Backing Up Your Files
Sooner or later, something terrible will happen to your hard drive. That's not a very happy thought, but the good news is you can survive a hard drive failure with only minimal inconvenience -- if you back up your files.
|
|
|
| The Top Five! |
| Check out this week's most popular articles. |
Hard Drives Are Not Forever
They can fail without warning, a virus could wipe out your data, fire or flood could damage the drive, or it might even get stolen. You might accidentally delete a file or an entire folder of important files with an errant click. And it's not only emergencies that make backups important... if you buy a new computer, a backup can make it much easier to copy your files from the old computer to the new one.
Backup Strategies
Do you need to backup all your files, or just certain ones? That depends on how you use your computer, how important your data is, and how much you want to think about backups. If your drive fails, you can reinstall the operating system and all your software. But the data you've created and stored (word processor documents, spreadsheets, emails, photos, music, etc.) may not be replaceable.
So at a very minimum, you should decide which are your most important files and make backups. Here are some easy ways to back up a set of files:
- Attach the files to to an email and send them to friend. Or open a free web-based email account, and send the files to yourself.
- Copy them to another computer on your home or office network.
- Upload them to your website, or free web space.
- Burn them to a CD.
- Copy them to a flash drive or external hard drive.
Do this often - daily, weekly or monthly - you decide based on how often you update the files and how critical it is to have access to the most recent data in the event your hard drive crashes and burns. But be warned that recovering from a hard drive failure will be a nuisance if you opt to backup only your data files. It will take quite a few hours to re-install your operating system and all the software that you had. If you downloaded software, you might have lost the license or registration keys along with your data, too.
Backup on Auto-Pilot
I strongly advise automated full system backups, because EVERYTHING is safely squirreled away, and restoring your data can be accomplished with a few clicks. You could back up your data on a bunch of CDROMs, but you'd need a LOT of them to back up a modern hard drive, which can store 100GB or more. CD-ROM disks hold about 700MB of data, so even with compression you'd need over 100 of them to get the job done. Not very convenient, especially if you ever need to restore the data.
Since hard Disk drives are cheaper than ever, I recommend you get an external hard drive and use it as a backup device for one or more computers. You can buy a large capacity external drive for well under $1 per gigabyte. The Iomega 33xxx series and the Maxtor OneTouch get high marks from reviewers and users, but other manufacturers such as Seagate and Western Digital make good products as well. Look for a drive that supports a USB 2.0 connection, or the faster FireWire hookup if your system supports it.
Backup Software
Backup software is also recommended, to help you automate the process of making automatic full or incremental backups, and to restore just one deleted file or the entire drive. A good backup program will even allow you to store multiple versions of a file, so you can go back in time and restore a file to the way it was a day, a week or a month ago.
I use Acronis True Image (Windows) but have heard great things about Retrospect (Windows/Mac), which comes free on the Maxtor OneTouch drives, and SmartSync (Windows).
Losing data that you've spent countless hours creating is one of the most frustrating things that can happen to a computer user. When it comes to backups, don't think too hard about whether or not it's worth the trouble. It takes only a little time and money to set up automatic full system backups that give you peace of mind and protection from data disasters.
