Backing up your computer demystified
Dec 16 '00
After countless times of breaking it to people that their hard drive has crashed on their computer and I can't recover their personal data, I can't tell you how important it is to backup your data. With backup not being as popular a concept as performing other tasks on your computer, it is still important. It is a protection from the thief of hardware failure. I will address some of the issues that are associated with a backup. A few topics that will be discussed are: What should I back up and how often do I do it? What can I use to back my data up with once I have figured out what I need to back up? I don't have an unlimited budget what is inexpensive? The next few paragraphs will help answer these questions.
What do I back up?
If you have the capacity for it, the best solution is to backup your entire drive. However, unless you have a system with a large backup device, such as a tape drive this may not be very feasible. If you only have enough to backup a small percentage of your drive you can still backup everything you need without loosing anything important.
For the sake of this article, I will categorize the data on your computer into two main categories. The first category is the program and system data areas. This data is, for the most part, useless to a partial backup routine given a few exceptions. Almost all of your system and program data already should have a backup. When you got your computer you most likely got some disks and cd's with it. These probably included operating system disk(s), program install disks and driver disks for the peripherals on your computer (If you didn't it would be a good idea to contact the people you purchased your computer from and request them). If you bought any additional programs or upgrades, they also came on disks. Manufacturer disks are, in essence, a backup of your programs and ONLY your programs. The exceptions being any programs that you have downloaded off the internet or network, as well as any driver/system updates that have been downloaded. These have no medium backup and can be laborious to download again, so they should be included in your backup.
The other category of data that is vitally important to a backup, is your personal data. This can consist of anything that you made with a program, such as a word processor or image editing utility. This is the primary concern with a backup that doesn't backup the whole drive. The data that you create from a program has no secondary backup, therefore it must be backed up by you. To optimize and simplify backups it is a good idea to organize the data on your hard drive. While the program data is already organized, you can put your personal data anywhere, eventually making it hard to find. To save time and make a backup easier and complete, sort your personal files into easy to remember directories on your hard drive. For example, if you have a lot of Word Processor documents (and your name is Joe) you might create a directory named Joe's Documents and store all your text documents there. This greatly simplifies the backup process because your documents are easy to find. When you go to specify what to target on your backup, you know where it is.
One downside of not backing up your whole hard drive is that some of your personal program settings and preferences may be lost on a system reload. The data that keeps the personal program settings can be hard to find so it is not viable to include these in a backup. Most of these settings can be easily reconfigured after a system reload and are a minor concern. It should be noted that there are a few programs out there that have their own separate backup system integrated into them. If this is the case I would recommend taking advantage of them.
How often do I backup?
Backup frequency is a matter of how much data you can stand to loose before it becomes a problem. Your data changes every time you access it and save it. Your backup is only as current as the last time you backed it up. For a large business with a central database, a change in data happens every second. For some users data can be changed on a much more infrequent basis. If you are a business or have crucial files that change all the time, a full daily backup is a recommended minimum. If you are a casual user with data that is not changed very often, you can usually go a week or two without doing a backup. Remember to put a date on your backup somewhere so you can see when your last backup was.
What is inexpensive?
There are many different backup solutions available, but I would have to say that currently cd writers are the best value for a backup. CD-R's (write once) have a 650-700 Megabyte storage capacity and can be had for under dollar a piece. CD-RW's (write as many times as you want) have a 500-550 megabyte formatted capacity and are generally under $2.50 a piece. Zip Drives are also great for backup but are a lot more for a lot less than a CD-R or CD-RW. Zip drives will give you 100-250 megabytes a piece for prices starting at 10 dollars a piece, significantly more money per megabyte of storage than a CD. The initial costs to purchase one of a backup drive is very diverse. Drives can range from about $75 for internal Zip Drives to $200 for a average CD writer to many thousands of dollars for a top of the line tape backup device.
In order to backup your data no special software generally is required, but can be helpful. A backup can be made by just copying your personal data from your hard drive to the desired backup device. If you want the added benefit of software it can be found for free, bought for a small amount, or is included with your removable media drive. Microsoft Windows includes a basic backup program that will backup to most any removable medium. CD Writers usually come with some type of software such as Adaptec's Easy CD Creator that can be used for backup. Zip drives can take advantage of Iomega tools. Iomega tools feature a backup and restore feature that is easy to use and will work for Zip and Iomega Jaz drives. All of these programs can be configured to select exactly what you want to backup on your drive. Some of them even have a verify feature that will ensure that your backup was not corrupted during the procedure. A majority of backup programs have a compression feature that allows you to fit more data onto your media as opposed to an uncompressed backup.
Choosing the right backup solution for you
The answer to this question depends on the amount of data that you have to backup and the amount of money you have to spend. For the average user a Zip drive or CD recorder will do the job just fine. If you want to backup your entire drive a tape drive, Iomega Jaz Drive or a DVD-RAM would be helpful because of their large storage capacity, meaning fewer disks/tapes. If you have a server on a network, a tape drive is a wonderful way to go. Together with a backup program such as Seagate's Backup Exec, you have a potentially massive backup capacity and the ability to schedule your backups. I did not mention the floppy drive for one reason: space. Even at it's best the floppy drive is only good for a 1.44 Megabyte capacity, far less than it would take for a fair sized backup and in some cases, a fair sized file.
In conclusion, a good backup can save a lot of time, hassle and money for a small investment. Working many hours on a presentation, document or image all to have a hard drive crash destroy everything can be devastating. With a backup in place, the problem can be minimized to some new hardware and a reload of your system.
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Member: Shawn Wonder
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