Backup your Phone

Backup your Phone | Tech Tips Article by PcCG

Friendly reminder to backup! There are only a couple things that we are sticklers about. Having a good Anti-Virus, and backing up.

With those 2 things in place, whatever issues may arise, you'll ultimately be fine. This includes BACKING UP YOUR CELL PHONE! In fact this is even MORE important than your computer. 

There are a lot of tools and methods to recover data from a crashed computer, but for cell phones options are limited. The problem is compounded by the fact that many or most phones today have encryption. Encryption is GREAT for securing your data, but can be a nightmare when it comes to recovering data. Often if a phone has a failure to start - getting those cherished, irreplaceable pictures off of it becomes next to impossible (and if it is possible often costs thousands of dollars). You can do things such as ensure pictures are being saved to an unencrypted SD card if you phone supports that, but really the easiest, most through solution is to perform a full backup on a monthly basis.

Almost all phones come with backup software. It is easiest just to use the application that came with the phone. Sometimes it can be a pain to get that data into a new phone, but at least we have options for recovering that precious data. Even if you think you have some type of cloud backup on your phone, please do a monthly full backup of your phone! You can skip doing a full local PC backup ONLY if you are 100% certain the cloud backup is getting everything you want, most people assume or don’t know until it’s too late. It usually will take less than 1 hour to figure out how to do this, and going forward takes minutes to do. Put a reminder on your calendar and follow through and do it!

I couldn't imaging losing all the data/pictures from my phone. For this reason, my phone nightly backs up at least the pictures to my PC. My PC backs up weekly to a local hard drive. And finally all my data is backed up to our cloud-based backup that is fully encrypted, so I don't have to worry about any hacks or data breaches. This means I have 4 copies of pictures from my cell phone, and I'll never lose that data. And of course, it's very inexpensive to have all of this in-place. Do you need to go to those lengths? That's up to you! But at the minimum, again, do a full backup of your phone on a monthly basis to your computer. It's not a question of IF something fails, it's WHEN.

And if you've made it this far in the post, you've inherited the responsibility of reminding friends and family of the importance of doing this!

IPhone: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203977#computer

Samsung: https://www.samsung.com/us/support/answer/ANS00048603/

General Backup software (Several reviewed; works regardless of phone maker): https://www.wondershare.com/backup/android-backup-app.html

Backup Your Cell Phone