Stress free: Backup Strategies

Change is Constant | Safe Practices Save Time | We Never Fail - We Learn!

Cost-free practices to prevent costly loss of files!

Don't wait for something to happen to your good work. Devise and implement you back up plans today!

What is the "Cloud"?

Is the cloud fail safe? Saving work to "the cloud (online)" is our first line of preferred way to safe and share educational files. However, it truth, nothing is fail-safe. How much redundancy you want/need to manage is a personal decision.

Alternatives Depending upon the security level required and ownership of the file (is it personal or is it work), your RTC eLearning Administrator a security cloud and/or repository, a local computer's drive, a local external drive and sometimes a print out of valuable documents.

Simple (free) "backup" strategies for your valuable homework, grades and text entry submissions. Please find below (2) very secure and popular services: Microsoft's OneDrive & Google's Drive

When typing more than a sentence or two in web application, like a discussion forum, we highly recommend first composing your work in your favorite auto-saving word processor. Why? Because web app text entry fields like many discussion forums DO NOT SAVE text that has yet to be submitted. It's only a matter of time before your cat runs over your keyboard - or your Internet connection hiccups -- and your brilliant work could be lost.
Take Screenshots of your Online Work and/or use OCR (Optical Character Recognition) -- it's built into Google Docs - or your favorite photo editing software to edit scanned files. Your application choice depends upon what's most convenient for you to access, save a screenshot to, and use.
Keep (just a few) good, old fashioned print outs of critical documents - still a worthwhile strategy. However, please try to keep this option to a minimum to save our planet's trees.

Prep for peace of mind...
Not pieces of homework!

Countless students come to us in a panic after their portable thumb-drive with "their world" on it has been dropped in puddle, slammed in door, stolen or lost, left behind still plugged into campus computer, and/or corrupted by the computer they plugged their thumb-drive into because it wasn't protected ... don't get us started on the viruses thumb-drives have been known to pick up and spread to other machines like a shared a tongue depressor.

Using a thumb-drive as a first line of defense "back up" choice is a bad idea!

Whenever possible/appropriate, use your cloud storage as your first line of defense for both ease of transportation and security of your important files.