One of my early jobs, soon after college, was at a backup company. I wrote scripts to help customers back up and manage data. I learned a lot about backups and restores while working there, and I'm glad I had the learning experience. After the job at the backup company, I worked at Sun for a spell. I analyzed system crashes, many of which were caused by bad hardware and corrupt file systems.
Technology has changed a lot since then, but the principles are the same.
It's a good idea to back up your data in case of hardware failure-and there's more to worry about than just a hard drive. The obvious piece of hardware to worry about is the hard drive. If the hard drive crashes, the data isn't going to come off of it. You might think that it's not likely your hard drive will crash. In my experience, it doesn't happen all that often. I've only had three crash in the last twenty years. However, hard drives aren't the only pieces of hardware that touch your data. The CPU, the bus, and your network also touch the data and can mess up your life. They can cause bad data to be written to your drive.
And there's one more problem your data could encounter. You. How often have you perfected a document only to accidentally delete it or change something and write over it?
So, what's a person to do? The standard wisdom is to back up your system regularly.
What does that mean, back up your system?
Backing up your system involves making copies of your files and programs so you can restore them if you encounter a disk problem or a corrupted file system.
Firstly, there are different levels of backups. A full backup is known as a Level 0 backup. A full backup makes a copy of every bit and byte on your computer. A Level 1 backup makes a backup copy of everything that has changed since you did the last Level 0 backup. A Level 2 backup makes a copy of everything that has changes since your last Level 1 backup, and so on.
You might ask, "why not just do Lev el 0 backups all the time?" The answer is simple. It takes a long time and uses up a lot of space. The solution, therefore, is to backup only the files that have changes since the last lower level backup.
With all those levels of backups, it sounds like a pain to find a file to restore, right? It can be. This leads to my first tidbit of backup wisdom-Make sure you know how to restore files, and make ease of file restoration a big factor in choosing your backup system.
How easy is it to restore files?
Okay, I know to look for ease of file restoration. How do I back up the system to begin with?
There are tons of ways to back up your system. Twenty years ago I bought a box of floppies and copied everything to my carefully labeled floppies. Fifteen years ago I had a ZIP drive, and I copied everything to it. Ten years ago I copied everything to CDs, and five years ago I copied everything to DVDs.
I don't copy my data to secondary stor age anymore. It's a lot of work.
Basic back up methods
Basically, there are two ways to physically back up your system: over a network or over a piece of hardware attached to your system. The ease of file restoration depends mostly on the software you use.
Read the comparison of Mozy, Carbonite, and SugarSync done by Consumer Reports for specific information about these programs.
Here's the most important piece of backup advice I can give you.
Choose a method. Do a full, Level 0 backup, and then practice restoring some files. Practice restoring the files right then and there-before you actually need to do a restore. Make sure that you understand how to do it and make sure that you're okay with the software you have chosen.
Gwen Nicodemus is a freelance engineer/writer and homeschooling mom. Visit her website, Notion Nexus, for book reviews, technical how-to articles and videos, and free ebooks.
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