Ask a Geeky Girl: Backing Up Your Computer(s)

Last week, we talked about what to do if your hard drive dies and you don’t have a recent backup. Today, we’re going to get proactive. How do you protect your data so little things like your hard drive doing the clickity click click of death don’t ruin your day?

As a starting off point, let’s look at Amanda’s follow-up question from last week:

Something else that has been keeping me up at night (not really; I’m actually super good at sleeping) – what is a good backup plan for a two-computer household? We have a desktop and a laptop here – when it was just me and my one desktop I used to back up to a small external hard drive. Now I’m not sure what’s next. Some kind of networked hard drive or server? How do they work? What features would I look for? How about online backup? How does that work – do you pay them every month for storage or something? Is it a good value? What are the advantages? HELP I cannot make decisions. If it is helpful we have about 22 gigs of music (and growing) plus a middling amount of photos and other smaller files. Both our machines run Windows. I may add a netbook or similar device to our collection at some point.

Amanda’s setup is fairly typical, so we’ll use it as a baseline.

First of all, let’s talk about why you want to back your data up. There are a few reasons, the most important one being that you don’t want to lose things like “all of your music” or “the report that’s due tomorrow” or “baby photos.” You need to protect yourself against a few different potential situations: hardware problems (your hard drive dying), software problems (your data getting corrupted), theft/loss (your laptop getting stolen), catastrophic failure (your house burning down).

When it comes to backing your data up, the more places you have it the better. Backing everything up to an external hard drive isn’t going to help you much if it’s kept in the same bag as your stolen laptop. Storing your backups somewhere that’s not your house is key. It might sound crazy, but you have to think about what would happen if everything burned down. There’s a reason that IT people are so big on off-site backups. Just as importantly, a backup is only as good as how recently you’ve taken it. The best backups are automated so you don’t have to remember to run them.

You have a few options when it comes to backing your data up: You can burn CDs/DVDs. You can save stuff to a second computer or external hard drive. You can use an online backup service.If you want to get fancy, you can use a tape drive. But, if you’re getting your IT advice from some random blog on the internet, you’re probably not going to want to drop some serious change on using tape.

For data that isn’t going to change (the bulk of your music collection, old baby photos), you can probably burn some DVDs, ask your parents and/or a trusted friend if you can store a shoebox of discs in a closet at their house and call it a day. Just remember that this method only works if you actually burn the discs. If you’re inspired today, burn everything now. You’ll at least have something if disaster strikes. Burning discs can be a pain if you have to burn lots of them to get your data. I would suggest buying software like Nero (for PC) or Toast (for Mac). If you set yourself a reminder and are faithful about burning new data every week, this actually might work for you.

For those of us who aren’t that organized (IE. 99.99999% of all humans), you’re going to want a backup plan that you don’t have to think about.

One option is to get an external hard drive and some backup software (many external drives come with backup software these days). Plug the drive in, set your software to backup specific folders and call it a day. You can even get a drive system with a network card in it that you can set multiple computers to backup to. Kristian and I have a Drobo that we keep all of our photos on. We love it. Just make sure you get a DroboShare if you want to put it on your home network.

Of course, an external hard drive isn’t going to help you much if someone steals everything from your house. If you’re extremely risk averse (and I know I am), your best option is an online backup service.

The two big players in online backup are Mozy and Carbonite. Another option is Dropbox. Mozy and Carbonite will backup specific folders and/or files on your computer to their servers. Dropbox will put one folder on your computer that it backs up onto its server and lets you access from anywhere.

One thing to remember about online backup services: your data isn’t going to just sit out on the public internet. Most people tend to feel a little paranoid about having everything stored on someone else’s servers. But, your data is encrypted and these companies take security very seriously. It’s not a 100% risk free proposition (nothing in this life is, really), but I tend to think that the benefits vastly outweigh the teeny, tiny risks.

If you only have a few important files (word documents, not pictures, music or videos), you can probably get away with using a free version of one of these services. Mozy and Dropbox will give you 2GB of storage for free. This will only work for a few (small!) critical files. But, hey, free! I have a (free!) dropbox account and I store all of the documents related to our wedding in it. Not only does that mean I won’t lose our Save the Date artwork, it also means that I can work on it at home and during my lunch break at work.

(To that end, you can always email yourself any important document that you’re working on. That way, a copy of it will get saved on your email provider’s servers).

Most of us have more than 2GB worth of important files. Which means that we’ll need to be prepared to pay to have them backed up online. Dropbox gives you a set amount of storage (50GB or 100GB) and Mozy and Carbonite will give you unlimited storage. You’ll have to pay between $5 and $10 a month, but I think that’s a small price to pay for peace of mind.

So, which service do you choose? Dropbox is a little more expensive and you don’t get as much space, but it’s the best option if you have music that you’re sharing between more than one computer (Mozy and Carbonite will only back up one computer). It’s also a little more user-friendly and the backups don’t take as long. I have a Mozy account and the initial backup (over 80GB of photos, mind you), took over a month! Things get a little faster after the initial backup is done (it only needs to back up any new data), but it’s definitely not speedy.

In Amanda’s case, I’m going to recommend a shared Dropbox account. With only 22GB of music, they can probably get away with the 50GB account. That is, assuming that their photos aren’t ginormous. Store all of your music in your Dropbox folder and you’ll never have to worry about it. Bonus points for having access to it from work and while on vacation.

For those of us with too much music and too many photos, I would recommend Mozy. Just be prepared for that first backup to take forever! And then some.

If you’re thinking about using Dropbox, drop me a line by email or leave a comment. I can give you a referral code that will give both of us some extra space in our free accounts. Dropbox isn’t paying me to say this (I wish!) but the referral code wheelie dealie is something that they offer to get people to recommend their services (I would have recommended them anyways).

No matter what your backup plan is, make sure that it’s actually, you know, backing shit up. Open up your discs to make sure that your data is on them. Periodically check your external hard drive to make sure that everything is on there. Check your online backup service to see what’s on there. Backups are no good if they’re empty. When in doubt, check file and folder sizes. If you have 22GB of music on your computer, you should have 22GB of music in your backup.

In summary:

• Backups are only as good as when you take them. Whatever your plan is, make it automatic.
• Your backups will be no good if you lose them at the same time as you lose your original data. Keep them somewhere else if you can.
• Be prepared to pay for online backups, but rest assured your data is safely stored somewhere else and you never have to think about it.
• Periodically test to make sure that you’re backing everything up properly.
• Whatever you decide to do, put it up against these four scenarios: “What happens if my computer dies completely? What happens if my hard drive gets zapped with a magnet? What happens if someone steals my laptop? What happens if my house burns down?” If your (hypothetical) data is still there after all four situations, you probably have a decent backup plan.

If you take my suggestions, you’ll save yourself a lot of heartache. And you’ll make the day of whoever has to fix your (hopefully hypothetical) dead computer when you say, “It’s Ok if the hard drive is toast, I have a recent backup.”