Data Backup Software and Service

Why You Need a Backup?

The hard disk is the main storage medium in personal computers. Unfortunately, hard disks do sometimes fail, or in computer lingo, crash. When a hard disk crashes, all of your data is in jeopardy. Sometimes information can be retrieved after a crash, but it is usually an aggravating, time-consuming procedure that may end in despair.

To backup your files simply means copying files to a second medium as a precaution in case the first medium fails. The medium used to make the copy can be any of a number of different storage choices including floppy disks, hard disks, Zip disks, CDs, or tapes.

Backup Medium

The first thing that you must decide is what kind of medium to use to backup your data. While the good old floppy disk is adequate for copying a few files, floppies do not hold much data. Even if you backup individual files as you use them, it is good to occasionally backup all of your files. If you do a complete backup of your hard disk, you will be able to reconstruct the entire disk and/or restore any individual program or file.

A complete backup requires a medium that can handle a large amount of data. The tape drive is the tried-and-true backup medium, but it is slow and cumbersome to use. Recordable and/or rewritable CD-ROM drives, which have recently become affordable, are now one of the best backup mediums. Recordable CD-ROMs can only write a CD once. Rewritable CD-ROMs can write a CD, erase it, and rewrite on it again. Most writable CD-ROM devices come with software that helps you backup your data.

What to Backup

Your hard drive holds three things: the operating system, applications or programs, and data. The operating system is Windows or the Mac operating system. Although you may lose some settings that may have been customized, in general the operating system can be restored from the original CD that came with your computer. Your programs, again, minus some settings can also be restored from their original CDs. Your data includes all of the files and documents that you create, the e-mail that you send and receive, the favorites and/or bookmarks that you use in your browser, your Internet settings, and all of the photos, graphics, and other files stored on your computer.

Don't underestimate the importance of your data. I had a client who lost all the information in her family tree because she hadn't backed up the file. She didn't think that it was a very important file until she realized she had been working on her family history for three years. It will probably take her that long to reconstruct the information.

Obviously, there are many important things to backup. Unfortunately, Windows does not make this easy. Window 95/98 keeps all of your documents in a folder called My Documents, but your Internet settings, favorites, and other important data is scattered throughout the Windows directory. (Microsoft groups all of these files together in Windows 2000, but since Win 2000 is made for businesses, most home users cannot take advantage of this feature.) To make matters worse, many programs don't use the My Document folder, so even documents files that you create may be spread about your hard disk. If you can find all your documents and settings, you can back them up individually, but the easiest way to be sure that you copy them all is to do a complete backup of your hard disk.

Backing up your data makes good sense. It's like buying an insurance policy. You hope you will never need it, but when disaster strikes, that backup will be your most appreciated forethought.