The important thing is to learn a lesson every time you
lose. – John McEnroe
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Any person who uses a computer has got to learn to back up
their data. Backing up your data is a
crucial part of working on a computer.
Nothing lives forever and a hard drive will eventually die. It is all just a matter of when.
The chances are that your precious hard drive will bite the dust right
when you need it most. Like for example,
when you’ve just finished that paper that you spent over a week working on,
right BEFORE you hand it in.
Don’t forget, that a hard drive death is not the only thing
that can rob you of your important data.
If you’re willing to spend an extra few minutes thinking about it, your
data is also threatened by natural disasters such as fires, floods, tornados and
even theft. While no one wishes for
their house to be broken into, the risk is still real and if your external hard
drive is sitting on top of your tower, then say “buh bye” to both copies of
your data.
Having had my own hard drive die on me recently I have been
doing a bit of research about ways that I can prevent another mostly
catastrophic loss of data and I’m going to share some of my findings with you
here. One interesting fact that I
stumbled over a few times is that the 3 year mark in a hard drive’s life is
generally when you have to start worrying.
This strikes me as interesting because my hard drive that just died is
about 3 years old.
There are lots of different methods for backing up your
data. Some of the simplest (depending on
the amount of data you need to save) can involve manually burning your stuff to
CDs or DVDs or copying it to an External Hard Drive. There are also some automated solutions for
copying data to an external hard drive.
For those of you who are a little more worried about natural disasters
and theft you could back your data up on an offsite server, or you could burn
what’s important to you onto a few CDs or DVDs and then give them to a relative
to keep at their house. The only problem
with that solution is that you’re dependent on updating the backups yourself
and that is a bit of a hassle.
I found one great blog post that details a way to automatically back your files up onto an external hard
drive (as well as an ftp server if you have one) using a free program called
SyncBack. Unfortunately this product only works with
Windows machines, so Mac users are out of luck with this one. It seems like a fairly easy way to automate
backing up your files. Personally, while
I would love to do the back ups manually every day, I know that laziness or not
having time to do it will be the culprit of lost data. Plus, I could accidentally miss some
important file that I just can’t live without if I try to back it up manually. If you do decide to check out that blog post,
be sure to read through the comments as well.
They offer interesting input and discussion as well as some other
potential ways to back up your data. One
user points out that if you are using a removable hard drive you have to be careful
when you unplug it from your computer because the drive letter may change. They also gave a link to where you could find
information about how to assign a permanent drive letter.
For those of you out there who are Mac users, the companion
blog
to the one mentioned above gives some good suggestions about backing
information up. After having read all of
the user comments (and the background & disclaimer,) it seems like most
users prefer a product called SuperDuper! even though it is priced at $28. There
is a free version of Super Duper! available, however, it does not support
incremental backup, (meaning that every clone will copy your entire drive every
time, which is a large process if you have a large hard drive) and scheduling
is disabled. Another free program,
SilverKeeper, is also mentioned in this
blog. It supports incremental backup,
file exclusion, multiple backup profiles and schedules. They mention a few different backup options and
what alternatives there are to those options.
It really is a very comprehensive post and is worth reading if you’re in
need of some start up information about how or what program to use to back up
your files. As I stated with the
previous blog, read the comments, they are just as helpful as the blog post and
offer interesting insight and suggestions.
Another blog post
that you might find helpful is about a free program called
FolderShare. It can be used on Windows
2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 and Mac OS X 10.3.8. It is a “file sharing solution that offers
unlimited, free sharing of any file up to 2GB, allowing you to access and sync
files over your very own private peer-to-peer network.” This product seems like a fairly easy way to
sync up multiple computers while also allowing you access to the information
from anywhere.
I found another interesting article about offsite backups and how to easily create your own. The article states that there are four things
you need to create your own automatic offsite backup; backup software, network
attached storage device (NASD), a router and a friend with an always-on
internet connection. It is a good read,
and is definitely an option when thinking of ways you can back up your
information. It does require a bit of
thinking to get it all set up, and if you don’t want to put in the effort, then
you could always pay another company to host your files offsite.
There is a product called Carbonite that, from what I can tell, allows you unlimited backup over the internet for
$49.95/year. It can provide you with a
way to back up your information and keep it in a remote location, nowhere near
your house. This can help prevent the loss
of data through a natural disaster or theft.
Currently, Carbonite is working on a Mac version and it is expected to
be released in August. They do offer the
chance to beta test their Mac version.
All you have to do is e-mail them and let them know that you’re
interested. Since it’s so close to the
expected release month, they may not need more beta testers, but hey, you never
know.
While I was doing my research another product kept popping
up. It is called Mozy and it offers a way to back up your files onto an offsite server. You can start off with 2 GB of free secure
storage, or pay $4.95/month to get unlimited storage. They encrypt your data during transport and
from what I can tell, they encrypt your data a second time to secure it on
their servers. They also offer continuous
or scheduled backups. For Mac users,
Mozy offers a beta version of their product that supports Mac OS X 10.4.
Lastly, if you’re using Windows XP and you still have your
Windows XP CD, you could always just use the backup program that comes with
it. Here is an article
that details exactly how use the program and also includes a few other third
party programs you can look into at the end of the article.
Well, that’s all for now.
I hope that I’ve at least got some more people thinking about backing up
their data! Check out a few of the
sites, hopefully some of them will be useful to you!