Backing Up and Restoring Data in Windows 10

There are multiple threats to data from a malicious intruders, such as human errors or natural disasters. It is very important to perform regular backups to prevent the loss of valuable data. A Backup simply copies your data to a removable disk that you can store somewhere safe, ideally in off-site locations (not somewhere in your building that your computer is in). Here, cloud backup is an ideal choice to keep your data safe.

Windows 10 has a number of features that allow you to perform both simple and more comprehensive system backups. The two common backups are, full backup and incremental backup.

 

Backing Up Data in Mac OS X

Time Machine is the built-in backup utility for Mac OS X. It automatically backs up all of your files including photos, music, videos, documents, applications and settings to an external hard drive so that you can restore them later, if needed. You need an external storage to be able to back up with Time Machine. You can connect the external hard drive to a USB, FireWire or Thunderbolt port on your Mac, or Time Capsule or mac0S server on your network.

When you connect an external hard drive directly to your Mac, you might be asked if you want to use the drive to back up with Time Machine. Click on ‘Use as Backup Disk’ You can also encrypt the backup disk by selecting the Encrypt Backup Disk

 

Secure Data Destruction and Its Need

Today, sensitive data is arguably one of the most precious assets and it can cause a great deal of damage if it falls into wrong hands. In recent years, a number of breaches in data security have highlighted the importance of proper data handling and secure data destruction from all data storage media. Data destruction, as the name implies, is the process of destroying data stored on various electronic storage media such as hard disks, tapes, cloud storage, NAS storage arrays, server storage or other small media such as flash drives and CDs/DVDs that contains sensitive information. The main of aim of data destruction is to make the data completely inaccessible and unreadable for unauthorised purposes.

Deleting a file from a computer does not destroy it permanently. Even if you erase the entire drive or format it, the data stored is not permanently destroyed. Therefore, people should be extra careful before disposing or selling their devices. Because, sensitive data, if not destroyed properly, can cause serious monetary and psychological damage.

Deleting Vs. Permanent Data Destruction

Often people assume that simply deleting data is sufficient; however, it is not the case as deletion can still leave data vulnerable to theft. Let’s first understand how data is stored on a storage media.

On a hard disk, the data is stored magnetically on a platter, which is a shiny, circular and magnetic plate. There are one or more platters. There’s an arm, called a read/ write head that moves a tiny magnet back and forth across the platter to store information. A platter is further divided into tracks, which are concentric circles, and each track is broken up into smaller areas called sectors

The central spindle rotates the platter at high speed to help store and retrieve the data from the platter. To improve search performance, the operating system maintains an index of the files on a computer. The OS can update the index itself when there is change in the data. When deleting all files or formatting the entire hard drive, the index gets formatted. This essentially tells the computer that the hard disk is empty. When new data is stored on the drive, it simply overwrites the previous data. Thus, deleting a file, formatting a hard drive or even reinstalling the operating system doesn’t really destroy the data permanently and is retrievable.

Ways to Permanently Destroy Data

There are many ways to destroy the data on your computer or laptop, such as data wiping and physical data destruction.

 Data Wiping: It is process that involves software based data erasure. Software like Eraser employs multiple passes and overwrites each file with gibberish data. This ensures that the original data is lost.

Physical Data Destruction: Physically destroying is the most effective way of ensuring that nobody has access to data on that drive. There are machines that are capable of shredding hard drives, data tapes, servers and other physical data storage media.