|
|
|
Send this article 
Jump to the 
Buy Bob a 
Check out other articles in this category:Posted by Bob Rankin on October 23, 2005 01:28 PM
| Need More Help? Try the AskBobRankin Updates Newsletter. It's Free! |
 |
Prev Article: Is Your Printer Spying on You? |
|
Next Article: Internet History |
 |
|
Link to this article from your site or blog. Just copy and paste from this box: Related Keywords: Backup backup back up external hard drive hard drive failure drive crash |
Most recent comments on "Backing Up Your Files"
(See all 28 comments for this article.)|
Posted by:
|
please help me i cannot get back all my lost files, it cost alot of money, how can i get it back free of charge EDITOR'S NOTE: You want fries and a Coke with that? |
|
Posted by:
|
Interesting to read the backup details above as i am about to reformat and reload XP due to a malware/virus. I have backed up the data and drives to CD but was more interested in backing all up using an auto-Pilot. But of cause doing this would copy the "problem" and as i have not been able to locate it ( system crashes when the area is hit and no log recorded)i would be recreating the very reason i wish to avoid. EDITOR'S NOTE: If you do frequent backups, you can pick the one from just before the problem point. |
|
Posted by:
|
Like an earlier poster, I want to use my second iinternal drive as a complete system-wide backup of the internal hard drive I use on a daily basis (PC/WinXP). Am I correct in assuming that because I can actually see the second internal hard drive, that that means it's a separate PHYSICAL drive and not a second partition? Are there any other cautions to using a second internal hard drive for complete system backup? I ask because I noticed your article references only using an exernal hard drive, which made me curious. HUGE THANKS for all the help you provide to me and others on this forum. You need to know you are truly, truly appreciated! EDITOR'S NOTE: Yes, a second internal drive will work fine. Just not as portable! |
|
Posted by:
|
Everyone seems to choose what works best for them. I see a lot of different backup software programs being used. I need a package that will be very intuitive and as hands off automatic as possible once installed. I have customers with no real computer experience beyond the programs they use. I tried the Acronis demo and found it complicated with very little instruction built in; never did get it installed completely. EDITOR'S NOTE: Acronis will do all that. In fact, I've used it exactly as you describe. |
|
Posted by:
|
Would you recommend storing backups in dvds? I'm planning to buy a dvd writer and I'd like to make sure I can store data files on dvd just like in cds..Dvds have much bigger capacities than cds so you'll need fewer of them. EDITOR'S NOTE: Sure, just don't count on ANY backup media to last forever... See http://askbobrankin.com/lifetime_of_a_cdrom_disk.html |
|
Posted by:
|
I just purchased Maxtor OneTouch 4 Mini (120GB) and it comes with Maxtor Safety Drill software. The salesman recommended that I purchase Norton Ghost 12.0 in addition to the external drive because the software that comes with Maxtor is not sufficient. I paid $80 for the drive and $70 for Nortons Ghost. Is Nortons Ghost really necessary? I am using a Toshiba laptop that is 1 and 1/2 yrs old and have important data that I now back up using a flash drive. Thanks, Anne EDITOR'S NOTE: It looks like the Maxtor Safety Drill software should do the job... |
|
Posted by:
|
My hard drive is going(sigh) on my toshiba laptop which is amazingly only 3.5 years old. I am hoping they will replace it for free. Chances are they will install the operating system on it. But I need to figure out with umpty number of choices of types of backups I can use, can you suggest which one should I look for( not just the product but type of backup(image vs selective files etc). EDITOR'S NOTE: I'm very happy with the Acronis True Image, which does an complete (image) backup. You can extract single files from the backup image if needed. |
|
Posted by:
|
Sorry I forgot to mention one more comment in my previous note. Once the system boots, the hard drive is quiet as a mouse.. and everything works fine. Now can you please tell me whats wrong. Thanks EDITOR'S NOTE: Why do you think something is wrong? |
|
Posted by:
|
I am thinking something is wrong with the harddrive because when I first power on the machine it makes a screeching noise. Then it becomes quiet once the boot process starts. Do you thinnk its still the hard drive? EDITOR'S NOTE: Screeching noise... Hmmm... you didn't mention that little bit of information before. Yes, I would replace that drive ASAP. |
|
Posted by:
|
Just to reitterate one of the early posts regarding the Retrospect software mentioned in this article. I too had problems with this program. The free version that comes bundled with various hard drives (mine was an Iomega) is called Retrospect Express and the main problem that everyone complains about is that it grabs focus away from other running apps about every five minutes. You have to right-click the tray icon and exit it if you want to run other apps without interruptions. It also has some problems with restore point data not being saved right. It's just not worth the hassle, so I uninstalled it. EMC is aware of the problems, but they don't bother to update this freebie. Maybe their commercial versions are OK, but I'd be wary. |
There's more reader feedback... See all 28 comments for this article.
Post your Comments, Questions or Suggestions
|
Ask Bob Rankin Home Page
Subscribe to AskBobRankin Updates: Free Newsletter |
|
|
Advertise on This Site!
Copyright © 2005 - Bob Rankin - All Rights Reserved |
||