Backups are important things. Think about it. If you lose your computer, you can always replace the hardware and the programs. But if you lose your data, what will it cost you? Probably more than you would guess...
Do you store your financial information on your computer? Where else do you store it? If you are like me, the only other place some of that information is located is on your backup drive. If I lose the data on my drive, I lose:
- The contact information for most of my clients
- Tax records for the life of my business
- My calendar
- My email
- My to do list
- The electronic copies of my books
- All outstanding proposal materials
- All of the brainstorm data that I have stored on my computer
Losing any one of these items would cripple my business. Losing it all at once might be an event from which my business couldn't recover.
The first step in protecting your data is to find backup software that runs automatically on a schedule. That way, you don't have to remember when to backup. I use Microsoft's OneCare - It is reasonably priced and does what I need it to do. I also know that Acronis True Image is a good backup product - I have used it and liked it as well.
Once you have the software to do the backup, you need drives to hold the data. Hard drives come in two basic styles: internal and external. External drives are never meant to be installed into a machine. They are connected to the machine via a USB cord. They are meant to be extra storage for a machine, not for booting. Internal drives, on the other hand, are meant to be installed in your machine and are the drives where your operating system and programs reside. However, many years ago, someone came up with an enclosure for internal drives that lets you take an internal drive and connect it to a computer through a USB cord.
Bruce and I have two different external drives and we alternate between them. The first is a Seagate 230 Gigabyte external drive that is our main backup drive for all the machines in use in the apartment. This drive contains the main backup of our data and our pictures. The second solution is a set of smaller drives that get swapped in and out of the drive enclosure. Each drive is marked with the machine name. This is our backup backup.
Why do it? Cost for one thing. External drives are somewhat more expensive than internal drives. By being able to connect internal drives to my computer, I can have more disk space for my backups at a lower cost. Another reason is size. External cases are historically much bigger than the internal drives. On the flip side, external drives are much more portable. They can be swapped and moved without taking anything apart.
Ok... But why use one of each? Simple. If having one backup is good, having two is even better. With two backup drives for each machine, I can be assured that if something happens to one of the drives, my data is still available from the other drive.
You have the software, you have the drives, what next? Next, you run the initial backup. Your first backup to any given drive is going to take some time. It is going to save off every data file on your computer. Once you have the first backup done to a drive, your software can do an incremental backup for all future saves. Incremental backups save only the files that have changed since you last ran your backup.
Your initial backups will probably take awhile to run. Once the first one is done, do it again to a separate drive. Once you have backed up to two external drives, you have two more steps to do.
The first step is to test your backups. Pick a file and restore it once from each backup. This is testing your backup. If you can't restore from the backup now, it won't do you any good to have it later in an emergency. Once you have tested your backups, you are ready to store them.
A backup is only as good as the place you store it. Never store your real backup drive next to your computer. No, it won't hurt anything. But it won't do any good either. If something happens to the computer, a drive sitting right next to it is probably going to be affected as well. Instead, take one backup drive and store it somewhere safe in your office or home. This is your local backup. IF you need to grab a file that you accidentally delete, this is the copy you are going to use.
Finally, take that other backup drive and store it off-site. Take it home if you work in an office. Take it to the bank and put it in a safe deposit box if you have one. At the very least, go knock on the neighbor's door and arrange to store each other's off-site copies. (FYI: If you live in a multi-unit place like we do, swap backups with someone in a different building. Swapping with someone in the same building won't help you recover from a natural disaster - chances are their place will be affected too.)
Now that you have your initial backups done, it is time to schedule the next round. If your software doesn't automatically schedule the next date, go to your calendar and put a reminder next week to run another backup. Yes - do it weekly. Think about how much is on your computer and you will realize why.
(By the way... In the time it took me to write this blog entry, both of my machines were backed up by OneCare. Slick, huh?)
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