Hello world 👋🏻 my name is Francisco, fcoterroba on the Internet and today I am going to bring you a very theoretical post, with a lot of text but to further enrich, if possible, your computer knowledge.
Before starting, although I will explain what it is later, I recommend you visit a post that I uploaded more than a month ago, in which I explain many of the computer terms most used in our daily lives. (Yes, backup included.) 😁. You can reed the post here.
I also want to remind you that a few months ago I uploaded a video to my YouTube channel, very interesting, focused on home automation. Specifically, we connect, configure and install a smart light bulb 💡 with which you can change its color, turn it off, turn it on and much more simply by using your mobile phone and/or voice assistants such as Google, Alexa, etc. 👇🏻
Now yes, let's start!.
Perhaps, if you are not very close to computing, the term backup sounds familiar to you on your phone, whose WhatsApp makes a backup copy, or backup, at two in the morning. It never fails.
Do you know where this backup copy is saved? 🤔
A backup, backup, backup copy or reserve copy (in English backup and data backup) in information sciences and computing is a copy of the original data that is made in order to have a means to recover it in case of its loss. Backups are useful for different events and uses: recovering computer systems and data from a computer, natural disaster, or attack; restore a small number of files that may have been accidentally deleted, corrupted, infected by a computer virus, or other causes; storing historical information more economically than hard drives and also allowing transfer to locations other than that of the original data, etc.
Explanations from Wikipedia aside, a backup (or backup copy, in Spanish) is the fact of making a copy of various previously selected data. In order to be able to recover and/or restore them in the event that the main medium, which maintained the information saved in the backup, has been deleted, corrupted, formatted, etc.
It is very important that, both in companies and individuals, we keep a regular copy of our data, whether it is important or not.
Among many others, some of the advantages of making backups are:
- Data is stored instantly according to the scheduled date and time.
- All stored information can be used immediately.
- When we perform the backup on a server external to ours, preservation is even more guaranteed in the event of any unexpected incident.
- The information can be encrypted, thus guaranteeing the privacy and security of the data during sending.
- Furthermore, if we use servers other than the usual one, the storage space on the servers is considerably freed up. Contributing to making the platform more efficient and faster.
As an interesting tip, I can also tell you that March 31st marks World Backup Day. A day that aims to teach users the importance of making backup copies of files.
Below I leave you a YouTube video of a podcast created by the guys from Underc0de made this March 31st with the purpose of talking about that day. 👇🏻
There are many ways to make backup copies, different from each other and the most appropriate being the one that makes the process easier.
For home users, those who are not companies or self-employed, it is recommended to perform the famous 3-2-1 backup method.
This method consists of making 3 copies of your data, having them on 2 different media, in addition to having 1 copy outside the usual place.
For example, Let's say we are indie video game developers. And we are making a video game that to date weighs 12GB. The correct way to make a backup of our game would be:
Make three copies of the video game, copy these three copies to a pendrive and to an external hard drive. And move those three copies back to a storage cloud like Google Drive, Dropbox or iCloud.
Below I leave you a video of the Xataka friends, in which they explain the reason for this methodology 👇🏻
Although they are also suitable for home users and small projects, different, somewhat more advanced methodologies are usually used in large companies. According to their traffic.
Mainly, there are three types of backups:
- Full backup → Actually, it is the backup that everyone makes, the basic one. Copy all of the data we want onto another set of media. The main advantage is the ease of encompassing all the data.
La desventaja es que dicho proceso suele llevar bastante tiempo, más aún cuando el total de los archivos aumenta notablemente de tamaño. - Incremental backup → Also called progressive, it copies only the data that has changed since the last save process. That is, it only saves the data that the system notices has been modified since the last backup. It requires greater attention to processes but is noticeably faster than the previous one.
- Diferencial backup → This backup methodology can be placed as an intermediate step between the previous two.
The operation of this is like the incremental one, with the difference that, from the third backup, all the data that has changed since the first full backup will be copied.
It has the advantage of being more secure, as it saves “the same complete copy” several times, but it is somewhat heavier than incremental backup.
As I understand that it can be something complicated to understand, I leave you this video below to finish understanding it. (it helped me pass the exam on the topic) 😂👇🏻
BACKUP TOOLS
Although the simplest is the typical one of copying and pasting your files to an external hard drive, pendrive or cloud. There are programs specially programmed for this purpose. Among many, I recommend:
Bvckup 2 → It is paid. It costs about €30 but offers, in a very simple way, making backup copies exclusively in Windows. Its main focus is file synchronization and backups.
Acronis → It is the most expensive one that I recommend. It costs €50 but it is very powerful, complete in functionality and easy to use. The copy is done in the background, without the computer in question being affected in the slightest.
EaseUS Todo Backup → It is free without limitation beyond the impossibility of uploading the backup to a cloud. This program allows you to perform incremental and differential operations, without much problem.
Paragon → It is another paid program that costs around €45 that is specially programmed to make individual or complete copies of files. It also allows you to filter by file type, date, user, etc.
Uranium → It is a free program to make backup copies on Windows. Among its functions is avoiding duplicate data and its friendly interface. It is very simple.
Duplicati → It is a free and open source program that allows you to make backup copies with the advantage of being able to have web access from anywhere in the world. It's the one I use personally.
FBackup → Finally, I recommend this free tool with an Office layout. It is very simple and easy to understand. In addition, with its friendly assistant, we can make completely complete backups without being computer technicians!
And little more to add, guys! I hope you liked this very… theoretical post 😅 and that you learned a lot. See you here very soon and you already know that you can follow me on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. 🤟🏻
English 
Spanish