably are thinking of backing up your address book, photos, documents, etc, I recommend including app configurations in your backup of choice. Having your passwords written down somewhere is also a solid idea.