List of items to backup
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The first decision you face in implementing a backup strategy is deciding where to back up your data to. You have a number of options, all with strengths and weaknesses. Let's look at them:
* Floppy Disks - This is the least desirable option for two reasons. First, floppy disks do not hold very much. Second, they fail fairly often, and seem to do so just when you need them most. I tell people that they should never store anything important on a floppy disk. Floppy disks are for moving files, not storing files.
* Zip Drive - This is an excellent choice as long as you are careful about picking which things to back up. You cannot do a complete backup of your entire hard drive this way, but I will argue later that for most of us we do not need to a complete backup of our hard drive anyway. Zip drives are just one of several brands of large-capacity drives which hold 100-200 MB of data on a single disk. So if you have one of the other brands that will work out just fine as well.
* CD Recordable - A blank CD will hold 650MB of data, and the disks themselves are cheap, as low as $1 a piece in quantity. If your hard drive is not too large, you could use several of these to a do a complete backup as well. If you want to look at this option, experts suggest that you stick to SCSI drives only unless you like making coasters. The drive itself will probably cost around $250-300 for a decent one, plus a SCSI controller card if you don't already have one, which can cost $50-100 more.
* Magnetic Tape - If you are going to do a complete backup of your entire hard drive, this is the usual way to go. There are people who need to do this. Usually, they are System Administrators backing up the hard drives of Network Servers. Most home users do not really need to do this. If you already have a tape drive, by all means use it for backups. But if you don't already have one, you might be better off buying a Zip drive or the equivalent.
* Web site - Yes, there are now places online that will give you free storage space, often in amounts as large as 250 MB. This is great if you don't have any other option for storing your critical files. But news reports say half of all Dot.Coms will go out of business next year. What if one of them takes all of your backups with them when they go? I have never been able to convince myself that storing my backups online is really a good idea. There are companies that do this for a fee that are quite reliable, but they cost a lot and are aimed at corporate clients.
* Network Drive - These days, more and more people have two or more computers in the home, and they are starting to network those computers. This is a great opportunity for a backup solution as well. If you have a server on your network, you can back up to the server. If your network is peer-to-peer, computers can backup to each other!
* Second hard drive - If your computer has a second hard drive, backing up to that second drive can at least protect you against data loss due to hard drive failure. That is better than no backup at all.
* Different directory - This does not give you much protection, but it does protect you against file corruption in the original files, including some types of virus infections. It is the most minimal protection, but better than nothing. -
Instead of backing up everything, I advocate backing up only those things that are irreplaceable, and that usually means data and personal files. Other things can usually be replaced if worst comes to worst. Lets take each component in order:
1. Operating System - If your hard drive fails, you will need to buy a new one and start over. Step one is installing the Operating System. You will need two things to do this, the installation media (usually a CD-ROM), and some type of Registration Code. Microsoft uses a Certificate of Authenticity, usually a greenish document with a hologram, frequently on the cover of a booklet. Make sure you know where the CD is, and where the Certificate of Authenticity is.
2. Shrink-wrapped software - Again, this will come with a CD-ROM (usually), and probably some kind of registration code. Make sure you know where they are when it comes time to reinstall.
3. Downloadable software - Chances are you have a lot of stuff you downloaded. If you cannot bear to live without it, go to the Web site, and print out the Home page, and store the print out. If you need to reinstall, this will tell you where to go.
4. Shareware - A lot of this is downloadable stuff as well, but in this case you paid good money to register it. Print out the registration code, along with the Web home page (if applicable) and store it.
5. Documents - I am a college professor, and I create documents all the time in my job that I know I will refer to later, copy, reuse, etc. So my Documents directory is full of things that cannot be replaced. These need to be backed up. To make it easy, I have one directory that I use for all documents. In the directory I create subdirectories as needed to organize my stuff, but every document is somewhere in this one directory. This makes it a snap to do a backup.
6. Address book - Whatever e-mail client you use, you have undoubtedly created an address book. That is something you would want to back up as well. Find out which file(s) hold your addresses.
