IMPORTANCE OF BACKUPS

WARNING
These past two weeks I have had 8 service calls where the client's PC or laptop would not start-up properly. Some would simply not recognize the hard drive (the place where the operating system, the programs and your data is stored) and some would simply freeze with a blue screen with white text aka "The Blue screen of Death".
Until recently, I have been very successful in either repairing these "corrupted"
disks or, in the worse case, I have been able to retrieve the clients data before the drive gave up the ghost completely.
However, recently I have had 3 incidents where the hard drive was NOT recoverable and the client's pictures, music, financial data and documents were lost forever.
While I sympathize with these users I have to say that in today's environment of cheap storage there is NO excuse for not backing up your important files. If you are a recipient of my newsletter and are not backing up your computer data, no matter how insignificant you may feel it is, let this be a wake up call for you to act, and act now. I will state that "any PC that is more than 4 years old is at a high risk of it's hard drive failing". That is not to say that if you just bought a brand new PC or Mac that you are safe. The reason that manufacturers give a 90 day warranty is that the first 90 days of any electronic product is the period when it may experience what is termed "early life failure". That is the period during which, if a new product is going to fail, because of a manufacturing defect or weak component, it will most likely fail. Get past the first 90 days and you will be safe, at least from this effect. From 90 days to say 4 or 5 years, you are not totally out of the woods either, a local lightning strike, a can of Coke poured into the keyboard by your three year old or a malicious virus can wipe out your photographic, musical and written memories in an instant.
So, if I have not convinced you of the importance of backups by now you obviously don't drink milk and if you do you don't cry when you spill it, if you get my gist.
If on the other hand I have convinced you to install a backup system, what should you do?

Local and Remote Options
First of all there are two major types of backup. The first is a "local" back up, in other words a device that somehow attaches to your computer and receives a copy of all the important data on it. This device is either next to your computer or at least in the same house as your computer so, in the event of any type of computer or hard drive failure you would have a backup. However, as I tell all my clients, in the event that you have a fire, the last thing you would do is to grab the computer or it's back up device as you are running out the door. Which brings us to the other type of backup device, the "remote" backup. This type of backup, which until recently was only available and affordable to corporate users, is now very affordable and easy to install for the individual. This is a backup system that relies on your Internet connection and backs up important files that you specify while the computer is not being used for anything else. Choosing the remote backup pretty much negates the need for a local back up in many cases.
Personally, I like the idea that I can locally recover an accidentally deleted file without downloading a complete back up from my remote back up vendor, so I maintain both. For most people that choose the remote backup option, it is enough and the small cost per month will be about equal to the cost of a local backup device and software amortized over say a couple of years.


Local Backup Options
So what are your options for each type? Well there are many and it can be confusing.
Let's first look at local backups. On the latest Apple iMacs or MacBooks running Leopard or Mac OS Version 10.5 you simply plug in a network attached or local USB drive and the Apple "Time Machine" will prompt you into backup heaven. For the rest of us we fall into one of two categories, a single PC user or a household with multiple PC's and laptops on a wired or wireless network. For the single PC house a simple USB attached external hard drive with equally simple "set it and forget it" software is the best solution. I cannot stress enough, you must have an automated backup software solution otherwise you WILL forget to manually backup on a regular basis and then you might as well just attach a brick to your PC. Any external hard drive will do the trick although I am partial to Seagate as a manufacturer. The software I use all the time is "Second copy" by Centered Systems. This award winning backup software is simple, reliable and costs just $30. If you really want simple, there is a PC product called "Click Free Easy Backup". It is an external hard drive with automatically loading backup software. You simply plug it in and it does the rest and for $180 for 180 Gigabytes it is the easiest way to achieve peace of mind. ( I have this in stock if you want to purchase it). If you have more than one PC or Mac and you are networked, in other words your computers all share the same Internet connection through a Router, then you might consider a shared standalone backup device that attaches to your wired or wireless network known as a "Network Attached Storage" or NAS for short. These devices are simple computers in their own right but are managed through a simple interface program that you run from one of your existing computers. They come in various flavors and configurations and require a little understanding of networks to set up properly. The Apple "Time Capsule"
is an all singing all dancing unit that also replaces your existing router. It comes in two sizes, 500 Gigabytes and 1000 Gigabytes or 1 Terabyte, priced at $300 and $400 respectively. Modern (Leopard) Mac's automatically back up to the Time capsule using the built-in "Time Machine" software. To back up automatically from your PC's you would need to add additional software like "second Copy". LinkSys, Netgear and ZyXEL are just some of the manufacturers of NAS units. Most of these units do come without the storage hard drives which you have to add. Although this does require a little more understanding, it does give you more flexibility as well as the ability to simply swap a drive if it goes bad. Most units support fully redundant (RAID) drive systems. This means if a drive goes bad there is a second "Mirror" running avoiding any lost data or downtime.

Remote Backup Options
Remote backups are becoming more and more affordable and hence more popular. They are all subscription based and their cost is based on how much you want to backup.
In fact if you back up requirements are 2 Gigabytes (a Gigabyte is 1024 million bytes, about 500 digital photographs or 300 iTune songs) or less then the two companies I am about to mention currently offer FREE backups up to a total of 2 Gigabytes.
To activate you simply download their software, install and configure, simply a matter of deciding what you want to back up, how frequently to do it and at what time of day. Mozy, www.mozy.com, is an EMC company which has been around for decades and offers unlimited back up from a single PC for just $4.95 a month. For those who want to spend less and have less to back up, Dell Data Safe, www.dell.com/datasafe provides a prorated service starting at just $30 per year for up to 10 Gigabytes of back up. Both these companies encrypt your data before sending your information over the Internet to protect your privacy.
Finally, and although not strictly designed as a backup system there is a free service run by Microsoft called FolderShare, www.foldershare.com. As the name suggests you can share folders with other computers that have Internet access. For example, if you have a home PC and a remote Office PC that you are able to configure (i.e. your own business), you can create a FolderShare account and synchronize data folders between them. This not only ensures your most recent work is always available to you, but automatically gives you a remote backup.

Finally,
I hope I have convinced you that backing up your computer is not only essential but very inexpensive. Digital photographs of your children or those special vacations and events can never be reproduced. Music documents and financial data are just going to cost you time aggravation and money. Act now and if you need help deciding or implementing the best solution for you please feel free to call me call me for a consult.
Until then Ctrl-Alt-Del,

Steve Holder
Fix My PC 2, llc