Why don't people back up?

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I bought a second hard drive identical (80GB) to my primary HD. Initially did a clone using the mfr's (Western Digital) free program, and now keep both drives active as Drives C and D, using Windows XP Pro. About a year ago I lucked into legitimate, free copies of Paragon Drive Copy (version 8) and Acronis True Image (version 7). I now use Paragon to clone Drive C to Drive D every two weeks. I keep Acronis in "reserve" if anything ever goes wrong with Paragon. I've had to use the cloned Drive D (in boot capacity) at least four times over the past year to recover Drive C, following the procedure(s) in this Web site: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb%3Ben-us%3B307545
and in this Web site: http://www.informationweek.com/news/windows/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=189400897
I know I should have an external hard drive rather than an internal one to protect from natural disasters, but at least I'm protected from losing everything on Drive C as long as Drive D is available and up to date.

One question: why isn't there one source for all information on backups, with easily understandable, step-by-step procedures for every eventuality? I think it's a lack of an authoritative, "one-stop shopping" source that makes people give up on thinking about backups (or disk cloning, or whatever).

Frank D

I think Mat has a good suggestion in suggesting bundling backup devices, but to get people to pay more, they'd need to scare 'em - and what they are trying to do is tempt 'em. They want to sell easy, carefree, pretty, and safe. Backup reminds them they might have to do additional *work* that is no fun, hence takes the edge off their pitch. Maybe repackaging backup as something exciting itself...

I think it's also important to have a backup offsite - most IT people know this (whether or not they practice it). I think most end users aren't aware of this but unfortunately, if they were, they might be less likely to do backups in the first place. But I've worked recoveries many times where a home or business office was burglarized, and the perps took the backup because it was sitting on the computer. Or consider fires or floods - they tend to take everything that's sitting in the same place too. A local school's library burned down and, while they did do backups, it was a CD sitting in the desk drawer under the computer. After the fire, it was just a re-hardened blob of melted plastic. There's a picture of the laptop in question here: http://datarecoveryworldwide.com/images/laptop_3.jpg Makes the idea of off-site backups a little more desirable.

I use Acronis version 10, which I know is not the latest. I verify each backup after creating it.

On at least two occasions when I have tried to access a backup, Acronis has claimed the file is not in .tib format--though it has that extension and was previously verified by Acronis.

I keep several generations of backups on USB drives, so this situation was not a total disaster. But it is disconcerting to find that a supposedly valid backup is not usable, and such an experience might cause someone to give up on doing backups.

Any file--not just an Acronis backup--might become inaccessible for one reason or another. So I think it is essential to keep more than one generation, or perhaps more than one copy, of a backup.

As far as I can see, the reason people don't back up is that it's virtually impossible on a normal PC to do so. They don't come standard with anything that can store enough data to do a decent backup, the software isn't there by default to do it, and it's very hard for a standard user to know what to back up and what not to. Things like their PST for their email are hidden away in an obscure directory, so even if they did have the time to feed dozens of CDs into the PC and then store them carefully afterwards, they probably would miss important data.

tried acronis!!! it dont work!!! so complicated couldnt figure out how to do it!!!

Well, I'm pleased to hear that Acronis does, in fact, have a "bare metal" restore ability. I may just look into it further.

As to Ben's comment about 119-page manuals, I'd have to agree that that would be a bit intimidating/overwhelming for most people. Perhaps a solution to that might be to have backup solution providers include a small "getting started" pamphlet, which would take them through the installation and setting up pre-defined "full backup" and "weekly backup" scripts, and then running the "full backup" once.

I think another obstacle is that many people think that we "techies" can perform miracles, because we sometimes manage to do just that. Why bother with the "hassle" of making backups if help is just a phone call away if ("when"?) the system crashes?

Case in point, from about 8 years ago...

My wife's cousin's system crashed. He had all of his business data on it, and of course not a single backup. We managed to recover it. We got him a tape backup for Christmas. (He said he'd install it, despite our offer to do so for him.) Several months later, his system crashed again. He never even installed the drive, and had no backups. We pulled a second miracle and recovered the system again, and this time we installed the tape drive. We even made a backup for him. Well, some six months later, you guessed it, this aging system died again. This time, however, he did have a backup -- the one we made some six months earlier, which was still in the drive. Once again, we perform a miracle and recover his system. Fortunately, he got a new system shortly thereafter, though I don't know if he ever made backups.

Recently I felt that bacup is very essential because there is some problem in my machine that's why i can't open my machine but at the same time i need my programme and the data base for my immidiate purposes.And i can't do anything because i have no other options.
But it is still true that before it happen i have no realisation about the backup facilities.If I have then i obviously do that.That's why i appreciate Leo for published this type of article by which we are aware about back up and its advantages.
So lack of knowledge is one of the many criteria for the people not to store back up data.

So I had a nice, current Acronis 10 HDD image 'safely' stored on an external USB drive. Then my XP Pro system wouldn't boot up *but* I was then unable to access my DVD drive. Therefore the image was useless.
A miracle was performed whereby my one year old HDD, which was replete with bad sectors, was replaced and the OS restored via Recovery Disks. For this experience, $245 and I parted company.

i find, that the easyiest way to backup is by using a OTB soloution inbuilt into a external usb HDD enclosure, welland make a cheap one for about AUS $35.( case only) all you do is set the program up, plug in the dirve and press the OTB button on the back, it will then automaticly copy or sync everything you want from your computer to the HDD. then you unplug it, put it in the cupboard for another week, its easy as that. and because its a standard 3.5 case, you can change the HDD or even pull the HDD out and put it in the machine itself for faster copying.

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