Hi ,

I hope you had a nice summer.  Michelle and I took a trip to Las Vegas in April to visit my cousin and see a wonderful Cirque du Soleil show called KA.  Wow, can they throw their bodies around on the stage.  And the stage moves too!  In July Michelle's family had a mini family reunion here in Colorado.  We took everyone to visit Bishop's Castle in the beautiful Sangre de Cristo mountains.  What a character Jim Bishop is.  We were fortunate to see him working on his castle and over heard some of what he was saying to a visitor.  He is a man in his own world that is for sure.  August and September were pretty quite this year just catching up on some home projects.

I have been thinking a lot about backups this year.  The technology has changed dramatically since the last time I covered this topic in 2000 so I thought now would be a good time to revisit the issue. 

Why Backup?
For many of us more and more of our lives are stored inside our computers.  Documents that we have written, pictures we have taken, vacation and holiday videos, emails and contact information are all now stored on a small piece of equipment called a hard drive. As you can see in this photo there are platters inside the hard drive and arms that moves back and forth as the platters spin.  If the platters stop spinning or one of the arms stops moving then you will no longer be able to read any of the data off the drive.  Just as with anything mechanical this can happen at any moment.  So we backup to copy our important information to another drive.  In the past that was a floppy disk, zip disk or maybe a CD/DVD.  Nowadays we have faster and more reliable ways to backup our data.



USB Flash Drives
One of the least expensive drives we use these days are Flash USB drives.  They are also called Thumb Drives.  Flash is the type of memory they use, they are about the size of your thumb and they plug into USB ports on your computer.  So call them what you want but they are a super fast and easy place to store your important files.  They come in gigabyte sizes 1 GB, 2 GB, 4 GB and 8 GB for approximately $15, $25, $40 and $80 respectively.  A nice feature of USB drives is their portability.  Just stick it in your pocket or purse and your files go with you.  This can also satisfy a basic backup tenet, "Always keep a copy of your backup off-site in case of fire or theft."  USB drives have no moving parts so their is nothing to stop working. These drives rarely come with backup software so you will need to install and configure your own software (see below).

External Hard Drives
Another good option is an external hard drive.  Inside the enclosure is the same hard drive as inside your computer.  They also plug into your USB port.  They come in larger 3.5" size (that is the size of the hard drive inside) and smaller 2.5" drives for more portability.  The advantage of an external hard drive over a USB drive is the capacity.  The disadvantages are that they are less portable because of their size and they use the same hard drive as in your computer so they are vulnerable to the same hardware failure. These drives start at 60 GB and go up to 1 TB (1000 GB) for $80-$350, so if you are a photographer or videographer you will want one of these (or a NAS drive below). These drives often come with backup software which is a nice feature or you can install your own (see below).  The software that comes with these drives can be set to backup on a schedule or manually when you want.

 

 

 

NAS Drives
If you have more than one computer and a home network  they you will want a Network Additional Storage (NAS) drive.  It plugs into your home network router (if you don't have one they are easy to install) and then all the computers on the network can backup to it.  They come in sizes from 250-750 GB for $220-$450.  They come with backup software which performs "real time" backup software which means that as soon as you save a file it is copied to the NAS.  This drive has a USB port on the back of it so you could use an external USB drive to backup the NAS drive and then take the USB drive off-site.

 

 

Backup Software

If you buy an external hard drive or a NAS drive it should come with backup software (check this before purchase).  These software packages can be setup to automatically backup or you can manually run the software.

 

If you have a drive but no software I have been using the free Microsoft SyncToy to create "folder pairs" to be backed up.  You select a folder on your hard drive and a corresponding folder on your backup drive and then run SyncToy and it does the rest.  Click here to read more about and download SyncToy (I may have already installed it on your computer.)  Mac users can try ChronoSync for free and if they like it purchase it for $30.

 

I hope these tips have been helpful.  And remember that backing up only works when you use it and keep a copy off-site.  I hope you never have to need a backup but just know there are two kinds of computer users, those who have had a hard drive failure and those who will have a hard drive failure.  It is usually not a matter of if but when.