Photo by Mocodragon

Backup my hard drive?  How do I put it in reverse? - unknown

One of my coworkers had a near-meltdown last week when her computer wouldn’t recognize her thumbdrive.  The thumbdrive contained all of her important files, and was her only copy.  Now, I could have been a smartass and said, “What’s the problem?  Just use your backup”, but my coworker is a nice person who’s helped me in the past, and I was in a good mood.  We were eventually able to copy the files from the thumbdrive to a network drive, so the disaster was averted.

Learning the hard way

I was in a similar situation several years ago, but my files were not recoverable.  I did have some backups of the files that were lost, but they weren’t the latest versions, so I had to partially reinvent the wheel, so to speak.  The one thing that you can count on about electronic devices is that they will all eventually fail (Isn’t there a Murphy’s Law about this?).  I’ve talked about my penchant for being prepared in previous posts (here, here, and here), and I learned my lesson the hard way for not covering all the bases when it came to my computer files.

Redundancy is key

If backing up your electronic files can be considered Plan A, then Plan B is to always have a second backup copy.  Think of it as the belt-and-suspenders theory in practice.  I always carry two thumbdrives, and I even copy the contents of these portable drives to my computer’s hard drive.  On top of that, every week I make two backup copies of the files in the “My Documents” folder of my computer, so I’m pretty much covered in case both of my thumbdrives and my computer’s hard drive crash.  You can’t be too careful.

Tools of the redundant

My two thumbdrives are both PQI Intelligent Sticks:

They both hold 4 gigs of data, and I barely use a quarter of the available storage space.  There very tiny, about one inch long when closed, a half inch wide and 3/16 of an inch thick.  I barely notice them in my pocket.  These are my daily portable backups.  They are very reliable, but I take no chances.  The wear and tear from pocket carry compels me to replace them with newer versions each year.  Fool me once…

For my weekly backups, I use two Western Digital My Passport external hard drives:

These are powered by the USB connection on my computer, and don’t require a separate power supply.  This makes them a good option for laptops, too.  I have a both 60GB and 80GB versions, which are both a couple of years old.  I don’t replace these as often as the thumbdrives, since they don’t take the same daily beating.  When it is time to replace them, I won’t buy the latest version.  I’ll opt for something less than cutting edge, and save a few bucks.  The cheapest that I could find was $64.99 for a 250GB version.

Automating the backup

I don’t have an automated backup, but instead do it manually each week.  I’ll leave it to an expert to explain automation.  Gina Trapani of the website Lifehacker put together this excellent guide to automatically backing up your hard drive.

Other backup options

Of course, my setup is “old school”, and there are many alternatives if you would rather opt for online storage.  One is Carbonite, which is a set-it-and-forget-it offsite backup over the internet.  Carbonite finds your files, and copies them to their secure servers.  Other options include Amazon S3, Mozy, and Dropbox.  I can’t vouch for any of them, since I’ve never used online backup.  But the website Lifehacker also has a post which details the best online backup tools.  Check it out here.

Whatever option that you choose for data backup, make sure you have another backup somewhere.  Remember, belt AND suspenders.

For a humorous look at the subject, check out The Tao of Backup.

Share your disaster stories in the comments, so that we can all learn from them.  What option have you chosen for data backups?

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