If you have any important or hard to reproduce data on your computer, you have likely backed that data up. If you do not have backups of this data, you will likely be able to effectively back it up in some fashion by the end of this post.
What should I back up?
This one is pretty simple: anything you don’t want to lose. For many individuals, this would include our photos, documents, or maybe even your music library. Of these things, you may have already backed up some of them without even realizing it. Any photos that have been posted to Flickr, Facebook, or your new Google+ account are still available if your hard drive dies. But things such as your eTax returns, resume templates, or expense spreadsheets all hold valuable information that needs to be backed up somewhere, and is often overlooked.
For businesses, many more things fall in the range of what needs to be backed up. Data files from various software (Accounting, POS, and other day to day systems may all have their own central databases), Outlook email boxes, and documents should all be regularly backed up. Losing any of your employee’s hard work not only means you pay to have it recreated, but you may lose quality when trying to recreate a document from scratch if it has been refined over many iterations.
How can I back up my important data?
Data backups come down to a few key concepts: Automation, Redundancy, and Timing. Depending on the value of the data, you may opt for a more sophisticated backup that incorporates more of these elements.
Automation means having your backups run with as little manual effort as needed. For some, a fully automated backup system isn’t needed, and they are fine triggering the backup or even manually copying the files to the backup location. For those that prefer to do some initial setup, regular backups can be controlled by scheduled tasks, scripts, or even commercial backup software. These fully automated backups will run without any intervention, which can be a big time saver in the long run as opposed to having to manually perform the backups.
Redundancy refers to having your data in multiple places. Most home and small business users may already perform a simple local backup on a regular schedule, such as copying files to an external hard drive or DVD-R. By making your backups redundant, you are basically making sure not to put all your eggs in one basket, which is accomplished by copying the data to multiple locations and mediums.
For example, having all your backups on your local hard drive means if it fails, you are out of luck. Doing backups to an external drive is much better, but if a thief were to break in and take everything from your desk, you would again have no additional copies. But if you were to have everything backed up on your computer, an external hard drive, some intermittent DVD copies, an additional external hard drive stored in a safe or offsite, as well as online backups, there would be much less reliance on a particular piece of your backup system, as even a tornado through your home or office would not affect your online and offsite data.
Timing is important because some data rarely changes, while other data changes constantly. Having a weekly backup of your documents folder ensures that you would only lose a weeks worth of updates, which can generally be recreated with some time and effort. A monthly backup may suffice for your music folder, as you may only get one new album each month, so the value of daily backups is minimized. But for a business point of sale system, losing a week’s worth of information may take days to recreate, and daily (or even hourly!) backups might be necessary for the most important of files. I have seen too many occasions where one backup method has been relied on and failed, meaning restoration of a week or month old data file.
As a real world example of these concepts, consider a retail store. They have a tape backup system as their sole method of backup for their server’s retail management software. They suffer data corruption, rendering their database unusable. When searching for their daily backup to restore from, they realize nobody has been changing the tapes in their backup system. Upon further inspection, the backup system isn’t even turned on, as it was moved around during server repairs months ago and nobody has looked at it since! They are now forced to look for stray backups from months ago, eventually finding one from 4 months earlier. Not only do they need to dig out all printed receipts to re-enter, but they lose months worth of valuable customer data, their inventory figures are all off, and reporting accuracy can not be trusted for that time period. This is an example where their low redundancy system failed them, and even though it was supposed to be set to automatically run based on daily timing, a single point of failure cost them months of valuable data.
It may seem like a bit of a horror story (especially to those with small businesses), but I’ve seen this happen in various forms a few times over the years, and it is only in hindsight that they realize their backup system was not robust enough to ensure secure data. Applying this to a smaller scale, imagine a student that has spent hours working on a project, only to have a power interruption cause data loss. Starting over again due to no backup (in this case not saving recently) is a painful event, but luckily it is one that can be avoided in many cases.
Backup Methods
More important than the reasoning behind keeping solid backups, is knowing how to use technology to meet your backup goals. Once you’ve decided on the appropriate levels of automation, redundancy, and timing, you are ready to implement a backup system.
The simplest method is manually copying your data, whether it is to an external hard drive, DVDs, or emailing important documents to yourself. If you want your photos backed up, you could simply upload them online. You don’t need to post them for others to see, but you will sleep better knowing the digital photos of your latest vacation or child’s birthday won’t be lost if your main data is lost.
In order to step up to the next level of automation and timing, many would expect to require costly software, which is not necessarily the case. You can set up a simple batch script that runs automatically via Windows Task Scheduler, and have your data backed up overnight to an external hard drive, and perhaps other locations as well. See here for scripting examples and screenshots of adding the scheduled task. All of this can obviously be configured or expanded to meet your needs. Doing this on your own may be a bit technical for some folks, but if you have a friend or family member with some IT knowledge, they can likely help out pretty easily (and most won’t mind doing it, as they’d rather do this than try to recover lost data in the future!).
A newer method is using web based solutions to provide online backups. You can use a service like MozyHome (stay tuned for a review of this service) and push your backups online. Many services are free for a small personal account, but for larger data sizes paid accounts are offered as well. This is one of the easiest ways to make a highly redundant backup, and fits the needs of many home users.
For those who require an even more robust solution, it may be time to speak with an IT professional about what will work best for you. You may find that a more advanced script with Task Scheduler will meet your needs, or an online service that can handle your data for a reasonable rate, or you may consider investing in enterprise grade backup software.
And although most of the discussion here has used the example of a computer, remember to back up your phone and other devices as well. If you are able to sync contacts and information to your phone, that is preferred over keeping everything locally on your phone, in case it is lost or damaged. There are also apps that will forward your call/sms logs to Gmail, so that nothing is ever truly lost if your phone has any data loss. This can also take the pain out of getting a new phone or computer, as all of your important data is already off your old device and everything you need can be moved over quite easily.
