Where To Keep Backups?

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Making sure you backup everything you have is very important. Now the question arises - where to keep backups? After several backups, you will accumulate a great number of copies. Now is the time to plan how to look after it all.

Where to keep backups needs to be considered before disaster strikes, not after!

Once you have made a good backup plan, and you have faithfully followed it, what comes next?

What do you do with all the backups you have? How long do you keep them?

If your backups are on CDs or DVDs or tapes, you know you will need a fairly large place to store them. So start thinking now about where that might be.

• Do you have a friend who lives nearby who is also a genealogy buff, and with whom you may exchange backups? She keeps yours and you keep hers. That way, if either of you has a catastrophic loss, you have a set of backups to start from again in a safe place.
• Those who live through constant threats of tornadoes and floods, or some other equally dire natural disaster, may want their backups stored somewhere further removed from the immediate area. You might have a relative in another town who would be willing to keep your backups safe for you.
• Others rent storage facilities, with or without climate control, as a safe haven for their backup materials.
• When you first begin, and have only a small amount of data to backup, you may be able to rent a safe deposit box which is big enough for all your backups.
• If you are concerned with only your digital data backups, there are online storage facilities you can use. Just remember, when you have backed your data up to that online storage, you are still dependent upon them to do regular and complete backups too! Shop around.

Whatever method or place you choose, it is important to consider your circumstances. If there are never floods or tornadoes where you live, then you are lucky and can fairly safely eliminate those from your considerations.

Think of it this way. If your machine failed today, how hard would it be for you to recover? The answer to that depends at least partly on your decision of where to keep backups. If you kept them along with your originals, you have probably lost your backups too!

If you could not recover, then now is the time to plan for that eventuality. If you plan ahead, then you will never have to wonder how you will ever recover.

What do you need to copy?

When do you need to perform a copy?

How do you perform a complete copy?

How long do you keep your copies?

If You Need the Backup Can You Get It?