Backup Tips for Freelancers

hard drives

I thought it was time to chuck some outstanding backup tips for freelancers your way. Though naturally these tips are not just applicable to freelancers, but also cover numerous other circumstances.

Give your email a good old squeeze!

This advice is for those using an email client application with messages stored on their computer.

You setup your snazzy all singing and dancing backup solution, only to discover your email backup goes at a snails pace! Perhaps there are ancient emails that can be removed? Especially those pesky emails with their monster attachments lurking in forgotten folders!

Plus if using an email client such as Thunderbird, you can search for emails based upon attachment status, which makes shifting those bulky emails a breeze. Don’t forget to tidy up your ‘sent items’ folder! Also don’t forget to ‘compact’ your email folders afterwards. Hopefully with as little as thirty minutes of dedicated email cleaning, you should have been able to squeeze your email into shape, and thus speed up your backup.

Encrypt your backups!

Be paranoid, be very paranoid! What would happen if someone broke into your premises or accessed your online storage, and took your backups? Can the thief access your data? As well as making sure your backups are as secure as possible to access, you should also encrypt your backup files! This is easily done using 7-Zip or automated solutions such as Cobian.

Automate!

When you rely on manually backing up your data, you are in turbulent waters, as people tend to forget or not find time. i.e. I’ll do it tomorrow! Instead automate as much, if not all your backup processes when possible. Documents, Email, MySQL, Website files backup processes can all be automated.

Store your backups at different locations!

Never store your backups just at the same location as the original data. What happens if you are hacked, a fire, theft or another hiccup occurs? For example I use a NAS box with two different hard drives (not setup as RAID) for two backups, and store some backups off-site at another location. You need to find a solution that is right for you.