Does your backup strategy include your cell phone?

While I know it’s probably not accurate (at least not as much as I’d like it to be), I’m going to assume that you have some type of backup system in place for your important data. You know those little things like the documents, email, and contacts you need to stay in business.  The sad truth is that many mobile workers and too few home offices have a good backup system in place.

There are plenty of options for backing up the data on your computer such as writeable CDs and DVDs, external USB hard drives, and affordable online backup services. And if you are smart you have some type of system in place – one that is automated and scheduled as much as possible so you don’t have to think about it. But is ALL the data you need to be up and running easily restored?

How about all the contacts on your cell phone?  Have you found the best way to back up your cell phone address book? If you lost your phone or it was stolen could you restore them easily to a new phone?

Recently I was the unfortunate victim of a burglary in which my cell phone was stolen (along with my wife’s and a few other things). Sure I was able to get a new phone from Verizon to replace my old one (I decided to stick with my beloved Samsung Alias) – but what about all the contacts, phone numbers and emails I had in my cellphone?  I certainly didn’t want to have to enter them all in again.  Well luckily I didn’t have too thanks to Backup Assistant from Verizon Wireless.  This service (which normally costs about $2 a month) was bundled with my calling plan.  When I first got Backup Assistant (on the phone that was eventually stolen) I downloaded the program to my phone and set it to sync every night which backs up my entire cellphone address book with all it’s contact data to their website.

When I got my new cellphone to replace the stolen one – all I had to do was redownload the Backup Assistant program to the phone – run it and it downloaded all my contacts from their site and BANG within a few minutes my new phone had a full address book.  Thing of beauty!

This got me to thinking how few people probably include their cellphone addressbook in their backup plans.  However, if you are like many people and most mobile workers – your cellphone is your lifeline and an essential part of your work (and play).

There are a number of ways to backup and transfer data too and from your phone.  You can use syncing software like Bitpim (which is free) or DataPilot along with a special cable to backup or transfer data to and from your PC. This includes the phonebook, calendar, wallpapers, and ringtones.

If it’s primarily your addressbook you are concerned about (as I was) then check with your wireless provider to see if they offer a subscription service to backup your addressbook over the air.  Here are links to the ones from the major players:

• Verizon – Backup Assistant
• AT&T – Mobile Backup
• Sprint – Wireless Backup

Another nice feature of these services is the ability to make changes to my contact list on their website using my laptop’s larger Qwerty keyboard. The changes are then downloaded to the phone on the next sync or if I manually initialize it. This made it really easy to initially setup my first phone as I quickly entered all my contacts into the website rather than the slower method of entering them directly into my phone.

If you have a smartphone like a Treo, Blackberry, Palm Centro, or Windows Mobile Phone – then your phone probably already came with the ability to sync your addressbook and calendars with your primary contact manager like Outlook or Act.

Regardless of how you choose to do it – do yourself a favor and take the time backup your cell phone addressbook. Then make this part of your ongoing backup and disaster recovery plans. When you need it you will be thankful you did.