In the last couple months I have had three friends experience serious hard drive failures. Of course they didn’t have backups of their critical data. One of the friends had hundreds of pictures of their daughter after a long and painstaking international adoption. Fortunately I was able to recover some of their data with the help of an amazing utility Spinrite, but backups are extremely important for anyone that has any important data on their computer.
Background
The basic premise of any backup solution is that you must have at least two copies of every file. There are many ways to accomplish this with different strengths and weaknesses. The hard part is deciding which method to use.
For the purpose of this article, I am only considering backing up files that you made such as photos, documents, financial data, etc. Backing up your operating system and programs is a very different issue and much less important since you should have the CDs that came with any software that you bought.
There are a couple general technics that I recommend. The first is a local backup typically using an external hard drive, but you could also use a CD or DVD. The second method is an online backup using a service such as carbonite.com.
Local Backups
The local backup option involves using a local storage device that you will periodically connect to your computer and copy any new files or some way syncronize with the files on your computer.
There are several programs that will take care of checking for new files and copying them to your external drive. Most external hard drives come with a backup program that you can use. There are other choices also. One that I like is Clonedir.
Some important issues to consider with any local backup is the safety of the backup. For example, if your backup drive is sitting on top of your computer certain events (such as fire or theft) could affect both your original and the backup. The best case would be to have the backup in a different building (like a trusted relatives house), but that is inconvenient and means that you would probably not run the backup as frequently. The best balance might be to keep the backup drive in a fire safe.
Online Backups
The way an online backup service works is that you will install a program on your computer that will encrypt and upload your data to an online data center. This requires a broadband internet connection and requires that your computer be left running while you aren’t using it heavily so that it can transfer your data. Also, there is typically a monthly or annual fee for these services.
Online backups have a lot of advantages. First, it is convenient so you don’t have to go through the hassle of pulling the external drive out of the fire safe and connecting it to your computer. With online backups you can schedule the backup for a time that your computer is usually running but not used heavily. The main benefit of this convenience is that you typically would have very few or no changes that are waiting to be backed up. Another benefit of online backups is that by using this service your data is managed by data experts in highly secured data centers. Modern data centers have extensive protection from fire, flood, earthquake, power failure and other risks that I don’t even know about.
Online backups have some disadvantages as well. For example there is a risk that the company you are using could go out of business. Also there is a fee for these services.
There are a few different services that I like and recommend. The service that I am really impressed with is JungleDisk. Please see their website for pricing details, but for most people the pricing is more competitive than the other options.
There are a couple other options that are very good, but have some disadvantages compared to JungleDisk. They are iDrive and Carbonite. They both cost about $50 per year and can only be used on one computer. They have their own program that you can install and setup easily.
Summary
To summarize this topic, the most important thing is that you do some kind of backup. If you use a computer for long enough, your hard drive will fail! Any kind of backup is much better than none. Feel free to contact me or leave a comment if you have any questions.
