Data Backups
(Computer)
Data Backups - Why Bother?
For many people, computers have become a daily necessity. We use them
for work, for correspondence and for entertainment. Many of the files
are important documents and losing them would cost us time and money.
Backups are the best way to prevent their permanent loss.
Don't make the mistake of believing that backups are only for computer
geeks or large corporations, or a task that can be performed 'when I get
around to it'. On the contrary, backups are a necessity for everyone.
Even if your computer has been running reliably for years, it will fail
one day - either through virus attack, user error or just age.
On that day, one of two things will happen. You'll either suffer the
grief that comes with losing financial information, passwords, music
collections, personal photographs and all the software you've purchased.
Or, you can repair or replace the computer and restore from the backups
you've been making regularly. The latter is an annoyance, the first a
disaster.
There are, unfortunately, an infinite variety of ways to lose data.
Besides hardware failure, computers can be destroyed in fires or floods.
Hard drives can be damaged by power surges caused by lightning strikes
or data lost by a child randomly hitting the keyboard. Viruses can
infect systems and erase hard drives.
But there's only one way to get it back - by having it available to be
restored.
What to Backup?
For the average user, it's usually not necessary to backup every file on
the computer, which would require large storage space. But at bare
minimum home users should backup personal files and irreplaceable
software. Spreadsheets with financial records not easily available from
other sources, legal documents, work-in-progress... the list is large.
But backups needn't be.
The easiest way to do backups is to use the backup software that comes
with the operating system. Windows has a free, usable backup program
while similar ones are available for Mac, Linux and others. The software
is easy to use and backing up is a simple matter of selecting which
folders to backup. It even has a scheduler so backups can be automated
to occur at convenient times.
For a modest sum backup software can be purchased that will only backup
files changed since a certain date, or since the last backup.
Alternatively, new files could be copied daily to a backup folder where
they can be backed-up by your backup program. To ease the task of
identifying which, use the Search option to list files 'newer than X'.
Once the list is complete, copy them into the backup folder and run the
program for just that folder.
Some data, such as e-mails are only slightly more difficult to protect.
Some e-mail clients can be configured to keep copies of received and
sent e-mails on the e-mail server. When that's not an option, most can
export messages to a file, which can then be backed up.
Backups can be done to any kind of removable media - writeable
CD's/DVD's, removable hard drives or even the newer 'keychain' devices
that plug into a USB port. Even floppy disks can still be used in many
cases. Documents often take a small amount of space. Just set aside 7
disks and rotate them from week to week.
Daily backups are one more thing to do in a busy schedule. But the day
you lose that file you need and can't restore, you're going to be a
whole lot busier.
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