Summary: Backing up your computer's data is critical. What program should you use? There are many, but the best is which ever one you actually will use.
What backup program should I use?
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Doing backups is kind of like eating healthier; everyone agrees we should and yet very few of us actually do. Much like the heart attack victim who no longer visits McDonald's the most religious users of backup procedures are those who've been bitten hard by a failure in their past.
Asking what backup program to use is very much like asking "what's the best exercise program?" The best program for exercise or backup is whatever one you'll actually do.
So let me ask you this: do you know how you'd recover your data should everything on your computer suddenly disappear?
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In order to choose what's going to work best for you, there are several questions you need to ask yourself.
Do I want to put a lot of thought into this? If not - and most don't - then prepare to spend a little more money for some additional disk space and get one of the stock backup programs. I'm currently quite pleased with my external USB/Firewire Maxtor drive.
In addition to a drive, you'll need backup software. Many external drives will actually come with backup software of some sort so that's often a good place to start. If you elect to purchase backup software there are many good choices - I personally use and recommend Acronis True Image for most home users. Starting with Windows 7 the backup program included with the operating system is also worthy of consideration.
Am I comfortable re-installing my system if something goes wrong or do I want the backup to take care of that? This is one of those comfort versus space tradeoffs. If you're ok with re-installing your system - which means your operating system as well as applications and customizations and you can clearly identify what does and doesn't need to be saved - then you can save a lot of disk space by backing up only your data. This requires a great deal of diligence on your part because anything you don't specify that needs to be backed up will be lost in the case of a catastrophic failure.
Is there another machine nearby? Quite often you don't even have to go out of your way to get additional hardware for backup purposes. Hard disks are so large these days that quite often simply having another machine on your local network with sufficient free space can be a quick and easy solution. Many backup packages will allow you to backup across a network. Having two machines each back up to the other is a quick way to ensure that if either has a problem your data is safe on the other.
How valuable is what you're doing? As much as we hate to think of it we should: what if your building including your machines and all their backups were lost in a fire? If the potential data loss just sent a shiver down your spine then you should be considering off-site data storage for your backups. That could mean burning a CD or DVD periodically and leaving it at some other location or if the sizes are small enough or backing up across the network to some server not in your home.
Might on-line backup be an option? If the amount of data you're backing up is manageable, and your internet connection is relatively fast, then an on-line backup system such as Carbonite, Mozy, JungleDisk or others may well be worth considering. These systems install software on your machine that backs up your critical files to secure servers "somewhere" on the internet, thus getting you both data backup as well as off-site backup at the same time. In addition, some services then allow you to access your backed up files from any machine connected to the internet. For large backups, such as full image or system backups, this approach is typically impractical due to upload speed and storage size limitations.
How important is incremental access? By incremental access I mean; how important is it that you be able to recover a file from a specific day and not a day before or after? If you simply back up all your files on top of previous versions you'll only have the most recent version. In many many cases that's enough. In some cases it's not; one example might be needing to recover an older version of a file that became corrupt at some point.
What resources should I backup? Have you thought of all your computers? All the drives therein? How about external hard drives you're not using for backup? Do you have a web site? Do you have a backup of it? What would happen if your ISP "lost" it? (It's happened.) If you're a small business, do you have databases that need backing up? Office machines that belong to everyone but no one?
Let's use myself as an example for those questions:
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I've put a lot of thought into this. And I should; it's my profession to do so and my business relies on it. In my case, I use my own scripts written in Perl and a leveraging a tool I wrote many years ago called SyncFile, in addition to using Acronis True Image.
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I'm very comfortable re-installing everything so with the exception of only one machine - my primary desktop - I backup only my data. My desktop machine gets a monthly full backup and a daily incremental using Acronis.
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I have several machines on my LAN and in the middle of the night there's a flurry of activity as data gets copied from one machine to another and another, each using at least one other as a backup.
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What I do for my business is definitely valuable and worthy of off-site backup. Since I have servers at a data center half-way across the country, once a week I upload snapshots of my data as encrypted packages. In the past I've had computers at two different physical locations, and used two external drives: each location backed up to an external drive and roughly once a week the drives would be swapped.
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As I mentioned, I do have external servers and web sites as well. I've been careful to ensure that the servers, as well as the files that comprise the web sites, are all backed up in some appropriate way.
The bottom line for backup is simple: just do it. Understand what you have and what you're willing to invest in but do something.
Before it's too late.
(This is an update to an article originally published February, 2004.)
Related:
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How to Backup A series of articles and videos walking through the steps to backup - and restore - your computer.
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How do I backup my computer? Backing up your computer is an important step to avoiding data loss. We'll look at what it is, and give a suggestion for average users.
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Can't I just copy everything instead of using a backup program? It's tempting to just use file copy tools to backup what you think you need. But if you're not careful, you could easily miss something very important.
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Can I do my backups over the internet? Backing up to a service or server across the internet can be a useful part of a larger backup strategy, but the technique does have important limits.
Article C1894 - November 22, 2009
Haven't read all the comments, but has anyone talked about cloning their disk, ie, making a functional duplicate disk so that if the disk in your computer goes down, you put this one in and you are back in business as of the date you made the clone. Since we do daily data backups, this is a quick two-step to recover from any disk disaster. Of course if the computer disappears or the motherboard goes down that is another story. We use Casper and it is simple and effective.
Posted by: Bill Bruneau at November 25, 2009 1:08 AMWe also back up to the internet and burn a DVD now and then. All this is not that much work and I consider it minimal for proper backup.
I already have ATI Home for my Windows XP Home. However, I am now moving to Linux - specifically Ubuntu. Acronis (I believe) has a "server" version that supposedly runs on Linux. Can you help me in this regard for Ubuntu? Or, do you have any additional resources to check for back-up software for Ubuntu? Many thanks.
Posted by: Michael at November 25, 2009 3:41 AMHi Leo,
Posted by: James Marsh at November 30, 2009 9:49 PMI have a windows XP and regularly backup on a USB thumb drive which works just fine, no problems.
But recently I purchased a Seagate external hard drive for addithional backups. It had problems. It repeatedly caused my computer to freeze up.
My solution was simple...I formated the Seagate erasing all of their pre-programmed trinkets and now I can use it like any simple USB thumb drive. I backu two ways. #1. Using a briefcase. #2. I copy all my files to it according to date without a briefcase. That way if I lose one file I can go back to that date and bring it back into my main files.
I learnd the hard way a long time ago to back-up files.
Happy computing
I have Windows 7 on two systems, my new (main) PC and a Dell Latitude D610 laptop. I use the built in Windows backup, it's easier than any Windows backup that I've ever used. I have a WD external drive to backup the newer one on, I also use DVD's for that one. The older one, I backup using DVD's only. I only use it when I cant get to my main one (when outdoors or traveling). On my new HP, if the absolute worst happens, I was given the chance to make recovery discs, and I did. Also, there's a recovery partition on the hard drive, to access it, just push F11 at startup, and do a full recovery (for some reason, HP recommends this yearly). But whatever backup you use, by all means, USE IT! There are too many free ones available not to do so.
Posted by: Charles Tilley at December 27, 2009 9:02 PMEnjoy your site and appreciate your advises.
I am using Urgent Backup: http://www.urgentbackup.com/
It's portable and very lean application.
Posted by: Remo at January 16, 2010 9:35 AM