Doing Daily Backups? I Hope So!

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Backup Utility Screen We’ve all heard the horror stories of how someone lost all their important and irreplaceable information when the hard drive died, or worse yet, your computer was stolen, or completely wrecked by fire or whatever! Are you prepared? If not, let’s get prepared right away. Read on, it’s not that difficult to do, and you’ll be happy you did.

I highly recommend doing a daily backup. There are some nice backup software utilities you can purchase. There are also some nice one’s that can be downloaded for free. You can use the one that XP provides, but personally, I’ve found it to be unreliable.

I’m not going to go into an extensive list of different backup utilities here. You can do a search in Google or Yahoo for that. I will however, recommend the freebie I found, EZBackitup, it works great for me, and has a very easy User Interface.

1) Internal Drive
I don’t recommend using an extra internal drive for backup. Some do, but if your computer were stolen for instance, so is your backup!

2) Firewire and USB External Drives
These drives are a great choice for backup. Some are even entirely powered from the USB cable. They come in a variety of storage capacity to fit your needs.

3) NAS (Network Attached Storage)
This is basically a drive connected to your local network instead of directly to a computer. That way it can be stored in a more remote area away from your computer and possibly the prying eyes of a thief. You have to safeguard against everything you know!

4) Onlike Backup Services
I’ve always been reluctant to use this type. Only because I’m a very paranoid type of person. I like to know I have complete control over the backup files. Or at least I like to think I do!

Actually, these online service companies go to great lengths to insure security. Authentication mechanisms are provided to ensure that data is kept secure from unauthorized access. One source I’ve found to be easy to use and very affordable is Amazon S3.

Safety Tip 1 Servers crash, and companies go out of business, both without warning. Don’t use this method, (or any of the other methods for that matter), as your only backup source. At least for the highly sensitive and important stuff!

Safety Tip 2 Make sure you encrypt the files that contain highly sensitive information like passwords and other private information.

There it is in a nutshell. There are other options available. And this is by no means a complete guide. But the main point here is to be safe. Don’t lose your valuable info!

One other suggestion while we’re talking about backups. If you’ve created a file you absolutely wouldn’t want to lose, save it to a Flash or Jump drive as a temporary safety move between daily backups.

Oh No! My Hard Drive Crashed!

14 Responses to “Doing Daily Backups? I Hope So!”

Ty Hurd on 24 Mar 2008 at 10:29 am #

Ha - I never back up… Probably should.

Jonathon on 24 Mar 2008 at 2:10 pm #

It has been awhile since my last back-up, so I guess it is probably time I do it again. Thanks for the reminder!

Thomas Sinfield on 24 Mar 2008 at 2:13 pm #

I have to agree with Ty. I never even think about backing up. So hopefully nothing ever happens to my computer and I lose everything!

LGR on 24 Mar 2008 at 11:39 pm #

I use MozyPro online backup and I have been very pleased with it. It is pretty much setup and forget. I check it every once in awhile to make sure that it is working but it has been great.

Curt on 25 Mar 2008 at 4:29 am #

Just as I thought, most people let a daily backup routine slide by the wayside.

Like LGR commented, just setup and forget. (Maybe check on it once in a while though!)

vance on 25 Mar 2008 at 10:07 am #

You can setup yourself a FreeNAS. One good thing of having NAS is that you can share to anyone in you network.

Another good investment would be DROBO, if you can afford one. It cost about $500 without the drives and it needs 2 drives. Whats create about DROBO is its fully automated you don’t have to set it up. If one of your drives goes down, all the files contained it that drive will be scattered to the other working drives.

I personally don’t a backup system because I can’t afford to buy or build one myself.

Josh on 25 Mar 2008 at 10:41 am #

Thanks for reminding me…

Jodith on 25 Mar 2008 at 6:55 pm #

I’m really bad about backing up regularly. I really need to do better about it. It’s not like I don’t have the tools at hand, it’s just that I’m basically lazy about it *laughs*. I need to get back to my daily backups.

Curt Despres on 25 Mar 2008 at 7:29 pm #

Good point Vance about the DROBO. It would be a great option, but as you point out, very expensive. Especially with networking costs.

Once again, most people just put it off. I have a lot of client based files that would cause some serious problems if they were lost.

LJP on 25 Mar 2008 at 11:53 pm #

I have been using an external hard drive for backups (Maxtor) but last week the icon disappeared, then it couldn’t be accessed, data would need to be retrieved file by file and there were at least 300,000 files on there!!

Do a DVD backup from your external hard drive as well. That’s what I’ve learned recently

Curt Despres on 26 Mar 2008 at 4:04 am #

Hi LJP. Sorry to hear of your misfortune.

I know I’ve had trouble with a Maxtor drive in the past.

vance on 26 Mar 2008 at 6:46 am #

As the experts always says Back Up! Back Up! Back Up!

You can not depend on one backup source! You have to do multiple backups; External Drives, DVDs, and off-shore backups (online and other sources).. This way no matter what happens you’ll never lose your files.

Michael Aulia on 26 Mar 2008 at 6:41 pm #

It’s been a while that I have a backup.. will do some research on an automated sync to an online storage later

Mattaw - Moneybites on 26 Mar 2008 at 7:53 pm #

Its been a while since I backed up thanks for the reminder doing it now. I need to figure how to schedule bi weekly backups.