Chris Bigelow
Disparate thoughts and musings…Archive for online back up
Do You Back Up Your PC Data?
Backing up the data on your PC ranks right up there with getting a root canal. Or so you’d think based upon how few people have a good backup system in place for their irreplaceable data. Yet today, with so much of our lives in digital form, it’s more important than ever.
This issue was brought sharply into focus for me on 15 October when I returned home from a meeting to find the screen of my eight week old laptop black with the ominous message: “No OS found”. I tried numerous times to get it to boot but to no avail. Diagnostics confirmed that the hard disk had failed. I guess I shouldn’t have been as surprised as I was, as electronics typically will fail in the first 90 days or they’re good for years. But my heart fell when I saw that message. Why? Because I had not yet backed up any of the data on my “new” laptop – I figured I had time to do that later.
Fortunately for me, I was able to start the laptop using a bootable Linux CD (from Knoppix). And, though the laptop’s HD would no longer boot, it spun up and I was able to copy all of my data off onto another network computer (“and there was much rejoicing”).
I got lucky. This time. I should have had a backup system in place. I do on my other PCs but had not yet set something up on the laptop. Valuable life lesson learned.
Backing up data is not unlike saving for retirement: both are most successful if automated. I use a simple system to do this: I have each PC on the network copy any new files to a different PC on the network every night using one of two free utilities: Abakt and Cobian Backup. It’s simple and automatic. Large media files I back up manually every so often to writeable CDs or DVDs. I do the same with any downloaded software I wish to back up.
But what if you don’t have multiple computers or, even if you do, they are not networked together? As I see it you have two decent options: utilize an online/internet backup service (PC Mag has a review of several here) or a removable external drive. Several of the former services offer a free option with 5GB of storage; cost of the latter option has plummeted to where you can now pick up 640GB of external USB storage for about $70. Spending a little more will typically buy you a drive with included, automatic backup software. Trust me – automatic is good.
One final backup option I’m partial to is a network attached storage (NAS) solution employing either RAID 1 or X-RAID® (to be fair, there are RAID solutions available for inside your PC but that gets much more complicated). These RAID configurations write your data to two physical hard drives which are mirror images of each other. When one of the drives fail (which it will do – drives are electromechanical devices with a lifespan of 3-5 years) you just replace the failed drive with a new one and the RAID software will mirror the data on the good drive onto the new one and you are back in business. To insure the safety of your data if you go this route, you must either save all of your critical info only on this drive array OR you must use one of the previously discussed back up software programs to copy key data to the RAID system on a daily/nightly basis.
It has gotten so easy and inexpensive to automatically back up your data that there is no excuse to not have a system in place. Don’t wait until it is too late.
Chris Bigelow 