Why Backup?

If it hasn't happened to you yet, it will. You'll turn on your computer, the hard drive will fail to turn on and you'll receive an error message about the lack of a boot device. Where is your data?

A 2004 study by the University of Texas says that only 6% of all businesses who experience catastrophic data loss survive for 2 years. 43% never open their doors again, while 51% go out of business within 2 years. Do you have your data backed up? Where would you be if it all disappeared in a puff of smoke? Do you have fire insurance for your business? If you do, but you don't have your data backed up, you are many times more likely to suffer from data loss as from a fire. Why pay for fire insurance and risk the whole enterprise on a cheap piece of hardware like a hard drive?

What is a backup?

Maxtor Onetouch USB hard drive unit A backup is simply a copy of one or more computer files onto a different storage device. The reason why you need to backup is that ALL storage devices will die. If you don't have a backup and your hard drive dies, you have lost all your data. How badly would it hurt if you lost everything on your computer?

Types of Backup:

Drive Image: Backup of the entire disk, including operating system, programs, data and temporary files. Ideal to restore the computer in the event the hard drive dies.
Full System Backup: Similar to a drive image, but with the ability to add new files and replace files where the data has changed. Ideal for continuous backup of data, but can be a bit more complicated to restore.
Data Backup: A backup of all the user-created data on the computer, but not the operating system or programs.

Backup Devices

Flash Drives: Simple USB devices, fit in a pocket or purse, hold up to 256GB (currently). More than adequate to hold most users' data.
Second Drive: Install a second drive in your computer to backup to.
USB Hard Drives: Hard drives inside an external case that will hold up to 2 TB of data. More than adequate to backup several computer systems. However, the drive must be shared on the network or the drive has to be unplugged from one computer and plugged into another to work.
Network Access Storage (NAS): A drive or array of drives that connects to the network as if it were a computer so that every computer on the network can perform backups without having to manually plug it into each computer.
Tape Drives: Mostly external devices that write to magnetic tape. If you run out of room, just insert another tape. They have unlimited (if you have enough tapes) storage capacity and it is quite easy to take a set of tapes offsite for offsite backup while continuing to make backups on another set.
Online Backups: Carbonite and Mozy advertise heavily, but there are thousands of other vendors. These sites are excellent for data backups and provide offsite backups to protect against theft, fire, earthquake, etc. A free online backup (for up to 2GB) is DropBox (www.dropbox.com).

What Defeats Backup Strategies?

Bad Planning: We see customers who accept the default to backup My Documents and then don't notice that Quicken, iTunes, several image programs and a couple of genealogical programs store their data in the Program Files folder.
Inattentiveness: We frequently see where the backup program is supposed to startup in the background and perform the backup, but for some reason it ceases to startup. The user never noticed. Or, the backup program ran out of space on the backup medium and sent error messages that the user ignored.
Backups at Same Location: Some users have been burgled and when the burglar stole the computer, they stole the backup device, too. Ditto for water damage, fire, earthquake, etc.
Backup Device Doesn't Work: Some users have backed up to a device that appears to be working, but when they needed the data, they couldn't retrieve it. Writing data gave no errors, but restoring data was impossible.
Version Errors: Most of us have modified a file and introduced errors into it by accident. Unless we spot the problem immediately, the backup program may write the mangled copy on top of the good copy and we've lost data.

How To Protect Against Backup Failure

Restore Regularly: Move a file to a different location and then start the restore process for your backup program. Tell it to restore just the one file you moved. If the file doesn't get restored, your backup isn't working properly.
Check the File Dates Regularly: If the backup stops backing up, the dates on the backup files won't change. Regularly check the report logs for the backup program. If that doesn't work, just open up Windows Explorer and look at the dates in the backup folders.
Pay Attention to Error Messages: Don't automatically click on the X when error messages pop up. Be alert.
Get data offsite:
Swap Drives: If you are backing up to flash or USB drives, have one copy at home and take the other to work, to a relative's place or other safe place.
Subscribe to an Online Backup: Carbonite and Mozy cost about $55 per year per computer and are pretty simple to setup.
Exchange Data: Do you have relatives doing genealogy? Send a copy of your data file regularly and allow them to send you a copy of theirs. Even if you are using different programs and can't read each others' data, you can be an offsite depository for each other.
Versioning: Most backup programs are able to restore the version from last week (or other previous date), if they are setup correctly. This requires having a larger backup device than the original.

The rule of thumb is that you need two copies stored locally and one copy stored remotely. Selecting the proper mix can be difficult, but VCC is there to help. Whatever you do, don't select a strategy that requires a lot of manual intervention. Human nature being what it is, backups stop taking place regularly after a while.

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