The novice guide to backing up data, and why it's important to do

[+Warwagon MVC]

HARD DRIVES AND DATA BACKUP

I created this guide for my customers, to educate them on the importance of backing up. It?s written and geared toward the novice user. Feel free to distribute. A PDF is located at the bottom of the page.

How A ?Hard Drive? Works.

A hard drive is the device inside of the computer that stores all of your information. They come in all different sizes. Some can store a little and some can store A LOT. Everything gets stored on them: pictures, home videos, financial information, music, everything.

Everyone uses a hard drive, but very few respect them. A hard drive consists of a 2.5 or 3.5 inch enclosed piece of metal. Inside is a motor and platters (the platter(s) is what the data is stored on). The motor spins the platters very fast. Speeds vary between 5400, 7200 or all the way up to 15,000 RPM, depending on the drive. Laptop drives general operate around 5400 RPM. As the platters spin, a head (a thin metal arm) hovers millimeters above and extends across the platters. It moves side to side reading the data. This operation is performed very quickly; when observed it looks like a blur.

The Hard Drive (as I just described) is currently where most people store their data. I say ?currently?, because you can purchase, for a lot of money per gig, what is called a solid state drive. A solid state drive is more like the SD card in your camera than it is like a Hard Drive. It is silent and has no moving parts. They are available, but not widely adopted.

Now that you understand how the internals of a hard drive work, you can see that it?s a miracle they are as reliable as they are.

A hard drive can fail at any time. The failure can occur 1 hour after you turn it on, or 10 years down the road. If a hard drive is going to fail in its early life, it typically does so in the first few hours, but the failure rate stays relatively high for the first couple of weeks. The failure rate drops off after the first few weeks of the drives life. This is why when you buy a new computer, it?s important to back up regularly.

It?s been said ?If you only have 1 copy of a file, the file doesn?t exist?. It?s not hard to understand what that means: If you have a file stored in one place, you are one crash way from losing it forever.

Ways to Back Up Your Data

Any location where a 2nd copy of a file resides can be called a backup. How much you have to backup determines the best backup device to use. For instance, if all you have to save is a copy of your Microsoft Money, Quicken or QuickBooks file, than a USB key should work just fine.

If you want to backup 50 gigs worth of music, pictures and whatever else, then it?s time to look at something that can hold that a lot more than a USB key. It?s now time to look at an external hard drive. An external hard drive is just like one located inside the computer, but it sits on the desk inside a special enclosure and connects to the PC via USB.

Personally I like the 2.5 inch external hard drives. The 2.5 inch does away with a power cord and powers itself over USB. This makes it very portable and it takes up less room on the desk. You can pick them up in places like Wal-Mart, BestBuy or online.

Backup Software

A backup, in its simplest definition, is when a file is stored in 2 different locations. This can be accomplished by just copying the file(s) from one location and pasting it in another. It gets the job done but it?s about as time efficient as cleaning a toilet with a toothbrush. There are faster and more effective ways of doing it.

When using backup software a whole world of opportunities arise. A couple of them are:

1) Schedule Automatic Daily Backups

2) Incremental backups (backup only what is new and or has changed).

There are a bunch of different backup applications available. They pretty much do the same thing.

The 2 backup programs I recommend are:

1) Syncback (free version) from www.2brightsparks.com

2) Sync Toy 2.0 (free) from Microsoft. (Google synctoy)

Syncback gives you a lot more to configure, whereas SyncToy is simpler to use. No matter which backup application you choose, the basic idea is the same.

Every backup application lets you create as many different backups as you like. For each of those single or separate backups, you have to specify the source directory (The location where the original file(s) is located) and the destination directory (Where you want to send the copy). Sometimes it?s also referred to as left to right, left being the source and the right being the destination.

A good way of managing the files you are backing up is to use something called ?Folders? and ?Subfolders? (a folder inside a folder). As an example let?s assume each member of the family has files they wish to have backed up on a regular basis. Each family member could have their own folder. (Example e:\family\bob). You can even go further than that. If Bob has pictures and documents he is saving, you could also create a folders inside Bob called ?Pictures? and ?Documents? (e:\family\bob\documents. I think you get the idea. You can organize it anyway you?d like. Folders just make it easier to find it back again when you need it.

Online / Offsight Backup

Backing up your files onto an external hard drive that is sitting next to your computer is fantastic! But you have to ask yourself, ?What happens if my house burns down, or lightning strikes the house taking out the computer and the backup drive? What then?? An offsite backup is nothing more than a 3rd backup on a 3rd device, stored in a separate physical location. You can backup onto another external hard drive, but this time give it to a parent, a friend, a child (a grown child) or put it in a safe deposit box. As long as it?s not stored in the same location as the computer, it?s considered an offsite backup.

Another option for an offsite backup is to backup your files Online. Sites charge a fee (usually around $5 a month) and allow you to upload files from your computer to the internet (cloud) whenever your internet connection is idle. It?s secure and is considered an offsite backup. The most popular one is www.Carbonite.com . I use it.

Before using an online backup solution like Carbonite, it?s recommended that you contact your Internet service provider (The one you get your internet through) and see if they restrict how much you can download per month. If they do restrict you, they usually charge you for every gigabyte you go over. A service like carbonite would use up all of your allowed bandwidth in a very short time. So make sure to check with your service provider first.

Drive Images.

A drive image is a snap shot of your hard drive. It saves the entire hard drive and everything on it into a single file. A drive image typically doesn?t get updated that much. It?s very useful to restore your computer without having to reinstall all your programs and data.

This is the basics on how it works: Let?s say your hard drive dies. You buy a new hard drive. You have it installed in your computer, and then you restore everything to it from the ?Image? you created. Once restored, you reboot and you are back where you left off. The same process can be used if you get infected with malware and want to restore from the good image (when the computer wasn?t infected). Just remember to also be creating separate backups of all of your files. Because once you restore from the image, you will also have to use your other ?backups? to get back any new documents you?ve created since the image was made.

Creating an image isn?t straight forward, unless you are running the Business, Ultimate and Enterprise Version of Vista or any version of Windows 7 . Those operating systems have it built into Windows. Everyone else has to download and install an application onto the computer. A good free one is called driveimage XML. www.runtime.org/driveimage-xml.htm

For Windows 7 or the versions of Vista mentioned above, you click start and type in ?backup?. ?Backup and restore? should appear. From there you simply follow the instructions. It should walk you through the entire process of creating an image of your system. Depending on how full your hard drive is, this process could take a while. Just remember to plug in your external hard drive before you start the process. This way Vista or 7 will automatically see the external drive and use it to store the image.

Conclusion

Being in the computer repair business for 6+ years, I have seen, time and time again, hard drives die without warning. This leaves a lot of people without their data because they never took the time to backup. Take precautions. Don?t be one of those people.

Hard Drives and Data Backup.zip

[Sandor]

pretty nice guide and some good tips.

backup has always been a worry for me as i'd hate to lose my stuff. have most important things copied on 2 hard disks and the PC is surge protected. hopefully i'll not be unlucky enough to get zapped and lose both disks at the same time.