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Tips on Backing Up Your ComputerEric Moore, CUGGAugust 13, 2005 |
I am employed as a PC technician for the Weld Library District
at Farr Library. Recently a staff computer quit
working. When attempting to start, it halted with the message
that no system disk was found. After bringing it to our IT
lab and checking it out, my co-worker determined that the drive was
dead. When starting up, the only sound it made was a dull
thunking noise, as if a ping pong ball was bouncing around
inside. The BIOS did not recognize the drive nor did
Windows. The data on the drive is lost.
This incident only serves to reinforce a longstanding
imperative: Always back up your data! Viruses and
worms trash files and encrypt entire hard drives. User error
leads to deleted and overwritten files. Hard drives,
floppies, Zip disks, and recordable CDs and DVDs will eventually
fail. It is only a matter of time. The best thing
you can do is to be proactive by backing up your data regularly and not
trusting in any storage media for more than a few years of archiving.
Unless you have a large quantity of files and/or space is at a premium,
you probably do not need a fancy backup program with
compression. Instead, you can simply copy or burn your files
to removable media such as CDs, DVDs, or Zip disks. As a
rule, text-oriented files such as word processing files and
spreadsheets usually compress well. Programs, pictures,
videos, and sound files compress much less or not at all. If
you do need a backup program an adequate one is provided with Microsoft
Windows. You may need to install it your self by opening the
Control Panel, double-clicking Add/Remove Programs, clicking Add/Remove
Windows Components, and selecting the option for Microsoft Backup under
system tools.
My backup strategy is build around the principle of
redundancy. Rather than trusting in one particular device or
one type of storage, I use more than one. I have two hard
drives in my computer. Each hard drive has a dedicated
partition for storing my backups. One partition has a size of
20 GB and can hold several months’ worth of
backups. The other has a size of only 1 GB and can hold the
few most recent months’ worth of backups. Whenever
I create a new backup, it is first created on the 20 GB partition and
then copied to the 1 GB partition. This way, if one hard
drive should fail, I will still be able to restore my data from the
other hard drive. In addition to storing my backups on my two
hard drives, I also copy them to a DVD+RW disc. This way I am
prepared for the event of a major system meltdown such as a worm or
virus attack that has taken out both hard drives.
The importance of your data and budget will be guiding factors as to
how you prepare your backup strategy. Having two hard drives
to back up your data may not be necessary for you, but I do suggest
using a hard drive partition for storing backups if for no other reason
than that it is quicker and more convenient to restore at a later time
(especially if you cannot find your removable media).
Remember that hard drives have shorter access times than removable
media. I also recommend using removable media or an external
hard drive for storing copies of your backups. If you
don’t have the hard drive space on your computer, then you
may consider keeping duplicate copies on separate disks, such as two
CD-Rs, a CD-R and an external hard drive, or a CD-R and a Zip
disk. I do not recommend using floppy disks for long-term
storage. Floppy disks wear out much faster than other media
and can “rot” while just sitting in a storage box.
After backing up your data, you should test the backup by restoring
some or all of the files. You can do this by restoring them
to another folder rather than overwriting the original files.
This ensures that the media is sound and reliable if you should ever
need to recover your data. You should also store the
removable media in a safe place. At the very least, you
should store the media away from heat, magnetic fields, and direct
sunlight. If possible, store it offsite as insurance against
flood, fire, and other natural disasters. You may consider
storing the media in a safe deposit box, or leaving it in the care of a
trusted friend or relative.
If you use optical media such as recordable CDs or DVDs, be aware that
there is still an ongoing debate about their long-term
reliability. Estimates as to how long the data will last
range from a few years to several decades. The technology is
so young that nobody seems to know with certainty. The best
caveat I can give you is to use such media with care. In
addition to protecting the discs from scratches, heat, and direct
light, be sure to recopy the data to new discs every couple years or
so. In fact, you should also recopy data on magnetic disks,
as they will also degrade over time.
It can be hard to discipline yourself to perform regular backups, but
the practice will pay off in the long run. If you tend to
forget, then use a calendar program to remind you when it’s
time to perform a backup. However you go about it, back up
your data before it’s too late!