What is Backing up?
Backing up is essentially making a copy of your data (be that email, photos etc) so if anything happens to the original for any reason, you can restore the data from the copy with minimal or no loss. There are various “levels” of backup giving various degrees of protection depending on the possible bad event that may occur and how easily to get back to where you were with hopefully no permanent loss of data and information.
What to back up
I personally when backing up people work when rebuilding the machine recommend you back the following areas :-
XP Machine
- My Documents (this covers My Music / My Photo’s)
- Desktop
- Favourites
- Email (see Below)
Vista / Windows 7
- Just Backup the Users Folder on C drive.
- Email (see Below)
Email will for most people be the most frequent increase/change in new data and I’d recommend backing up in some form at least daily. How this is done will largely depend on the email client you use but please rememember the following links refer to emails on your machine and email stored on google mail, hotmail etc…
Outlook – Search for your PST Files and back.
Outlook Express – Best thing is find out where your email are stored and backup that location.
- Start Outlook Express.
- Click Tools, and then click Options.
- On the Maintenance tab, click Store Folder.
Methods of Backup
Optical Discs
The workhorse of backups. These are ideal for backing up pretty much everything except for entire hard disc imaging.
You will need some good “burning” software to minimise errors and make it easier for you to copy and back up data. I personal think anything below Windows 7 I would use a CD Burning software called Nero, but if you are on windows 7 then use the in built software.
Type of Disc’s
The acronyms after the disc types are R=Recordable/wRitable (you can record/write to them once only), RW=ReWritable (you can write many times)
1. CD (Compact Disc), typically about 700 MiB (Mebibytes,“Megabytes”). These will tend to be cheaper and can be written to quite fast (DVD Writers are compatible with them) so if it’ll fit on then you may as well use them.
2. DVD (Digital Versatile Disc), typically about 4.37 GiB (Gibibytes, 4.7 “Gigabytes”) or 7.95 GiB (8.5 “Gigabytes”) if it’s dual layer. The “standard” disc to go for and almost all PCs bought today will have a DVD Writer. There are a few different formats though, “+”, “-“ and “RAM”. RAM pretty much works just as a RW but isn’t that common nowadays, especially in computers so don’t worry too much. “+” and “-“ are the more common and most drives are compatible with both and not much to choose between them in advantages.
3. HD-DVD/Blu Ray, typically 28 GiB (30 GB) for HD DVD and 23.3/46.5 GiB (25/50 GB for single/dual layer). You’re starting to get to the capacity of possibly imaging your entire hard drive to optical disc but the writers for this third generation optical disc are quite expensive (and lucky you if you have one). As far as I’m aware although there are hybrid players that play movies of both types there aren’t any writers that’ll record onto both types at the moment. So any writer you get will not be compatible with the other format. It should be noted Toshiba have withdrawn the HD DVD format, this does have one advantage of making the hardware for that format cheaper but ultimately it will be more and more difficult to obtain the media and hardware for it.
Keep Off Site somewhere.. Just in case of fire.
External Hard Drive
This is easily the best for imaging your entire hard disc, they usually come with a USB/Firewire connection and just “plug in and play”. What size you get depends on your budget but you’ll want to get one at least as large as your internal hard drive(s). Some may come with their own imaging software to make backup easier for you. Using an external hard disc is extremely convenient in both backup and recovery.
If you really don’t like the provided tool you could always use Microsoft free software Sync Toy (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=c26efa36-98e0-4ee9-a7c5-98d0592d8c52&displaylang=en )
Keep Off Site somewhere.. Just in case of fire.
Network Attached Storage (NAS)
These are essentially external hard drives for your entire local network and are usually attacked to your router. Useful for backing up everyone’s computer in the house (assuming enough storage) but also useful for sharing documents, media etc from a central area that aren’t just backups without having to have the right PCs and laptops switched on.
Keep Off Site somewhere.. Just in case of fire.
Online/Offsite
I personal recommend anyone go for the live drive software from http://www.livedrive.com/ you get unlimited backups for very little money per year.
