Your hard disk just died, what do you do now?
What is Your Backup Strategy?
A few months ago I played with the following idea: what would happen if I would completely loose, forget somewhere, or break my personal laptop computer? This thought play was induced by the fact that I actually thought I had lost the darn thing, for a few minutes, at that point.
How good was my current computer backup status? In addition to answering to that question, the exercise made me realize — actually internalize — a few things:
1. Loosing my laptop and its contents without backups of my most important data would severely set back my productivity for a while. I have a lot of files I do not want to lose, and I would really hate to have to re-install everything I have on this computer. But even re-installing software isn't bad, compared to losing your most precious files.
2. I needed to add my contact details somewhere on the computer. This also struck me, a standard corporate practice, and not a bad one. There is always the chance that if I would somehow just loose my computer, that it would be found by someone nice, who wanted to help. As a corrective measure to this point, I added my email and telephone number on the front cover of my laptop, using a Dymo label machine. Someone could argue that one should not ruin the looks of a design apparel, but for me, the MacBook Pro is tool. And it does not look that bad with the labels on the cover…
3. I'd better turn on password authentication. Auto-login was enabled, so any passing by user could basically just open the machine, and start to use it quite freely. Automatic login is now Off. This can be toggled in the settings.
4. I realized that I actually have a secured backup plan, which would have saved me. I could just have bought a new machine, and within a few hours, continue exactly where I was left off. It would have cost me, and that of course did upset me, but I would not have lost my precious documents, or even been forced to install everything again (and I can tell you I have got some music software installed that takes some while to install).
What a relief!
Can you say the same?
So, what is my solution? Before I answer that question, let's take a look at some basic philosophies behind backups. I am not an expert on the subject of backup, but I will share with you what I know. It took me a small while to figure this out, hopefully I can save you that time.
Different Computer Backup Solutions
Like always with computers, there exists many options on how to do things. Here are a few points and options relating to backup.
Computer Backup Term: Online or Offline
Shortly:
- Online backup: Your files are stored safely in a datacenter of the service provider you choose
- Offline backup: The backup files are stored on a separate media, like an external USB hard drive, which you provide yourself
With the evolvement of a fast internet, there has born a vast number of online file storage and backup services. If you are familiar with Dropbox, Mozy, LiveDrive, iDrive, or the likes, you know what I talk about. They are all services which back up your essential folders from your computer, into a cloud server of the providers. You get to choose which folders to backup, and most often people choose the folders containing music, pictures, and important personal files. With online backup enabed you can always transfer the files back to a new computer, or hard drive, if you get a problem.
Dropbox is one of the pioneers of this kind of a service, but there are cheaper, and equally capable services available today.
Still, my choice is SugarSync. It is mid-priced but has really cool syncing features, which somehow appealed to me. The leaders in this kind of service are SugarSync and SpiderOak. The syncing feature enables people to share the MyDocuments folder between any number of computers I choose to. So, if I e.g. would save something on my PC, into the MyDocuments folder, it will also appear in the MyDocuments folder of any other computer I choose to, where SugarSync is activated, so the files are common for all the computers. With SugarSync, I do not need to hassle with emailing files, or using USB memories! This, for me, means increased efficiency.
You can achieve an equal result with the other services too, SugarSync is just a little more advanced in this sense. But for the moment I am sticking with them.
Offline backing up of your computer is something you do yourself. Offline backup basically means that you back up files on a separate media, like an external hard drive, or on DVD's. For Macs, the most popular choice is probably the Time Machine/TIme Capsule combo. It is a superb all-inclusive solution.
With the Windows machines I am not doing offline backup at the moment. One of them is from from work, so it is covered by our policies there. The scond only one only exists virtually, inside the Mac (Parallells desktop), so it is actually backed up by the Time Machine too.
Computer Backup Term: Full Backup or Partial Backup
Shortly:
- Full backup: You will clone all the data of your computer
- Partial backup: Only the most important files are backed up
A full backup means that your whole computer is backed up, including your operating system and program files. For Mac users, Time Machine provides the most easy full backup solution. For PC's there exists many software available. Carbon Copy Cloner seems to be a popular choice for offline security. Acronis True Image is also highly recommended. In my brief study, I also stumbled across a fairly new service named Hybir. It claims to be an online full backup service. That is an interesting animal.
Normally online backup services are partial to their nature. A partial backup means that you only backup your most important files, like pictures, and music. And critical document files, like your CV.
Computer Backup Term: Scheduled or Continuous
Shortly:
- Scheduled: Your data is backed up with regular intervals, eg. monthly or weekly
- Continuous: Your data is more or less backed up always when you make a change, on the fly, and in the background
There is one more parameter that I want to mention quickly: if the backup is scheduled or continuous.
A scheduled back up process means that you need to define a specific time, when the process is done, often by defining a regular interval, like weekly. This can sometime be challenging in practice, if your computer is turned off when the computer would like to back up. In that case you miss your backup.
Continuous back up process on the other hand works in the background, and is less "seen" to the user. My SugarSync is practically totally invisible. The data is also more up-to-date, as it is backed up more often, more or less in real-time, or at minimum hourly.
My Solution
As I am currently at home primarily a Mac user, I have chosen as my offline full computer backup solution the Time Machine, which is a hardware and software combination provided by Apple itself. It is unparalleled in its ease of use. Its complete integration with the Mac OS makes it a safe choice. If I loose my laptop I can basically just buy a new one (Ouch!!), and restore all the info from the Time Machine to the new Mac, and continue where I left off. I have not needed to do it, but I have read many success stories on the web. If you want a little cheaper Mac solution, there exists non-Apple hard-drives, which you can use with the Time Machine software, e.g. by hard drive manufacturer Lacie.
As my online variant, and as an extra scurity layer for the critical files, I use SugarSync, as I already mentioned. If I would not be so obsessed with the Sync part of the SugarSync, I would probably opt in for the solutions by LiveDrive, which seem to contain value-for-money.
The most important thing is that you have some computer backup strategy! My recommendation would be, that you should at least have either an offline, or an online solution, and preferably both. What is your excuse, when online solutions don't take more than 5 minutes to set up.
You need an insurance for your digital life too.
Even just copying your MyDocuments every now and then to an external hard drive is better than nothing.
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