Image this. You’ve just come home from work. After a nice evening meal, you head to your trusty computer to pay bills and update your finances. Oh, the trusty computer. You’ve been using it to watch your bank accounts and credit cards. You’ve even used it to handle your taxes for the past five years. You sit down in your comfy computer chair and hit the power button. However, instead of a soft hum as the machine powers to life, you hear a very shill and blood curdling grinding noise. There’s a slight smell of smoke and burnt plastic. That’s your hard drive and it’s now toast.

What do you do at this point? What’s your plan of action? When was the last time you made a copy of all your important details? If you can’t answer any of these questions, you have a choice. You could stop reading right now under the presumption that this crisis will never happen to you. Your other option is to write these questions down and start searching for the answers. In this article, I’ll touch the basic concepts you’ll need in order to have a disaster recovery plan.

One Man’s Junk is Another Man’s Data

What are we referring to when we talk about important data? Important data is anything on your computer you can’t lose. I’m not talking about the video clip of someone riding a fire hose or the exploding whale. When I think of important data, pictures come to mind. My wife and I have about 3 gigabyte of pictures that we would not be able to replace. My wife has a collection of bookmarks. I keep track of all my passwords and important information on the computer. Anything in the My Documents folder is gold. (… because I only keep the important information in the My Documents folder) On top of that, if I were to lose all my Outlook information (even with Gmail you should keep a backup), I’d lose track of all my correspondents. The loss of any of these items would be devastating. These are important data.

More Than One Way to Skin a Cat

There’s more than one way to lose your data. I hope that my introduction wasn’t too scary (but scary enough to keep your reading.) However, this is just one way. Another thread comes from viruses which can infect your computer and destroy your data. Yes, Anti-virus software does protect your computer, but it isn’t infallible. All operating systems are able to be compromised. Kids have been know to “accidentally” delete important family data. (In truth, I plead guilty to this last one. Sorry Mom.) Another less common way to lose data is through a natural disaster, such as a fire or flood.

It all comes down to keeping your data safe. Thinking ahead can save you time, aggravation and a heap of money.

What is a Backup

What is a backup? Stand up and walk backwards. Just kidding.

In essence, a backup consists of making a copy of important data in a way that it can, if needed, be restored at a later time. Let’s think of it this way. Let’s say my grandfather took a picture of his vintage Ford Model T. Over time, the car falls into disrepair. Many, many, many years later I open the garage and find it with a coat of dust and a little worse for wear. Being the car enthusiast I am, I decide to repair the car to its pristine state. Luckily, my grandfather still has the photographs taken when the car was in its prime. If my grandfather had enough foresight to take pictures of every aspect of the car, I would be able to restore it to its original condition.

Well, that’s what we’re doing with a backup. We’re taking pictures of your hard drive so later on down the road, we can bring that data back.

What to Use to Backup Your Data

I’m going to be using the word “media” a lot throughout the rest of this article. Please let me define this word for you. Media refers to the object you’re storing the data on, not the device that does all the work. So, a CD is a piece of media but not the CD-Writer. When backing up your data, you’re storing it on a piece of media. In general, media can be referred to as optical or magnetic.

Optical media includes CDs and DVDs. CDs can store 700 megabytes of data whereas DVDs can store 4,700 megabytes of data. The most common and inexpensive CD/DVDs can only be written to once. There are CDs and DVDs which can be written to multiple times. These are generally more expensive. I prefer using the single write media. Optical media will retain its data for a period of 5 to 7 years. Magnets and magnetic fields will not damage optical media.Magnetic media includes external hard drives and tape cartridges. (Technically hard drives aren’t media. However, we’re referring to an external hard drive specifically used for backing up data. We’ll let it slide this one time.) Tapes and external hard drives can store up to 800 gigabytes each. External hard drives are the new craze. It’s just a box with a hard drive in it which you connect to your computer via USB or Firewire. While the amount of space is tremendous, there are more moving parts in a hard drive than in a DVD (none) or a tape cartridge. In the long run, the tape cartridges are less expensive.

I would like to take a moment to talk about Online Data Storage. Companies around the globe offer to backup your data through by way of the Internet. The plus side is that this is easy to use and your backups are harder to lose. However, on the flip side, you need to check the reliability of the company you’re trusting your data with. In addition, backing up your computer via the Internet is more time consuming. Depending on your needs, most people should consider using single write CDs or DVDs. They’re very inexpensive and if you’re backing up correctly, you shouldn’t need to keep a CD or DVD for a long period of time. If you’re using anything more than 5 DVDs per backup, start pricing tape drive solution.

