Backups - Don't Ignore Them

I think that we all understand the importance of backing up the data on our PC's, but how many of us actually just keep putting this off for a rainy day that never comes, yet dreading the disaster of suffering data loss that could rear it's ugly head when you least expect it.

A few years ago, many people used their PC's to access the internet, to read email and for playing games etc. When they suffered a hard drive crash or a corruption in Windows, requiring the system to be reinstalled, they lost their address book, a few emails, and maybe a few documents, but it wasn't necessarily a major disaster as such.

Nowadays though, how many people DON'T use their PC's to store Digital Photographs, Home Movies, Music and Videos etc? I think 90% of us could easily say that we do. In addition to this, many of us store more types of document than we used to, plus we have more sophisticated Favorite Places (Bookmarks), Email Addresses and other Contact information stored on our PC's.

How would you feel if your computer crashed, and you lost those treasured photographs of a once in a lifetime vacation, or even worse your wedding photographs, or photographs and movies of your children? I know that without a doubt I would be devastated if I lost any of my photos or home movies. These are trips and events that could not be repeated, and as I keep everything on my computers, if I suffer a crash, I could lose the lot.

I have all my CD's ripped and stored on my Laptop as well, which not only makes them easier to play, but I never managed to get the originals back after my divorce, so in a way these too are irreplaceable.

HOW MIGHT YOU LOSE DATA?

So what might cause you to lose your data?

There are actually more causes than you think.

Aside from the obvious ones, such as a Hard Drive failure, Windows corruption, or loss caused by a Virus, your house could be robbed, damaged by fire or flooding, hurricane, tornado etc, and don't forget that you might accidentally delete something valuable as well. So losing precious data is a real risk that you face every time you use your PC.

DO YOU TAKE ADEQUATE BACKUPS?

I think we will all agree that taking backups of your data is essential, but how many of us do this, and how many really understand the options that are available to us?

OK class, raise your hands in the air if you think that you take enough precautions to prevent you from losing data if your computer was to crash?

I didn't see too many hands in the air there, not too encouraging is it!

BACKUP DEVICES

Today there are a number of fairly cheap options available for backing up your data, and as well as some good programs, that range from free to rather pricey. I won't go into details of every possible option and program here, otherwise I will end up writing a book, but if you are interested in considering an option, you can always Google for more information.

Years ago most of us would be limited to saving data onto floppies, which had a low capacity and were horribly slow to use as well. Today we have much better choices, examples of which you will find below.

External Hard Drives. These are mostly connected to the computer using USB or Firewire connections, some are powered through the USB port, but most come with their own power supply. In the USA a 500gb external USB drive will cost under $100, and that ought to be enough to hold the data that most of us have on our computers. You can also get 1TB (1,000gb) and 2TB drives for under $200.

Flash Drives. These no longer just store 256mb or 1gb of data. You can get an 8gb, 16gb and even 32gb at a reasonable price these days, especially if you know where to shop. The beauty of these drives is that they are so small. They are great for copying data and transferring it onto another computer, or for keeping data off-site (more about this later).

CD's and DVD's. These are a very inexpensive way of storing data, but creating these requires a special program, and it's very slow to save data. You can buy re-writable CD's and DVD's, but for safety you should consider each backup a once-only option. They are great for backing up your Photographs and Home Movies to store off-site, but as we all know, CD's and DVD's are very unreliable, so you can't necessarily trust them to be readable if you have to restore from them. The other problem is capacity, with a CD storing 850mb of data and a DVD 4.7gb. When I had my 2mp Digital Camera, I could store almost a year of photographs on a CD. Now with an 8mp Digital Camera, I can barely store more than a month of photographs on a DVD! Times are changing, data sizes are changing, and we need to adapt with them.

Internet Storage. Another option is available for saving your data, and that is to backup to a location on the internet. There are a number of companies offering this service, some which are FREE for small volumes of data, but although your data is off-site, the drawbacks of this are that it may prove costly, and may take a long time for the data to upload or download, especially if you have a lot of movies.

Personally, I use 2 External Hard Drives to save all my data, and rotate these so I always have two copies, in case something happens to one disk. I backup my data weekly, and only the changed files are saved, so the backup process does not take that long. I also use a number of Flash Drives to store documents, because these are mostly small and I can store a lot on a flash drive. My documents are everything from Financial Documents, People's Addresses and Phone Numbers, and Family History documents, and being on a Flash Drive I can store them easily off site, such as at Work in a locked desk drawer.

BACKUP SOFTWARE

There are many programs that you can use to backup your data, including Windows Backup, but this is fairly unsophisticated and not very well documented in my opinion. These are best used for backing up to another computer or to an external Hard Drive.

I love EMC Retrospect but this costs over $100 and might be a bit too much for many people. The great thing about this software for me is that it creates multiple generations of backups, so if you realize that you lost a document or it became corrupted, and only realized after the latest backup was taken, you have previous backups that you can go back to. Retrospect can also be scheduled, so that you can leave it to run overnight, and it comes with a comprehensive restore solution, so if you had to re-install Windows, you would only need to install Retrospect again, and then run the restore process. Retrospect also saves the Windows Registry and other settings, so you ought to lose nothing at all in the event of a crash. One other bonus, you get 2 client licenses, so that you can schedule to backup 2 other computers as well. If you have a need for this, it is well worth the money in my opinion.

If you prefer a FREE program, Karen's Replicator comes highly recommended. This is what I currently use, and it works well, but it's best for backing up data not your whole computer. This again can be scheduled, but as it can take a while to run, it's sometimes more convenient to split the backups into things like Email, Photos, Movies, Documents etc, and to back each up on a different schedule. Photographs and Home Movies for example probably only need to be backed up once a week or less, depending on how often you update them. Only the files that have been changed will be backed up.

Windows SyncToy allows you to synchronize files between two computers or devices, and is another backup option to consider instead of Karen's Replicator. This used to work only up to Windows XP, but Microsoft have retooled it, and it will now work with both Vista and Windows 7. It doesn't come pre-installed, you have to download it, but it is very fast and easy to use. To use Windows SyncToy, you need to define a Source and Destination Folder Pair (one usually being your PC and the other a Backup Device). You then define how data is to be synchronized, one way, the other, or both, and then you can either manually execute the process or schedule it to run. The nice thing here is that you can synchronize the contents of a folder between your PC and a flash drive, so only new or changed files will be transferred. You can then take the flash drive to another PC (Work?) and run SyncToy there, which will ensure that any documents that have been changed will be copied and updated correctly. This is great if you edit documents on two different PC's. As with Karen's Replicator, it might be best to run this with multiple jobs that each backup a smaller amount of data, rather than one job that copies everything.

If you live in the USA, I highly recommend Buy.Com and TigerDirect for having a wide choice of External Hard Drives and Flash Drives at low prices. These are on-line stores that I have used for a few years and their prices can't be beat.

My next planned installment should help you to prevent loss of email in the event of a computer failure, and this is a very simple but effective solution.

These are just a few options for backing up your data, which I hope will help you to improve your backups, or give you ideas on how to more easily transfer data between different systems and devices. If you found this article useful, or have any information that might help others, please leave a comment.