Back up that hard drive, Part 2 June 22, 2007
Posted by Beth in : How-to, Tips , trackback,
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These are statements I’ve heard on the job that I never want any of you to have to utter:
“I thought I was backing up regularly, but when my computer crashed and we tried to upload the backup files, nothing was there!!”
“Yeah, I back up. How often? Every 6 months or so.”
“I sent my computer to [insert computer company name] for a keyboard fix and they had to replace my motherboard and OMG WHERE ARE MY FILES???”
“Back up? What does that mean, back up?”
You shouldn’t be thinking about backing up for the first time when your computer crashes. By then, it may be too late. Get in the habit of regularly backing up while your computer is still in good health, and you’ll be glad you did if it ever fails.
What is this “back up” you speak of?
Simply put, backing up means making a copy of your files in a second physical location. So making a copy of My Documents and putting it on your C:\ drive is worthless, since they’re both stored on the same hard drive. (Sounds obvious, but I’ve seen it.) You can back up to an external hard drive, a USB drive, CDs or DVDs (depending on your computer’s capabilities), or if your company provides it, network storage space (since that is on a server stored in a different physical location). You can even set up Google to allow for file storage.
How often should I back up?
As one of my co-workers says, “How old can your file be before you start crying about work you’ve lost?” So for photos or music, maybe you only back up when you add a bunch of new files to the collection. But for documents you update and change daily, maybe you should be making copies of those daily. For me, a happy medium is to back up every Monday morning. It’s one of my “starting the work week” rituals. Put it on your online calendar or task list with a reminder so that you don’t forget! If it’s your dissertation or some file equally compelling, you might want to get in the habit of saving twice every time you make changes - first to your computer, and then to your backup device.
What should I back up?
Again, what would you cry about if you lost? For me, this is pretty much everything in my My Documents folder. I don’t save files to my C:\ drive directly, but if I did, I’d want to back up those files as well. Also, think about certain programs that may save your files to weird locations. For instance, if you have offline personal folders or archives (.pst) in Outlook, the default storage location is C:\Documents and Settings\[User name]\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook\. Not only is that a crazy storage location, but several of those are hidden folders! But if you care about your old email, you’ll want to make sure you make a copy of those files. My Internet Favorites list is stored in My Documents, as is my Desktop. If yours are stored elsewhere, figure out where and add these to your backup list.
What you don’t need to back up are program files or system files on the computer. Some people mistakenly think that if they back up the program’s .exe file, they can then load it back and things will work fine. They won’t - you have to actually run the installation files again for these to work (or do a much more comprehensive system backup).
How do I actually back up?
For Windows XP users, I would NOT recommend the built-in backup utility. Remember that first sentence at the top, “I thought I was backing up regularly…”? That user was using the backup utility to make a compressed file of her important files. The problem is, the Windows XP backup utility is hard to use and it doesn’t tell you when you’ve done something wrong. So often you think you’re backing up when actually you’re doing jack squat. I hear the backup utility in Windows Vista is better, but I haven’t had a chance to play with that yet.
You can do a straight copy and paste from your local hard drive to your backup device. However, if you have a lot of data to transfer, this can take a long time. I prefer to use a sync program such as Microsoft’s free powertoy Sync Toy, which works for Windows XP (with .Net 2.0) and Vista. You need to do an initial setup (takes about 30 minutes if you’re being picky about what gets backed up) and run it once to do the first full copy. Then for all future backups, just plug in your backup device and run the program. Since it’s only syncing changes, it doesn’t take nearly as long as a full copy.
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