How to Backup Data

There are hundreds or programs that will help you backup your data. In most cases, when you buy and external hard drive, DVD writer or tape drive, it will come with backup software bundled with the hardware. Make sure the program meets your needs before you use it.

When I look at backup software, I make sure it has a way to backup my data securely. If someone were to get a hold of the DVD with my backup, I don’t want them to be viewing sensitive information, such as bank statements. Make sure that the program will require a password if that piece of media is accessed.

Next I verify that it will save my preferences for backing up data. It would be tedious for me to select each directory I need saved each and every time I wanted to backup my data. If my preferences can be saved as a profile, then anytime I want to backup my data, I select the appropriate profile. This is especially good if you have a home based business. You can keep the backup of business data separate from personal data.

Last of all, I look a program that’s easy to use and intuitive. I want to be able to backup and restore data without needing to dig through manuals. A good software program should be easy to navigate. You should be able to accomplish the basic backup task in 5 clicks or less.

Full Backup versus Partial Backup

When planning your backup strategy, you’ll need to decide if you wish to perform a partial or full backup of your hard drive. When you perform a full backup, the entire hard drive is being backed up. You’re not only backing up your data, but all your programs and your operating system. To me, the operating system and programs are the dead weight. They take up a lot of room on the backup compared to the data I really want saved. This is why I prefer a partial backup. I select the My Documents directory and a few other choice areas. Anything else can be reinstalled. This drops the amount of data I backup from 250 gigabytes to 15 gigabytes. That’s 2 or 3 DVDs instead of 55 DVDs (300 CDs).

Frequency of Backups

Back up your data often. But how often is often? If your a average home user, I recommend backing up your drive every month. If you’re a medium sized business, weekly backups will be sufficient. If you’re even bigger than that, government regulated, or just plain paranoid, daily backups are the way to go.

There’s no right answer. Just think about how often you use your computer. If you were to loose one week of data, is that bad? What about two weeks? Find the point where you say “I can’t lose that much work” and go from there.

Rotation of Media

Another key point is that you should be rotating your backups. I recommend that you keep the last three backups on hand. For example, let’s say I’ve been backing up my drive for the past three months. I’m now doing my fourth backup. Of these four backups, I’m going to destroy the oldest backup. This will leave me with three backups again.

A tape drive is different since the media is reusable. In that case, I would have three tapes. When it comes time to backup my data, I use the oldest tape.

By rotating the media, I have a greater buffer. If I accidentally delete a file, but don’t realize it until 2 months later, I can go back those two months to retrieve the file. It’s not lost forever because it was destroyed or written over.

Complete Annihilation of Old Backups

I cannot stress this enough. When its time to throw away a piece of media used to backup your data, destroy it completely. If you’re throwing away a CD/DVD, it should be safely reduced to shards. I can’t stress safety enough here since those shards are sharp. When shattering media, the shards can become flying razors.

Tapes and Hard Drives should be decommissioned by a software or hardware solution. If the media is still usable (you can still read from and write to it), use software that erases the data completely. This is done by writing over the drive various times until the overwritten data is not recoverable. If the media is broken (the drive is defective or the tape is broken), some companies offer a service where the media will be placed in a special appliance that runs super magnets over it multiple times which completely erases the data.

The key thing here is that we don’t want any information to be recovered by someone who is picking through your garbage. Even if the data was password protected or encrypted, there’s no guarantee that someone can’t get into it. Identity theft is a lucrative market and passwords are becoming less of a deterrent.

Off Site

Backing up your data isn’t enough. You need to keep your backups safe. It may seem like a good idea to keep your backups on a shelf in a computer room. However, if your house is flooded or burns to the ground, your efforts are in vain. All that hard work is down the tube.

The solution? Keep your backups someplace secure but not in the same place as where your computer is kept. At work, I have my own locker. No one can access it except for me. So, when I perform a backup, I take that backup to work. I put it in my locker and forget about it. If I need to recover data, I know where it is. (The building where I work can better withstand an earthquake or fire than my home.)

Note: If you’re thinking of keeping your media in the house fireproof safe, think again. Most media aren’t trustworthy if you get above 150 degrees Fahrenheit. Paper burns at 452 Fahrenheit. Verify your fireproof safe will keep the interior cool enough for your media in case of extreme heat.

Conclusion

Now, if you haven’t been backing up your data and your hard drive does byte the dust, there are companies that can recover a fair amount of your data. However, the recovery process does not guarantee all your data will be recovered. The process is also very expensive. (Hundreds to even thousands of dollars.) By performing the preventative measure of backing up your data, you will save yourself time and money if the unthinkable happens.