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Backup Basics Your hard disk will crash. Count on it. It happens to everyone sooner or later. And when it does you will be happy you have a backup copy of all your data and important files. You have an up-to-date backup, don't you? You don't? No worries. Here are the simple rules of data recovery for people who hate to back up. I
recommend using removable media for your backup. If you
can't take it with you, it's not a backup. I know a famous author who lost an
entire novel because her backups were stored next to the computer when her house
burned to the ground. You can back up to floppy disks if you have no other
choice, but floppies aren't reliable for long-term archival storage. And filling
dozens of floppies is so time consuming, most people will put off backing up
until it's too late. Many businesses back up to tape drives. Tapes are cheap,
and their huge capacities make it easy to back up an entire hard drive. But I
don't like tape backups because you're never sure if the data is really there
unless you verify it (which is time consuming).
Tape is better than nothing, but my preference is for removable storage such as
Iomega's Zip 100, Zip 250 or Imation's SuperDisk. These disks hold 100MB, 250M,
or 120MB
respectively -- plenty of space to back up all your irreplaceable data. And
they're fast and reliable. Best of all, your data is stored on the disk
normally, so it's easy to verify that the copy actually took. I think every
personal computer sold should be equipped with either a Zip or a SuperDisk
drive. If your computer isn't, you can buy one for $150 or less. Disks are
around $10. I
use a simple shareware program called Second Copy to automatically back up my
data every few hours to the Zip disk in my machine. I have three disks I rotate
daily, taking the most recent to work with me. This way I always have three
copies of my data, one of which is offsite in case of a major disaster. But
that's not enough for me. I also want to have long-term archival storage of my data. CDRW drives and
DVD burners are cheap enough now that everyone should have one. A CDRW
disk holds about 650mb of data, DVD burners hold about 4.7 Gigabytes of
data. The CD's are cheap and easy to transport. They are not
affected by magnetic interference. Besides the fact that it's easy to copy your
data to a cd for offsite backup and archival which will last probably forever,
the burners can serve as a means of transporting documents and presentations to
clients or customers. Many people burn their music on CD-R disks to listen
to their custom music in their automobile as an added advantage. But
now let's answer a key question: What should you back up?
Businesses make backing up simple. They buy big tape drives and back up
absolutely everything all the time. When the inevitable hard drive collapse
happens, the system administrator can restore the works in a matter of minutes.
For businesses, where every minute of downtime means dollars lost, that might
make sense. But most individuals aren't willing to pay the money or take the
time to back up everything all the time.
For the rest of us, the essential rule of backing up is, "Make a copy of
anything you can't otherwise replace." That means you make copies of your
personal data. Don't make copies of Windows or your applications (unless you no
longer have the master disks). If you lose your hard drive, you'll have to take
a few hours to rebuild it from the original program disks. That's not the end of
the world. The key is to also have a recent copy of your precious data, so that
you can restore that, too. Some
things you'll want to back up every time you make changes. I make a copy of my
Quicken data every time I balance the checkbook. Other things can be backed up
weekly or monthly. I'd strongly recommend backing up all your data at least
weekly and saving a copy of that backup offsite. You should have one folder where you store all your documents. Mac users will
want to create one called Documents and will want to start getting in the habit
of storing all their work inside. Windows 2000/XP automatically makes a My
Documents folder, and most recent Windows programs will store their data inside
that folder.
One critical exception is Intuit's Quicken. It stores data in its own program
directory, unless you save it elsewhere. So if you're using Quicken, right now,
before you forget, open Quicken and save a copy of your data to the My Documents
folder. Once you do that, Quicken will continue to keep it there. If you're
religious about directing programs to store documents in the My Documents
folder, backing up will be much simpler. Nearly everything you want to back up
will be inside. But there are a few other things you might want to also back up. Here's
a list of common data files and where to find them:
Saved games: Solitare, Minesweeper, Look for them inside the game program's directory. Look for files with
the .sav extension.
Email: Locations vary. Eudora stores its email and address book in
.mbx files in the main Eudora folder. Outlook Express lets you specify the
location of its mail file, so it could be anywhere. Netscape Messenger defaults
to "C:\Program Files\Netscape\Users\your name\Mail." Outlook stores
everything in a .pst file in the "C:\Windows\Application
Data\Microsoft\Office\Outlook" folder.
Templates and Fax Cover Sheets: You may have put a lot of time into
these. It'd be a shame to lose them.
Internet Bookmarks and Favorites: Netscape defaults to
"C:\Program Files\Netscape\Users\name\bookmark.htm." Internet
Explorer stores them as individual files in the C:\Windows\Favorites directory.
Preference and Settings: They're scattered all over your hard drive,
usually in files with the .ini extension. You probably don't need to back up
Windows .ini files, but you might want preferences from other programs. And
don't forget to jot down your Dial-Up Networking and TCP/IP settings while
you're at it.
You may have other important data hidden away on your hard disk. It's not a
bad idea to take a walk through your drive to see what else is there. You can
simplify matters by doing a search of your disk by file creation dates. Look for
new files, since new files were most likely created by you.
The moral of the story is, "All disk drives will fail eventually." And
they always seem to do it when you need them the most. Protect yourself by
backing up. You'll be glad you took the time to protect your data. |
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