Avoid the heartache of a hard drive crash by backing up

Having been the victim of a hard drive failure, and having heard faculty, students, and friends go through the same thing I thought I should share the method by which I use to avoid the heartache. I rest easy at night knowing that my documents, email, contact, calendar, and all other data are safely backed up. Not just once, but four different ways.

Items to keep in mind regarding Backups.

The first thing you must remember when selecting a backup system is that is must be a “Set it, and forget it” system. Anything that relies on a human to start the backup each time will never work. We get distracted and forget. The second thing to remember about backing up is to have more than one system in place in case one has a hiccup. Lastly, have at least one back up in the same location as your machine, and at least one in a completely different geographical location as the machine you are backing up.

The Hardware & Software of backing up

In the old days we used to use tapes to back up and we would rotate them out to a safe deposit box once a week. Was that ever a pain. Working for a digital firm like Rockbridge brought new challenges since all staff work in seperate locations. We have been using MozyPro for about three years now and it has worked well. It’s Mac and Windows compatible and centrally managed through their website. It also fulfills our need for an offsite backup.

Along side Mozy I personally use Drop Box to store all my documents in. I work off an iMac and a Windows laptop and this not only backs up anything I store in these folders but automatically syncs them accross any computers I wish. I share some of these folders with our accountant, a marketing firm, and a friend who’s starting a side business. I use the free version of Drop Box, but there is a paid version that allows for more than 2 gigabytes of data to be stored. I rarely get close to two gigabytes and when I do I know it’s time to do some archiving.

I have a NAS (network attached storage) device that I back up all the computers in our house to. This device is simply an enclosure that has both wireless and wired network access and houses a hard drive. (Ours has two hard drives that mirror, or automatically copy each other, in case one of them decides to stop working.) However, if you are just concerned with one computer a usb connected external hard drive works just as well. Nearly all of these come with their own back up software. Apple provides Time Machine for Macs which creates automatic backups and works wonderfully.

Archiving the most important files

If you have files that need archived and are critical must haves, such as tax filings or a movie of baby’s first steps, it’s always a good idea to burn a CD or DVD and label it with as many descriptors as you can. Trust me, in a year when you are flipping through the disk on your desk and can’t remember what’s on a specific disk. You’ll thank yourself for being so detailed.

What do you use for backing up? What have you used and didn’t like, or worse, didn’t work when it needed to? Sing praises or vent in the comments.

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