How do I back up my computer?
There are a number of ways for home users to back up their data so that in the event of a catastrophe, all photos, music, documents, etc can be retrieved. Personally, I am at a point where if I lost all my data, that would consist of over 100 gigabytes of media. Losing music is one thing, but losing 12,000 photos and videos hurts a little more.
All of the backup options I will discuss today will have their pros and cons, which I will try to mention, and this will be primarily geared towards the Windows community, since that’s the biggest computer base anyway. So, here we go.
Windows Backup (Windows XP)
Windows Backup is a relatively rudimentary method of backing up your data. In Windows XP, you get 4 options. Back up the whole computer, my documents & settings, everyone’s documents and settings, or choose what to back up. If you do any of the first 3, you simply select a location to back the data up to on your computer, either on an internal or external hard drive, and go to town. When it’s done, you’ll have a backup file – most likely called backup.bkf, and if you need to restore, you just open the Backup application and restore from it. Should you opt to back up the whole computer, it will ask you to create a bootup floppy disk so that you can boot to it and recover from there.
Pros – Built in application (free), simple to use
Cons – In general, you have to back up to your local machine, and if the whole thing goes up, you’ve lost all your data, network backup not an option for most users
Time Capsule
This is a WiFi router and NAS device all rolled into one and manufactured by Apple. The two current options offer 1 and 2 Terabyte drives, which is plenty of space for most. Because it’s also a router, the intial configuration may confuse some owners. With 802.11n speeds and distance, it’s a pretty good option for most normal sized households to use as either a backup device or central file server. I personally recommend using it as a backup so that there is always two copies of the data in the event a hard drive goes bad.
Pros – If your computer blows up, your data is all backed up on the network, the application keeps your backups incrementally every hour, so you’re almost always current
Cons – Expensive (299 and 499), difficult initial configuration for normal users, not fault tolerant, recent studies show lifespan of previous gen TCs to be approximately 18 months.
NAS
NAS stands for Network Attached Storage (not the rapper). In general, it’s a hard drive or RAID array of drives connected directly to a router on your network that can be accessed by any device on your network (or in some cases across the internet). Time Capsule is an example of a NAS device with very few configuration options. Most NAS devices allow you to configure RAID in a fault tolerant manner so that if one of the hard drives fails, the other drive(s) will continue to serve until the other one can be replaced.
Pros – High level of configurability, high level of fault tolerance, can be expanded as needed
Cons – RAID concepts are not familiar to most users, setup can be difficult
Online backup
There are a growing number of online companies that offer backup services. Carbonite, Mozy, Amazon S3, and others. They generally charge a fee for their service, be it monthly or yearly. In addition, there is sometimes a cap on the amount of data you can store online, unless you want to pay more. Then again, buying a hardware solution to keep at your house will run several hundred dollars, so it may be a few years before you break even on a home solution anyway. The way that it works is that you set up an account with the service you go with, install their application, and once your initial backup is complete, it keeps uploading changed files in real time. If you suffer a complete, or even partial, system loss, you get your computer back up and running, and restore from online.
Pros – If you lose everything you own, your data is still safe in “the cloud”, services are generally inexpensive in comparison to hardware costs of building your own backup
Cons – Initial backup will take what seems like FOREVER, if a restore is needed, it will also take a very very very long time for a full system restore, just because your data is in “the cloud” doesn’t mean it can’t get lost, you are not in control of your data.
There are other more specific backup options out there, but these are some of the most basic. Out of the 4, the online backup would appear to be the safest in the event you have an electrical storm that cooks all of your electronics or some other catastrophe. However, it’s the one you have the least control over. Personally, I intend to purchase a Time Capsule and back up our laptops and desktop to it. I am still exploring online backups and looking to be able to back up to my own domain in the simplest manner possible, but I am yet to find an elegant solution to that setup.
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