Chris Hunter technology column: How to make sure your data stays around even if your phone doesn’t

I always follow it up with the question “Have you backed everything up?” but I already know the answer by looking at their face.

I really don’t like telling people that 18 months to 2 years (or however long they have had it) worth of photos and videos have vanished without a trace.

Every device gives you the option to back up your info and my personal recommendation is to ensure you have some sort of wireless backup setup on your phone to automatically save your photos and videos.

This week I’ll go through how to backup an iPhone and a Windows Phone, next week will be Android devices and then in week three I will cover the old school method of backups (Plugging them in to a PC)

Apple has a fantastic free service called iCloud that takes care of backing up all your stuff.

Apple are great in that they encourage you to turn this service on when setting up your iPhone for the first time. If you haven’t, you will find this in settings on your iPhone.

Just sign in with your Apple ID (the email and password you use to buy apps and music,) and you are setup to use it.

There are two parts to iCloud, the first is the ability to automatically sync things between your iDevices such as your calendar, contacts and photos. The other part is the auto backup. This runs when you are connected to WiFi and the phone is on charge. This makes a full backup of your phone so you will lose nothing if the worst happens

With Windows phones Microsoft will ask you to sign in with a Live ID when you first turn on the phone. This is any email you have setup with Microsoft ending in Hotmail, Live or Outlook. You can create a new account here if you don’t already have one.

After signing in with this email you get the option to turn on backup to OneDrive. This will save all of your photos, videos, and even text messages.

You can see your pictures and videos if you go to www.onedrive.com and then sign in. Your contacts are backed up via the email address and can be viewed by singing in to your account at www.outlook.com.

Thanks for reading part one. Next week will be Android phones.

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