oldgrendel.com:  OLDGRENDEL'S GUIDE TO BACKUPS

Western Digital
MyBook USB
External Drive
500gb to 1tb
Western Digital
Passport USB
External Drive
200gb to 500gb
great for laptops
Acronis True Image
Home Edition 2009
If backup technology had been this good years ago, I would still have hair!
Have you ever accidentally deleted a file, and removed it from the recycle bin?  Or worse, have you ever received a message that something may be wrong with your hard drive, or found out Windows would not load?  Well, join the club.  I have experienced all of the above, and "it ain't no laughing matter" (pardon the English).  I've even had a client who had a good backup system (hardware and software) but the backup was in his shop as it burned to the ground.
It is a hard lesson to drive into people's minds but the data on your computer is far more valuable than the actual computer itself.  You can buy a fairly decent computer for well under $1000.00 now days, but how much would it cost you to:
  1. Re-install Windows
  2. Re-install all of your software
  3. Re-configure your email and other personal settings
  4. Re-type all of your important documents and reenter all of that data in your accounting or bookkeeping software.
  5. break out the checkbook because this is going to cost you a ton of money!
Keeping copies of your valuable data on other media (such as floppy disks, CDs, flash media or flash USB drives) is certainly acceptable, but limited.  It can help when you lose important documents through deletion or corruption.  As a rule I try to keep several backups of my important (and not so important) documents.  This is also why most good money/accounting/bookkeeping programs have built-in functions to backup your data.  However, none of this is much good in the case of a catastrophic incident, such as drive failure, large scale data corruption, fatal virus attack, physical problems (fire or flood), or theft.  The only way to live without fear is to have a solid and reliable backup system.

So what makes up a reliable backup system?
  1. Good software that reliably backs up ALL of the contents of your drive.
  2. A reliable storage media for the backup
       a. USB Flash drives (although still greatly limited in size)
       b. USB or SATA based external hard drive
       c. High-speed tape (although these are often unreliable and do not last long)
  1. An effective backup strategy (which only works if you follow the plan)
  2. Off-site storage or somewhere to store the data that is fire proof, water proof and theft proof
Well, all of the goodies are available for just such an operation and the prices are far lower than you may expect.  No longer do you have to invest in a high-speed (sounds like Military Intelligence) tape drive which are costly and very unreliable.  Let's look at the components we need for a reliable backup operation:

Software, Software, Software
  1. Although Windows has a built-in backup program, it is virtually next to worthless since you need to have Windows running to use it … get the picture?
  2. A good "imaging" backup program that also creates it's own bootable media (CD) so you can start with nothing and restore everything.
       a. My product of choice is Acronis True Image Home Edition (see review in my Software Review page). 
       Great at $49.95.
       b. There are several other products out there in the $25-$100 range that may be more to your liking.
Hardware
  1. You can get great USB external drives which make excellent backup receptacles for low prices
       a. 200gb drives run around $60
       b. You can get the WD MyBook with 1000gb for under $200.00
       c. You can even make your own devices by buying the hard drive and external USB "kit" separately.
  1. In the best situation I highly recommend buying two (one plugged in while the other remains in a safe place)
Safety box
  1. Since you can remove these drives it is a good idea to have a place to keep them (off-site may be the best altenative)
  2. Fire safe boxes can run under $100.00 (but be sure they are also waterproof).
The total cost for such a project can run between $150.00 to $300.00, which is cheap compared to your non-backup alternatives.

So let me give you an idea as to my own practices:
  1. I backup my entire system several times per week
       a. I have an automated/scheduled backup every Friday night
       b. I backup my "changed" data every additional night
       c. I perform a full backup BEFORE I install software, just in case something goes wrong, or the program creates issues unforeseen
     2.  I use the alternate drive method.
       a. I do a weeks worth of backups to "drive A" while I keep "drive B" in a fire-proof box
       b. I then change the drives Friday BEFORE the new major backup runs.
     3.   I often backup my major documents directory to an 8gb USB flash drive that cost me a whopping $50 on-line.

There is probably a lot of missing stuff in this document, but I hope you get the picture.  If you have any questions feel free to write me or call.  This backup system is very easy to setup and takes little time if you know what you are doing. 

Safe and Happy Computing!!!