Juggling the WFH office demands? Don’t forget to back up

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Work from home. Homeschooling. Zoom conference calls from dawn to dusk. VPN connections that just don’t quite work. Entire small businesses relocated to garages, spare bedrooms or the dining table. While home used to be our “escape”, it’s now become our whole life as we try to understand and adjust to our new normal in these challenging times.

Now is probably the time to take stock and make sure you are ready for the months ahead:

Tip 1: Be prepared

Laptops and phones break, at the most inopportune time. Although you may not always think about it, it’s important in your digital life as much as in your physical life to keep an eye out for potential vulnerabilities. So, make a schedule to regularly back up the data stored on your family’s computers and phones (as well as your social media networks if that’s important to you).

Tip 2: Choose the right back-up option

Take stock of your data. Do you have mostly text files and a handful of photos or do you have thousands of photos and dozens of videos, too? How often are you creating new data files? Once you know what sort of data (and how much of it) you need to back up you can choose the right drive for the job. You’ll need to go big if you have lots of multimedia content – an 8TB drive could be a good fit for a home movie fan. But if you don’t have too much to store, a portable drive with as little as 1-2TB of storage would likely be sufficient.

Perhaps you already use the cloud for some of your data storage, but it can get expensive when you have a lot of data but most importantly – the rule of data storage is that you should always have two copies safely and separately stored, so perhaps go for one local and one in the cloud.

Tip 3: Securing your data

Everyone has a different WFH situation – have you set up a desk in your living room or garage? Or perhaps you are working from a shared house with your roommates? Whatever your situation, company data needs to be protected from increased security risks such as malware, phishing and identity theft. Ensure your storage solution provides encryption features such as those found on Seagate Backup Plus Ultra Touch.

Tip 4: Fashion or function…or both

Want to keep it stylish or are you just a practical kind of person? Do you want something that you can take with you or leave on your desk? If you’re prone to losing things, consider a colourful storage drive that will be easy-to-find. Maybe you’d like something sleek for your desk, or robust enough to handle rough action from your children? There are options for everyone, so be strategic about what you think will work best for you and your storage needs.

Tip 5. Be organised

Why not use some of your WFH downtime to do some digital spring cleaning and get rid of any content that you no longer need. Do a “Marie Kondo” on your files. Delete the 10 copies of the same photo of your child, or dump old work files that you no longer need that are taking up too much space. While you’re at it, organise your remaining files into folders with names and categories you can easily search.

But, most of all, don’t be caught off guard if and when digital disaster strikes. Make sure you have a back-up plan that suits your needs in place before it’s too late.

Jeff Park, ANZ Country Manager, Seagate