How to Backup Jewelry Shopkeeper Data Every Day
Backing up to an external hard drive or even a local C: drive is better than nothing, but it's not sufficient because electrical or computer virus problems can wipe out both your original data and all the backups on hard drives. The correct backup is to USB flash drive memory sticks which you can remove, some of which should be kept in the vault. This way, in case of a computer disaster you'll have a USB memory stick backup available to restore the data to a new computer.
Automated Internet/Cloud backups are also a good addition* to memory stick backups but don't rely on them alone. Too often they aren't configured correctly so you're not assured of being able to restore data when needed. Sample Cloud backup companies are Crashplan, Mozy, Carbonite.
Therefore, we consider it important that you backup to USB memory sticks (even if you also backup to the cloud or to an external hard drive.)
If you backup to memory sticks using the VJS File Center then Compulink will know how to help you restore files in case of data loss. (Whereas if you use a different backup method you will need to know how to restore files yourself.)
Get 6 or 7 USB memory sticks as they only cost a few dollars. Generally any size from 8 GB to 64 GB is fine, but if you know you have 1,000's of pictures, consider 32 GB or higher.
With a permanent marker or your engraving machine, label them with the days of the week that you are open: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, etc. This way you do not have all your backup eggs in one basket and it's easy to put one or some backup memory sticks in the vault or have the owner take some home.
Open "My PC" ("Computer") from Windows then insert a memory stick and note which drive letter gets assigned to it.
e.g. something like E: or F: or K:
Then from the VJS File Center choose Backup
Then choose the right drive letter for your memory stick and Choose OK. It should take only a minute or two.
It is recommended that you check the Backup Image files option. Even if you have 1,000's of images it does not usually take much extra time because most days only the extra few new pictures are copied.
However, just the first time you backup to any particular memory stick, the entire collection of pictures is copied which can take several extra minutes, or even tens of minutes if you have tens of thousands of images. You might even leave it backing up when you leave the store in the evening. But be assured that it won't always be that slow; when you use that memory stick again the same day next week, adding the new images won't take long and you can wait for it to finish and then remove the USB stick before leaving.