Thursday, March 31st was World Backup Day and to celebrate this, we want to share some tips for backing up your computers. Ask any IT guy and they will tell you that the best thing you can do for your computer is to back it up. Unfortunately, computers don’t always make this as easy for us as we would like. There are literally hundreds of possibilities when it comes to picking a backup strategy but you should make sure you pick one that fits your needs.
The Basics:
While many people will tell you that it’s important to back up as often as possible, backing up isn’t always cheap. One of the rules that I like to go from is the “3-2-1″ backup. Have 3 copies of any important data, use at least 2 different sources of media (DVD, Hard Drive, Tape), and have at least 1 of them offsite. While this is a good rule to go by it is important to start at what is necessary and build up to what would be ideal. First, get a simple hard drive and backup using your operating systems built in tools.
Windows Backup:
The windows back up utility can be a little bit confusing at first but here are the steps to get you up and running.
1. Plug in your Hard-Drive
2. Go to your Control Panel
3. Search for Backup
4. Click on Back up now and follow the prompts
5. Find a time for it to always run
OS X Backup:
The Mac OS X utility, Time Machine, is simpler to use. Time Machine does what is called an incremental backup, which means that after the first initial backup, it will just add data to the backup disk as changes are made. The first time you plug in an external hard drive to your Mac it will most likely ask you if you would like this to become your Time Machine disk. If you don’t select this, you can easily find it again in your system preferences. The UI for Time Machine is very simple and because of this it means that it is incredibly easy to search through the backup and find specific data or restore everything from a specific point in time.
Which Hard Drive is For You:
Selecting the hard drive you use can also be confusing. While you can easily just buy an external hard drive off the shelf, there are some other products that may be more suited for backups. A NAS (Network Attached Storage) can be a great idea for your backups as it will let you put your data in a different room than your computer, which will increase the chances that your data won’t be harmed if there is some problem at your computer such as a fire or flooding. As well, devices like the Drobo will create redundant copies of your backup automatically to give you additional safety. You can also do this with a RAID Array, but chances are if you already know what a RAID array is, you don’t need help devising a backup solution.
It is also important that you do a bit of research into which hard drive you are going to buy as hard drives can be designed for many different things. Check out reviews about hard drives before you buy them to make sure they are right for backing up. Hard drives that are low power consumption, or have very fast read/write speeds aren’t really that necessary for backups since they aren’t going to be used at all times.
Automation:
Another important point to remember when you are developing your own backup strategy is to make sure that it is automated. Both the Microsoft and Apple backup solutions are automated. If you are using a system that currently doesn’t offer an automated backup, switch backups. It’s not worth the hassle to have to remember to run your backup every night or week, especially if it is for your personal computer and not a corporate system.
For most computer users, I would say that just having this style of local backup is enough. The only problem with this backup strategy is that if you ever find yourself in a situation like a flood or fire, your backups are fairly useless. This is where an off site backup can be useful.
