Are you backed up???????

Well last time we talked about scams. Something that could cost you a lot of money if you are not careful. Today we will talk about something that if you are mindful could cost you a lot of data, backups. There are things in life that we know we need to do but often don't, or at least not as regularly as we should. Oil changes in the car, balancing our checkbooks, getting our taxes done. These are all things we procrastinate on. Another one is backing up our stuff on the computer. I am as guilty as the next guy, and I work in this all the time.

So anyway, the secret of making backups work is to make it easy. The way most people do backups is to get an external drive and copy data to it. This works, and is pretty easy to setup. But here is the thing. If you are going to do it this way then you should have two drives and then keep one at someone elses house or at work. Then swap them back and forth. You could also use a fireproof safe too. You see where this is going? You don't want to lose both your computer AND your backup in a fire. Also, you want to make sure that if one external drive fails you don't lose your backup. And you could lose an attached hard drive along with your computer if you get like a lightning strike while it is connected or something.

The biggest challenge here is most people don't want to buy two drives. Or when they get to the point that one is full then they start putting some stuff on one and some on the other instead of getting two bigger drives. Also, people will start to take stuff off the main computer thinking "well I have it on the backup drive" but might not get it on both. so now you are like looking for stuff not knowing what is where. So it works, but is a bit of a challenge. Also, if you are using a laptop, like a lot of people do now, you have the issue of needing to be at home to get to your files.

So is there a better solution? Yes there is. There are now two services that I know of that you can do backups on line. They both have a minimal cost monthly, but no limit on the amount you can back up. The initial backup takes a while to get through, but after that it just keeps updating the things you change. And if you are using a laptop you can get to your files no matter where you are at. So let's talk about each service a minute.

The first service is Mozy. I have a good friend that uses Mozy. He chose Mozy because it is the one that will work with both Windows and MacIntosh computers. A Mozyhome account is $5 a month, or if you sign up for a whole year at a time you get a month free. You can also get a free account that will backup 2 GB of data so you can give it a try. When my friend set it up he said it took about a week and a half for it to get everything the first time. He has like 50 GB of data that he backs up. He loves the service. It just runs in the background and he is always safe from data loss now.

The second service is Carbonite. Carbonite is $49 a year. So it is a bit cheaper than Mozy (annual subscription is $54 for Mozy). But you need to sign up for a full year. You cannot do a monthly thing. You can get a 15 day free trial of it though to try first. Also, Carbonite does not currently work with MacIntosh computers. They are working on a Mac version too that is suppose to be out sometime early in 2009. One big difference is that Carbonite does not do external hard drives. So if you use external drives for additional storage then you are not going to get that stuff backed up.

I will say that I like the website for Mozy better. It is better laid out and makes finding information easier. That does give me a little better feeling for the service. I am hoping to set my parents up with Mozy soon so that I won't get that call sometime in the future where they are like "hey our computer died, how do we get all the photos back of the grandkids?" I know it is coming. Everyone sooner or later loses a hard drive. It is one of those when not if things. Oh, and I am going to be setting myself and my wife up too.

OK, with all that said, here are some pointers on backups that are really important to know. First, you don't need to backup everything on your hard drive. You are going to reinstall Windows from scratch if you have a major meltdown of the computer. So that comes off a CD. Also, you need to reinstall all software from scratch. There are a lot of things that get written to the computer when you install something. To make sure everything is out there you must install. So all you really need is your data. In Windows this is typically in your "My Documents" folder. If you have multiple people that use the computer then there is a Documents and Settings folder that has all the peoples "My Documents" folders in. Make sure you use an account that has full rights to everything when you setup the backups. As long as you don't have a rogue program that puts things in a "data folder" below c:\program files\ then you should be OK (bad programmers... you ALWAYS should put data in "My Documents"). So look around sometimes to make sure you don't have any stray data somewhere.

Also, keep in mind that thumb drives will not be backed up at all. If you have data on the thumb drive then you will need to copy it to your hard drive for backup. You should have your thumb drive backed up anyway. They are way to easy to lose.