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Surely you must have heard the term Back Up your files at some point in your life. As technology grows and becomes a more integral part of our lives, its reliability is sometimes put to the test. Backing up means to keep a copy of your important data in another safe place so that in the event of any mishaps or device swaps you aren't left without your precious moments or important work related documents and contacts.
I decided to write this thread after losing over 100 photos from a Galaxy S4 today. The S4 has randomly deleted photos in the past but nothing like it did today. Two major folders of precious moments, gone, disappeared. If you search on Google you will find numerous cases of people losing data because they did not back up their stuff. Remember prevention is better than cure. Deleted or lost files can't always be recovered. But thats another topic for another day.
There are number of ways you can back up your files, the method you choose depends on what your preference is and the device in question.
1. Backing up content from mobile devices(phones, tablets, camera, etc...) using a USB Cable and a Computer
There are several ways to do this:
-Android phones: The easiest way to backup content from an Android phone is to use the MTP USB Mode and copy the folders with the content you want to backup to a safe place such as the hard drive of the computer or a flash drive. There are other ways to do it using the device specific software but I will not get into that. For instance, Androids store camera photos in the DCIM Folder and if you want to backup contacts most Androids will let you export contacts as .csv which can be stored on your hard drive as well.
-iOS:iTunes is the easiest way to backup an iOS device. I have personally used this method without fail in the past. I recommend it for non-jailbroken devices. If you are jailbroken there are other ways to do it. However, you can use third party software to extract specific music tracks or photos from your iOS device by using CopyTrans Manager.
-Windows Phone: In my day Windows Phone was tied to Zune by Microsoft and the only way to get files off via a usb cable and a computer was to allow Zune to backup data.
-Blackberries also follow the Android method or you can use Blackberry Desktop Manager.
**Android can also be backed up by using an OTG Cable and plugging in a USB FLash Drive into supported devices.
Back ups can be made through the cloud:
Dropbox, Skydrive, Google Drive, they all do the same thing. You can store your pictures, music, contacts in the cloud. Mobile devices will allow you to automatically backup your photos by using the cloud service's app. Android phones usually come preloaded with "Photos" which has options for automatic sync between your device and the "Google Cloud".
Syncing with Dropbox is one of the most common ways of backing up data automatically from mobile devices. By installing the DropBox app you have the options witihn the app to automatically sync your pictures with your Dropbox cloud storage.
Though SkyDrive is now formally known as One Drive, it is the least heard off method of storage in my experience.
*All clouds give you the option to manually store what you want within the alloted size. I have personally used the Cloud as a form of integration rather than as a means of back up since I am a cross platform user.
I decided to write this thread after losing over 100 photos from a Galaxy S4 today. The S4 has randomly deleted photos in the past but nothing like it did today. Two major folders of precious moments, gone, disappeared. If you search on Google you will find numerous cases of people losing data because they did not back up their stuff. Remember prevention is better than cure. Deleted or lost files can't always be recovered. But thats another topic for another day.
There are number of ways you can back up your files, the method you choose depends on what your preference is and the device in question.
1. Backing up content from mobile devices(phones, tablets, camera, etc...) using a USB Cable and a Computer
There are several ways to do this:
-Android phones: The easiest way to backup content from an Android phone is to use the MTP USB Mode and copy the folders with the content you want to backup to a safe place such as the hard drive of the computer or a flash drive. There are other ways to do it using the device specific software but I will not get into that. For instance, Androids store camera photos in the DCIM Folder and if you want to backup contacts most Androids will let you export contacts as .csv which can be stored on your hard drive as well.
-iOS:iTunes is the easiest way to backup an iOS device. I have personally used this method without fail in the past. I recommend it for non-jailbroken devices. If you are jailbroken there are other ways to do it. However, you can use third party software to extract specific music tracks or photos from your iOS device by using CopyTrans Manager.
-Windows Phone: In my day Windows Phone was tied to Zune by Microsoft and the only way to get files off via a usb cable and a computer was to allow Zune to backup data.
-Blackberries also follow the Android method or you can use Blackberry Desktop Manager.
**Android can also be backed up by using an OTG Cable and plugging in a USB FLash Drive into supported devices.
Back ups can be made through the cloud:
Dropbox, Skydrive, Google Drive, they all do the same thing. You can store your pictures, music, contacts in the cloud. Mobile devices will allow you to automatically backup your photos by using the cloud service's app. Android phones usually come preloaded with "Photos" which has options for automatic sync between your device and the "Google Cloud".
Syncing with Dropbox is one of the most common ways of backing up data automatically from mobile devices. By installing the DropBox app you have the options witihn the app to automatically sync your pictures with your Dropbox cloud storage.
Though SkyDrive is now formally known as One Drive, it is the least heard off method of storage in my experience.
*All clouds give you the option to manually store what you want within the alloted size. I have personally used the Cloud as a form of integration rather than as a means of back up since I am a cross platform user.
