Do This Or Risk Losing Everything: Strategy For Backing Up Your Computer

By Author: Korey Bachelder
Total Articles: 1
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It doesn't matter if you are a lightweight, home computer user or the head of a large company. You need to safeguard that data on your computer(s) or, as the title says, risk losing everything. In the Information Age, of course, information is gold.

It could be family photos and correspondence, or marketing plans and accounting files, but if it has value and resides on your computer system - one PC, several or a whole company network - it needs to be backed up. Here is a solid introduction to backing up your computer that you can modify and customize to your particular needs.

Planning prevents poor performance
To clarify your plan, make it understandable to yourself and everyone else involved, and have a roadmap to follow now and in the future, you should develop a written backup plan. Whether it's a one-person home office or a corporate hierarchy, a written plan will keep things under control.

You need to answer a few preliminary questions:

1. Exactly what needs to be backed up, from what computer(s) or device(s)?
2. Where will it be backed up to?
3. How often will backups occur?
...
... 4. Who's in charge of performing backups?
5. Who determines the success of these backups?

Before starting, remember that there are many things on your drives that do not need backing up. You do not have to back up the applications for which you have the installation discs, for example, and the same goes for your core OS (Operating System), whether Macintosh, Windows or Linux.

Some home and business users who use a cloning backup method (discussed below) do, in fact, backup applications and the OS. The advantage to this is that any special additions to the OS - application plug-ins, dictionaries, etc. - are saved right where they are. That is, they would not have to be restored from CDs or other installation files.

First things first
In business, of course, databases and accounting files are the most critical data assets. Since they should be backed up both before and after any sort of significant alteration or use, most companies are backing up these files every day. Databases should probably be backed up after any substantial data-entry session.

Both Mac OS X and the latest Windows OS's create, by default, Documents folders, which are often the major (but not the only) location for important work. These should be backed up daily, as well as e-mails that are mission critical.

In addition to accessible on-site backups, businesses in particular should store a copy of its backups off-site. This will protect your critical data in the event of a fire, flood, theft or other such occurrence. You should consider storing backups in a safety-deposit box or a secure storage location, using the 2x2x2 rule - two sets of backups stored by two different people or companies at two separate locations. If disaster does strike, this will not sound like a paranoid idea at all.

Don't forget that there is data on your laptops and handheld devices that also contain valuable information. In your backup plan, you should specify how and when laptops and PDAs should be backed up, and whether those backups should be integrated into a particular computer's backup schedule or just backed up independently.

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