Originally posted March 2006 – updated “Storage Sizes” November 2016.
I’ve had far too many service calls where a customer’s hard drive has failed and their data is unrecoverable. People have lost financial data, important documents and irreplaceable family photos. A hard drive can be compared to a car’s engine – it spins at approx. 7200 rpm for thousands of hours over its lifespan. Eventually – 5 years on average – the hard drive fails. Now is the time to start a backup routine so that when – not ‘if’ – disaster strikes, you or a Computer Techs technician will be able transfer your backed up data to a new hard drive.
The purpose of a backup is to have a second copy of your important data. For example if you’ve backed up your data to a CD and your hard drive fails, your data can be copied back to a new hard drive from the backup on your CD. If your CD got lost, stolen or damaged you would be able to create another CD from the data on your hard drive. To put it another way, you want your important data in at least 2 different places.
Backup Media – What should you backup to?
Good: If you’re familiar with writing/burning CD’s or DVD’s then that may be the quickest way for you to start a backup routine. To backup to CD or DVD you can use CD/DVD burning software that comes with the drive, or use the CD Writing Wizard that comes with Windows.
Better: USB flash drives and external hard drives have become increasingly affordable for backing up larger amounts of data more quickly and easily than CDs and DVDs. USB Flash Drives and external hard drives are more durable than CDs and DVD’s and will likely last longer. Backing up to external USB devices is as easy as copying and pasting files or folders from your hard drive to the USB device, or letting a synchronization or backup program do the backing up for you automatically.
Best: In the past few years online backup and synchronization services have become popular because they allow a copy of your data to reside securely off-site and away from the threat of theft, fire, flood and natural disasters that could cause you to lose any backup stored in your home. Online backup methods also include programs that automate the backup process so that without human intervention required, data is backed up instantaneously or on a daily schedule once any data has been added or changed.
Below is a comparison chart for the most common media that you can backup your data to. A digital photo takes up about 1 Megabyte of space.
|
Backup Media |
Storage Size (in Megabytes) |
Approx. Cost |
|
|
|
|
|
CD |
650 MB |
Under $1 |
|
DVD – DVD-DL |
4500 MB – 9000 MB |
Under $1 |
|
USB Flash Drive |
2,000,000 – 256,000,000 MB |
$5 – $100 |
|
External USB Hard Drive |
500,000 MB – 4,000,000 MB |
$60 – $200 |
|
Online |
2,000 MB – 1,000,000 MB+ |
Free – under $10/month |
What files and folders you should backup…
Depending on the size of your backup media, and how much data you’ve added to your computer (and would have to restore) help determine what you should backup.
• Backup just your data – At a minimum you should backup “My Documents”, “My Pictures” and financial program data. Depending on your Internet Service Provider and how you use its service, you may need to backup your contacts and e-mail addresses, email, and/or internet browser favorites/bookmarks since some Internet Service Providers do not store that information on their servers.
By default Windows puts all of the data you create in a folder with your username located in or C:\Users (current versions of Windows). You can use a CD/DVD burning program to make a copy of that folder or select sub-folders. Or if you use an external USB device you can manually copy that folder to it, or use a synchronization or backup program that will do it for you automatically.
If you backup just your data, in the event of a hard drive failure, your operating systems and all your programs would have to be re-installed and configured just the way you like them, potentially taking weeks to get everything back to exactly the way things were before a hard drive failure.
• Backup your entire computer – (This is what I do). “Windows Backup” comes with Windows 7, or you can use a program such as Norton Ghost or StorageCraft ShadowProtect with all currently supported versions of Windows. It makes a bit-for-bit image/copy of my main hard drive to an external USB hard drive on a daily schedule. If my computer’s hard drive fails or if my computer gets corrupted by a virus or software problem, I can restore my entire computer’s image from a previous backup. This backup method allows me to be working on my computer with all the programs and files restored just as they were on the date and time of the last backup, in less than one hour after replacing the failed hard drive.
• Online data backup – (I also do this). Even though I have my data and programs backed up to an external hard drive, what if my computer was stolen or destroyed by fire, lightning or earthquake? That’s why I use Carbonite, an online automatic backup service that keeps a copy of my personal files, pictures, music collection, etc. stored in a secure data centers across the nation.
If this seems a bit complicated, Computer Techs can setup a backup routine for your data in less than an hour. Call us today before disaster strikes.