Is a Backup Really Necessary?

Do you have a recent data backup of your computer hard drive? You probably have important documents on your computer and losing them would cost time and money. Backups are the best way to protect yourself against their permanent loss.

If you don't save your data, the big question you need to ask yourself is "what will I do when my hard drive dies?" Notice that it is a question of "when" not "if." The hard disk drive is a mechanical device, and like all mechanical devices, it will eventually fail.

One of two things will happen will happen on that day. You will either experience the frustration that comes with losing mail files, address books, financial information, music collections, and personal photographs. Or, you could repair or replace your computer, and restore the disk from the back-ups you've been making. The first a disaster, but the latter is merely an inconvenience.

Besides hardware failure, there are many other ways you can lose your data. Your computer could be destroyed through fire or flood. Lightning strikes may cause power surges which may damage your hard drive. Viruses might infect your system and erase the hard drive. Or, one of your files could be deleted by accident.

In any event, when your data is destroyed, there is only one way to get it back - by having it available to be restored.

What to Backup?

For the average user, it's usually not necessary to save every file on the computer, which would require a large back up storage disk. But, at a bare minimum, home users should back up personal files and irreplaceable software. Spreadsheets with financial records not easily available from other sources, downloaded music, legal documents, work-in-progress... the list is large. Only you can decide what personal files are important.

How to do a Backup

A simple way to do a back up is to copy your data to the storage media without using any type of back up software. This process can be simplified by keeping your important files in a special folder. On Windows, many applications use the "Documents and Settings" folder for this purpose.

Another way to save your files is to use the back up software that comes with your computer. Microsoft windows includes a free back-up program, and similar software is available for Linux and MacIntosh. This back up software is easy to use and the task is a simple matter of selecting which folders to save. There is also a scheduler so that the back up can be automated to run at convenient times.

You could also make the task even easier by purchasing back-up software. The first desirable feature of a good back-up program is the "incremental" save. An incremental back-up only saves the files that have changed since the last back-up. This greatly reduces the amount of data you need to save to your back up storage device. A second feature is that the program will show you what standard files are most important to protect. A third feature is that the software will compress your data so that it won't take up so much space on the storage media.

Back-ups can be done to any kind of storage - CD's, DVD's, external USB hard drives, network disks, or a USB flash drive.

If you are using something other than the write-once optical disks, then don't limit yourself to just one back-up disk. Keep several disks available so that you can rotate through them over time. This can help you recover if you have a corrupted file that slips by unnoticed for a period of time.

Offsite Back-up

If you have high-speed access to the Internet, you might want to consider doing an online backup. This gives you the added benefit of saving your data at a remote location and thereby protecting your data from a local natural disaster such as fire or flood. You should consider encrypting all your back-ups but encrypting your remote back-ups is especially important.

The easiest backup is the the one you don't have to think about. Consider doing an automatic offsite backup. Once you've set up a schedule, this program will save your files automatically.

Disk to Disk Back-up

The tape drive used to be the mainstay for doing hard drive backups. However with the continuing drop in storage prices, many people use the hard drive to do a disk to disk backup. The easiest and most flexible way to implement a disk to disk backup is to use Network Attached Storage.

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