If there is only one thing you do today...
If there is only one thing you to today…
… backup your home computer.
After changing jobs to an office with a big focus on backing up your work and central file storage, as well as small scare with a computer at home I thought it would be a good opportunity to share what I have learned and think about computer backups.
First a few thoughts and rules that I try to live by:
1) It is not a matter of “if” your computer is going to fail/crash one day, it is a matter of “when”. A negative statement yes, but computers are for the most part electronic and/or mechanical devices and eventually they will fail. Better to be prepared and have a much less stressful fail/crash then you would otherwise with no backup.
2) Any file you have one copy of is a file that you don’t care about. You may have pictures sitting on your home computer hard drive and these pictures may be very important to you. Pictures of friends and family and if you are like me, sometimes you download them from your digital camera, erase your memory card, and that is it. These very important pictures sit on your home computer hard drive and do not exist anywhere else. If you care about a file, there should be at least two copies of it and three ideally (the third somewhere other than your house).
3) Make it simple and automatic. If you are like me, once things get really busy and your focus changes, you likely won’t be thinking “oh yes, I need to sit for 10 - 15min on Sunday and make sure all my files are backed up”. You need to ensure that at the very least your backup strategy is simple and ideally automatic, with as little manual work by you as possible.
Solutions
Here are some solutions that I have used and recommend. Start by trying to implement at least one of them and if you can implement all.
1) Make a local backup. If you don’t have one, purchase an external hard drive. You can find them now for $80 - $150 and will have a huge variety to choose from. Whether you are on a Mac or PC the process I suggest is easy: once a week select all of the files you care about on your computer and copy them onto your hard drive. Done. It may take 2 - 3 min to select the files and anywhere from 10 min - 1 hour to copy them (depending on how many you select) but once complete, you have a local backup of all your important files. In the event that your computer crashes you can simply plug the external hard drive into another computer and be up and running.
Note: There are some hard drive format considerations to keep in mind when using an external hard drive on both a Mac and a PC. Please email me for additional information.
2) Make a backup and take it elsewhere. The solution above is in my opinion the absolute minimum. I stronger strategy is to have the backup in a different location from your home computer. The reason is simple, in the horrible case where you experience a home disaster (e.g. flood, theft, etc.) you don’t want your primary copy and backup copy sitting beside each other. If your alternate location is easily accessible then it may suffice to have two copies: a primary copy on your computer and your backup stored at the alternative location. If your alternate location is not easily accessible then you may want to consider having three backup copies: two copies at your home location and the third at your alternative location. Ideas for an alternative location include: friends house, office/work, or a safety-deposit box (around $35/year for a box that could store a USB memory stick or small external hard drive).
3) Backup to the cloud. The “cloud” is a technology buzz word that basically means technology that you access that is not stored on your computer. This technology can include email (e.g. Hotmail or Gmail), application/software (e.g. Google Apps, Flickr/Picasa, and SalesForce.com) as well as storage (e.g. DropBox and Mozy).
You may be wondering about security and it will vary by the service. I’ve read about the security levels at Mozy.com and they are extremely high. Mozy was purchased by a technology leader EMC a while ago and run with enterprise level security and encryption. I would equate backing up with Mozy to banking online - if you are comfortable with banking online you will be fine using Mozy.
Backing up to the cloud provides an easy way to have a backup copy that exists elsewhere. It will reside on the servers of the service you select and can then be recalled when needed. Depending on the service you select you will have different options (for example, Mozy allows you to either access your backup files via a web browser or for a fee you can request to have a DVD set made and couriered to your house).
I have mentioned both DropBox and Mozy as these are services that I have used. I have not listed others but encourage you to explore and speak to others to learn about more services. Do not let this be an obstacle in getting started though. Both DropBox and Mozy offer 2 GB of cloud storage for free so that is a great way to start and you can always delete your account or switch to another service later.
DropBox.com Online/cloud storage. A great feature is the ability to create folders in either Windows Explorer (PC) or the Finder (Mac) that look like any other folder but are not actually on your computer. They are in the “cloud” and have all the features of a regular folder. A great way to simply copy folders you want to backup as well as have the same folders available to you from any computer in the world.
Mozy.com Online/cloud backup. Mozy provides an incremental backup services. This means that your first backup can take a long time, depending on the size of the folders you select. Note: you choose to backup your entire computer or just certain folders, which is great if you want to for example, just backup your Documents or just your Pictures. The first backup takes a long time because it is copying all your files to the Mozy servers. After the first backup, the service runs much faster because it has the intelligence to scan your selected folder and only backup the changes (i.e. incremental)
Take a step…
I highly recommend, if you haven’t already, taking a step today with one of the above suggestions. Some will cost a bit of money (e.g. buying an external hard drive) but others are free (e.g. backup an important folder of documents using DropBox). Either way the money or time spent is in my opinion absolutely necessary if the files are important to you.
Remember, it is not a matter of “if” you are going to need a backup it is a matter of “when”.
Hopefully that “when” doesn’t come until you are ready.
Please email me at Bryan.Sippel@gmail.com with any questions or comments on this post. I can also provide additional information / recommendations on external hard drives and the services mentioned above.
