Backing Up Your Computer: The Basics

An At-a-Glance Guide to Safeguarding Your Data

Hard drives crash with or without a disaster. It’s not whether yours will crash someday, but when — and that’s virtually impossible to predict. A regular backup plan that includes getting copies to an SOL (Safe Off-site Location) will ensure that you are not out of luck when a crash or a disaster occurs.

Here, in brief, are your options:

Backup to a reliable online service

Pros: Automatic, completely offsite, server is backed-up frequently, files can be easily accessed from a remote location after a disaster, and it’s free or inexpensive if you have a limited amount of data.

Cons: Uploads of large files can be slow (run backups at night), and relatively costly if you have a lot of large files like videos.

Backup to portable hard drive

Pros: Fast, easy, large amount of storage space, relatively inexpensive.

Cons: Must be taken offsite; subject to physical damage; vulnerable to physical, electrical or magnetic damage.

Backup to thumb drive or memory card

Pros: Fast, light, easy to take offsite, less vulnerable to physical damage (dropping) than hard drive.

Cons: Storage constraints for very large files, more costly per GB than hard drives, and small size makes these devices easier to lose.

Backup to optical media (CD or DVD)

Pros: Cheap, easy to mail to another location, not subject to damage from magnetic sources, relatively durable, easy to store.

Cons: Relatively slow, limited storage space per disk.

Backup to another computer on a network or to a network hard drive

Pros: Fast, easy.

Cons: Other computer or drive is likely to be in the same location and vulnerable to the same disasters.

Backup Terms and Tips

Terms:
Drive Image: A duplicate of all the files on a hard drive, including programs, drivers and settings. A drive image can be copied to a new drive, or even a new computer, with everything you need to get running again.
File-by-file backup: Makes copies of only the files you select. Generally used to save copies of your work, accounts and other critical files.
Incremental backup: Backs up only files that have been changed since the last backup.

Tips:

Do incremental backups daily, or weekly if your work volume is not too high.
Make a drive image backup less frequently, and whenever you make major changes to your software or system.
Find out where critical files (such as email) reside on your computer, and be sure these files are included in your backup routine. For instance, Microsoft Outlook stores email in a file usually called Outlook.pst located at C:\Documents and Settings\user name\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook. To make matters worse, the file is normally hidden unless you set your folder options to show hidden files.
Be sure you have copies of backups in a Safe Off-site Location (SOL) that is unlikely to be affected by a disaster that might affect your studio.
Files that do not change over time — such as archives, photos, music and videos — can be backed up (preferably to more than one disk or medium) and stored off-site. This eliminates the need to back up these files frequently.

The ideal backup strategy will probably utilize a combination of online, portable drive and optical media, depending on file type, size and necessary backup frequency.

Some Online Backup Resources

Carbonite offers unlimited backup for $54.95 per year. One nice feature is a red, yellow, and green dot by each file to let you know if the file has been backed up, or is waiting to be backed up.Carbonite has a 15 day free trial.

Mozy Home will back up up to 50 GB for $5.99 per month or 125 GB for $9.99 per month. You can try free and store up to 2 GB free (home use only). Mozy Pro for businesses starts at $3.95+$.050/GB per month per desktop.