The year is 2012. My sweet and adorable 3-year-old asks if he can play with my phone.
I say no.
He protests.
I hold my ground: “No. It’s time for night-night.”
Turning my back, I shift my focus and attend to his brothers, another 3-year-old and a 5-year-old, and complete the gauntlet that is the bedtime routine of three little boys.
With lights out, mama’s out. My time to flip on cartoon-less TV and jump on the ol’ social media to catch up with friends.
Wait.
WHY is there a welcome message on my screen?
WHERE ARE ALL MY APPS? My settings? My pictures? My … EVERYTHING????
Short of jumping off a cliff or rappelling down a bridge into darkness, there may be no rush of adrenaline like finding out your kid has reset your phone back to factory settings because he wouldn’t take “no” for an answer and failed at entering your passcode.
Losing years’ worth of photos, videos, text messages and voicemails is bad enough. Knowing I should have been smarter about backing up my phone is worse.
You don’t have to go through this headache and heartache. Just take today, World Backup Day, to ensure you’ve got a plan for guarding your stuff in case stuff goes down.
Geek Squad can help, said Sy Paulson, an Agent and senior market manager for Geek Squad. Recalling the strife of five years ago, I asked him some candid questions.
Me: How often do you encounter this panic-stricken situation? What do you do to help calm people?
Agent Paulson: Unfortunately, disappearing data because of an accidental deletion or a hardware issue does occur somewhat frequently. As a Geek Squad Agent, I will always try to reassure the client that there are still some options available. If we can recover the data, we also ensure the client is educated around proactive data backup methods.
Me: How should people back up their devices? How can we be sure it’s backing up properly?
Agent Paulson: Backing up your data proactively is an extremely important recommendation that we always review with every single Geek Squad client. The two most recommended backup methods are to have a Geek Squad Agent perform a backup service onto an external hard drive (which is often included in the data backup service cost), as well as a cloud backup solution through your mobile operating system. After your first backup, both the hard drive and cloud backups can be programmed to backup as frequently as you’d like.
Me: How trustworthy is “the cloud?” This coming from someone who also still burns data to CDs and puts them in fireproof safes. 🙂
Agent Paulson: The cloud is as trustworthy as you make it – in other words, use passwords and user names which are unique and not easily guessed, and keep them to yourself! Once your data is stored in the cloud, it’s extremely safe. Depending on the service, it is usually protected onto multiple hard drives and servers just in case anything goes wrong on their end.
Me: Any other advice for people who want to ensure their important info is securely backed up?
Agent Paulson: As mentioned before, the most important piece of advice to any client concerned about their data is to get their data backed up today! Geek Squad can help! Once it’s backed up, make sure you are staying rhythmic in keeping it backed up as you add and modify your data so the most recent backup is always a good representation of the information you care the most about and can’t live without!