Backing up your PC
People often want advice on the best backup software. It’s not a simple answer; it depends a lot on the software you use and data you keep. But backing up is generally easy. But you don’t backup because backing up is good, you backup because one day you will want to restore. When that day comes, it needs to be simple, straightforward, and achievable.
Imagine this: earlier today you had a hard disk crash, you rushed to your local PC shop, bought a replacement and installed it. It’s now 3am, you’re on your 3rd double espresso (or poison of choice), Windows is installed and you want your data back:
· Where is your data – how many devices is it on?
· Is it locked away somewhere and inaccessible (friend’s house…)?
· Do you need backup software to restore it, is that to hand? Where’s the licence key?
· If the software is on the internet, have you got internet access right now, and do you need a password?
· Do you backup the operating system, and data separately, so do you have a recent copy of the OS to make an up to date restore (with all your applications).
· If your data is on DVD-R or CD-R, have you tried using a five year old disk? There’s a chance that you might not be able to read it.
· If you rotate external disks, do you make sure that stuff you delete is deleted from the backups you make
Archiving – generally I do not recommend archiving to offline copies. With the growth in disk sizes and backup media, it’s cheaper to keep everything than to spend ages working out what can be archived, and then making sure it’s copied enough times.
So your backup is only as good as the last PROVEN restore you have performed. I know of at least one backup software program, that confidently informed users that the backup was done, had done all the files, but in fact wrote nothing to the backup. Some people ran that for months before they found out, the hard way. If you’ve not tested a restore recently, then do it; NOW!
So in conclusion, some rules to consider:
· Keep everything – don’t bother archiving except to a subfolder on your computer.
· Backup frequently, if you backup OS and data separately, do backup the OS regularly.
· Test the restore process often
· Know where your backups are
· Ensure any long term backups are a) still accessible, and b) readable, c) meaningful.
Written in association with online backup.
