Recently you advised a reader who lost all his data to back up regularly and mentioned that you automatically back up your files every hour. You say that it’s better to do this automatically than manually. Obviously in order to back up automatically it is necessary to have the backup media connected all the time, otherwise you have to connect it each time it’s going to back up, which could cause difficulties. But if it’s always connected, isn’t the backup media also vulnerable to a virus that gets into the computer?

This is a very good question which I am glad that you have asked. You are correct that there is a trade-off between data security and convenience of backup. That said, generally data destruction does not occur due to a virus or other malware but often as a result of hardware failure (such as a hard drive corruption or physical fault) or accidental deletion by the user. Additionally, most people run antivirus on their computers which generally stop viruses from being a problem in the first place.

On the other hand, if you did happen to get a virus infection on the computer which does destroy data then your backups could potentially be at risk given that the drive is always connected to the computer and is accessible by the virus. So there is a definite decision which needs to be made regarding how you will approach data backup.

Overall, I consider that the benefits of always having the backup volume connected to the computer and doing regular backups (such as each hour) outweighs the risk of the drive potentially becoming virus infected or having the data lost simply because any prudent user would be running antivirus software to prevent this from becoming a problem in the first place. There are also other steps that you can take to help alleviate these concerns. For those working with high volumes of data which need backing-up on the computer (such as the entire system plus all personal data), the backup drive may become full after a few months of usage. In this case it is necessary to archive that backup drive elsewhere and connect a new drive to the computer which does provide a degree of insurance against the backup drive failing since there is a secondary backup drive which, while it would not contain the latest data, does contain at least the majority of the historical data which could be used in an absolute emergency situation.

My rule of thumb is that if a standard, low-risk computer maintenance task (such as backup) can be automated it is more efficient and reliable than having to remember to manually complete this task, especially if you are interrupted at the critical moment or are otherwise too busy to complete the task.