Backing Up Your Data

Have you ever experienced a serious computer crash and lost all your important data? It is a terrible experience because you can lose years of valuable files. Don’t let that happen to you.

Data backup, even though critical, is almost totally ignored by a large percentage of computer users.  Computers work so well today that people often assume that nothing can go wrong. This is complete folly.  Computers do have problems no matter who makes them. Hard drives, the repository for all that valuable data, do go bad and destroy data in the process.

Most people who use computers have some irreplaceable data. I have over eight years of accounting records for my business in my computer. Losing this alone would be a disaster, not to speak of my web sites and all my other business files.

In my years of working with computers I had two hard drives that failed. The first time was a disaster and everything was lost except for my accounting records that were backed up on a floppy disk. I learned my lesson and I was able to recover from the second crash without difficulty.

I cringe when I walk into a business office and find a computer with years of valuable data and no backup. This is not just a problem with individuals and small businesses.  Even large corporations become lax with backups and find themselves in a serious crisis because of it.

There is no reason to lose valuable data. Backup is not that complex, costly or time consuming. It is available to anyone who can afford a computer. Actually, for the most part, most computers come with a backup tool already installed. The floppy drive is very limited in capacity but it can serve as a good backup tool if properly used.

Full Backup is one of two basic schools of thought in Backup. It can involve the use of a hard drive partition, a tape backup unit, an online backup service or some other backup unit. Full backup means that everything on your hard drive is backed up and can be restored later if something happens to your hard drive.

For those that like the full backup method, I recommend using a second hard drive and software like Drive Image that creates a duplicate image of your hard drive on the second drive. I would avoid using a partition on your existing hard drive because, if your hard drive goes bad, a backup partition may be useless. If it is on a separate drive it will be available even if your hard drive is destroyed. The disadvantage of using an internal hard drive is that your media is not secure from a disaster that destroys your equipment.

Some people like tape drives because of their large capacity and ease of use. Some tape drives work well for full restores but are not good tools for access to specific files. Other tapes allow you access to all files. The important thing with tapes is to replace them at regular intervals because they can stretch and lose data. Depending on use, tapes should be replaced about once a year.

Online backup is the process of uploading your data to an Internet company specializing in backup. The advantage of this is that your files are off property and safe, assuming that the company is responsible and takes good care of your data.

You can also do full backups with limited capacity drives like the Zip or LS 120 units but it takes a lot of costly media and the time to continue feeding that media during a full backup.

Data Backup is the second school of thought on backup.  Here only the data is backed up. The operating system and the applications can always be reinstalled with the original disks. It is time consuming but can also be advantageous.  The advantage is that you will be getting a completely clean system after a crash.

Computer systems accumulate little glitches and problems as they are used over the years. With full backups you are saving all those glitches and they will just be placed back in your computer. With a clean reinstall of your software, all those glitches will be discarded and  you get a fresh start. I have a friend who dumps everything out of his computer once a year and reinstalls clean. He says that this keeps his computer running smoothly. I’m not recommending that but it isn’t a totally negative thing if a complete crash occurs when you have good backups.

One of my favorite tools for data backup is the Zip drive. This tool has become so popular that there are over twenty million of them in use now. Each Zip disk holds at least 100 megabytes of data compared to a floppy disk that holds only 1.44 megabytes.  Iomega also has 250 and 750 megabyte units.

My preference is to keep one zip disk for all my word processing files and one for all my other data. I also keep one for my web sites and all related information and files. I have been using Zip drives for years and both of the desktop computers in my home office have Zip drives. Besides that, I have a USB 250 megabyte Zip drive for my laptop. This portable Zip drive has saved the day many times.

CD and DVD writers are also good tools for backing up your data. How you backup data is not as important as making certain that you do it regularly.

USB Flash drives are one the most popular backup tools. These small drives are easy to carry and are now available with up to 4 gigabytes of storage capacity.

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