One of my readers wrote me and said he has a huge hard drive and wanted to know if he could back up his data to an unused portion of his drive. The answer is, of course, no. The reason is that if your hard drive stops working (and they all will, sooner or later), he would loose both his original data and his backup. You must use a separate storage entity, such as a separate hard drive, a CD-RW, a DVD-RW, a ZIP drive, or a tape backup. Which one you use depends on how much data you have to backup.
As I suggested in the last blog, you need to move your all your data to a separate area...like a separate hard drive, or, if you have only one drive, a separate folder such as c:\data and the appropriate folder listings below that. Or under the My Documents section in Windows. Having all your data in one location makes backups so much easier.
Obviously, with all my data, I prefer to back up using a separate hard drive. I have seen external 250 Gb hard drives with a USB2 connection for as low as $125 (Make sure it is USB2 (or Firewire) as USB 1.1 is way too slow). Many of these backup drives include all the backup software you need. You also might want to look for the so-called “One Touch” external backup hard drives as they are made specifically for this purpose.
If you have all the hardware you need, but are looking for some good backup software, I can help you. One of the better software packages you can get is Cobian Backup. And, it is free. It is as complete a backup software program as those you pay a lot of money for. It is heartily recommended by me and the folks at the “Call for Help” TV program. The author of the program is apparently quite wealthy and does it for fun.
As I mentioned yesterday, another free program that I use to sync up the data for my two computers is Syncback from 2BrightSparks. You can use this program for either synchronization or backups. Please be aware that there is a paid version and a freeware version. I, of course, use the freeware version and it works just great for me.
Here is a short list of additional readings to help you formulate your own backup strategy:
- Personal Backup Strategies on the ExtremeTech web site
- Personal Backup Strategies on the Free-Backup.info web site
- Backup Strategies for the Road on the PC-World web site
- Windows Backup Strategies on the Geek-Girls web site
- PC Backup is a Must
- How to back up and recover Outlook Express data
- Easy Backup Strategies for your Data
- Essential Computer Backup Strategies
These articles should get you started in the right direction. I hope you will consider a personal backup strategy soon if you don’t have one already.
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