WHY YOU SHOULD BACKUP YOUR COMPUTER

SO - DO YOU?

As 99% of my business is residential service calls, and at least 90% of those calls involve computer cleanup and/or virus removal, I usually bring up the backup situation during the course of my recommendations on how they can make things better. But first, a look back at the history of backups!

Back in the "Olden Days" you had limited choices:

• Backup via floppy disk, and/or
• Print a hard copy of every spreadsheet, document, etc. So if it came down to it, someone would have to manually re-create each file.

Then came:

• Backup via CD
• And Backup via tape drive

Technology improved shortly and added:

• Backup via DVD, so instead of 600mb per disc, you now had 4.7GB

And finally, after USB was introduced [and became reliable]:

• Backup via USB sticks [you had a whopping choice of 256MB at first, then - 2,4, or 8GB, and now we can get 16 - 512GB size sticks]
• And later, external USB hard drives

It wasn't until the external USB hard drives came around where you could feel relatively safe about the stuff you were backing up, and even then it was advised to have at least two of them and alternate between them should one fail.

Today, with the exception of floppy disks, all of the backup methods listed above are still viable, and now we also have a variety of "Cloud" backup choices to choose from.

 

Many times customers balk at buying an external hard drive to do their backups, usually the first thing I hear is "I don't have much on that computer anyway". So I tell them some real-life "DATA-GONE" situations where those customers felt the same way until.... The hard drive crashed. Their pleas to recover certain data are almost always in the same order:

1. Photo's
2. Music
3. Documents, etc.

Photo images are always number one because in the age of digital photography, unless you keep the images on the camera's memory card and replace it every time it's full there aren't any negatives to recover lost images [not to mention those that were scanned into your computer of a deceased friend or family member and the hours/days you took in restoring that old photo in Photoshop Elements or a similar product].

Music is another oft forgotten issue. While most people use iTunes, and many purchase their music from the iTunes store, quite a few of us [ed. - I'm included my wife and I] spent countless hours converting our Cd's [which numbered in the hundreds] to .MP3 files, and then imported them into iTunes. Neither of us would want to go through that again [not to mention music a lot of our older Cd's are so worn they couldn't be read by the CD drive].

So after going over these issues my clients [usually I only have to get through the photo stories], they agree that something should be done. In many cases they already have an external drive that is supposed to be backing up data, and after a quick look at the contents I often see:

• It did an original backup but hadn't done any since then, and...
• The drive is 4 or 5 years old, meaning it could crash at anytime as well. Industry standards say 3 years is an average life span of a hard drive. That's not to say it won't die at 2 years, or last until 4 or 5 years, but you're rolling the dice and betting all of your data that it won't happen. When asked, most people will say that their external drive is only a year or two old, but when checked they're shocked to find out it really is closer to 5 years!

So what is/are the best solution(s)?

Should you get one of the new breed of virus that encrypt your data, it's not the end of the world when the technician says "We're going to have to format your hard drive"

1. Having an external drive is a good first step in the right direction. Setup your backups, then after a week or so check to make sure you set the backup correctly and you can see more than just the first backup [also verify the data being backed up is what your really want]. Then buy a 2nd external hard drive and alternate the two. But don't stop there -
2. I recommend that you go directly to Carbonite.com, pick a plan that fits your needs, buy it/install it/and start backing up your photo's and music online. A personal [non-business] plan for 1 computer will cost you $59.95 a...YEAR. That's right, talk about P.O.M.G. [Peace Of Mind Guaranteed]

• Your data is encrypted, and considering the highest concerns are Photos and Music, it's not like you'd be worried about having your taxes up there - right?
• You can access your files from any PC as long as you have the correct login/password information.
• You don't have to remember to do anything once it's set up and you've verified you set it up correctly. Carbonite scans your hard driver 3 or 4 times a day looking for new, or modified data then shoots it up to your spot on their cloud.
• Should you get one of the new breed of virus that encrypt your data, it's not the end of the world when the technician says "We're going to have to format your hard drive". Or, if the drive in the computer dies, your biggest worry is finding your software Cd's to re-install programs [ed. - that will be the subject of another blog post].
• The Money you will save. Typically when a drive fails on an older computer, or, if you've replaced the older computer with a new one, you'll place a call to have your data transferred to the new computer. Depending on how much stuff you had on the old drive/computer the data transfer could take awhile and you're being charged by the hour. 
• It's much easier to setup your new computer, login to your Carbonite account, download the program and just press the "Restore files" button. It will take anywhere from 11 hours to several days to get this done, but your won't be paying per hour to do it, and you can still use the PC while it's restoring your files.

I've written about this subject before [perhaps not in such detail], and I'll repeat what I've been doing for the last 4 years: I backup to a USB hard drive and I subscribe to Carbonite. I feel much more secure, and hopefully it would never happen, but if I came home to find it burned to the ground I wouldn't have lost my PC and my ONLY backup of my files - I'd know that they were safe, online, waiting to be restored when the time came to do it...

'Nuff Said,
Brian