7. Bookmarks/Favorites - You have saved the addresses of all of these Web sites, so back it up. Netscape saves them as a single file, IE uses a directory full of individual links to each site.
8. E-mail files - All those messages you saved that say "ILOVEYOU" are priceless. Back them up.
9. Other - You may have something else that can not be replaced easily. In my case, I have a database of 120 witty and intelligent quotes that get randomly inserted into the signature of my e-mail messages. It took me some time to accumulate these, so I back it up. -
i do my backup on my ext hdd....
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hmm you missed out Ghost....
create an image of your hdd in a secondary harddisk and you dun need to bother which file to backup or not hehe
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List of what you must backup:
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LOGINS, ALL passwords, FTP access codes, banking details, etc. Where do you currently keep this info? Please don't tell me it's in a little book on your desk ... oh so easy to get lost, to get put in someone else's pocket, to go walk-about. You should have a password-protected spreadsheet or document, or even better - a password-protected database. I have a database which I open as soon as I create a new login, or add myself to a mailing list, or join a new news group etc - paste the info in *as* you create it, to ensure you'll *never* forget it. Sure, you sometimes get confirmation emails with this data ... but if your computer has *died* ... get the picture? You can't access the emails!
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CLIENT documents / projects / websites (if you're a developer), in fact ANYTHING which could cause grief if you lost it or didn't have a copy of it. If you've printed a lot of this stuff, what would you need if you had a *fire* and lost all your paper files? Think about that. Hard. Now make a list and maybe have a backup CD for each Client or group of clients, depending on your business.
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EMAIL software folder which should include ALL your emails. You do *keep* all emails don't you? Please tell me you're not one of those people who deletes emails as soon as you read them (business ones I mean). Have you ever considered that emails are a form of *database*? I can search my Eudora software for any word or phrase and in a nanosecond I have a list of emails relating to that item (all neatly filed in their email folders ... but that's *another* article!). I *love* Eudora's features! Getting back to business, emails with historical information on projects are invaluable to see who said what and when they said it. It's a timeline, tracking resource, for a project's life.
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PHOTOS, personal, professional - unless you're using them all the time, these can be kept on CDs on a regular basis. When you download from the digital camera, save to cd straight away and save space on your hard drive [note to "self" : follow own suggestion]. If you have photos related to a project or client, save them to the Client cd you created earlier, if there's space.
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SONGS. Music of your life.
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FINANCIALS. All your spreadsheets, MYOB or whatever other software you use to track financials. Every document which the tax department might one day want to see ... for the past 7 years. Business plans, budgets, everything relating to your business which you'll need to continue to *be* in business.
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FAXES - do you use online faxing like I do? Where every incoming fax comes into my inbox as an email? From now on, whenever one arrives, put it into a folder called FAXES or save with your client data. Faxes are also a record of what's transpired - another form of database. Plus if you use this kind of fax service, you're saving trees.
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INSURANCE. Keep quotes etc on your computer.
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DATABASES - all of them. A must. Trust me, you'll kick yourself if you need one of these you didn't bother backing up.
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COMPUTER DESKTOP. OK - what's still sitting on your desktop which hasn't be put away or filed yet? Probably a bunch of stuff - clear this up before you backup, make your job that little bit easier.
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EXCEPTION to the SOFTWARE RULE above - if you've bought any software online, or downloaded any software or programs of any kind for which you did not receive a CD, then back it up. If you've still got the Installer file, save that - it'll save time.
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BROWSER Settings - go through your browser Preferences screens, take snapshots (like print screen) of those settings - it'll save you a TON of time if you have to set up your email and ISP settings at a later date.
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PDFs : have you downloaded any PDFs or purchased any ebook? Are they all in the same download folder, or in a PDF or eBook folder? You'll want to save these.
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SAVED GAMES. some games you want to play again,include screenshots of your favourite moment. -
me back up my precious mp3s, pix, ebooks, installers and some other misc documents....
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i have 3 external drives and 2 internal ones, and i still dun have enough space to do backups.
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u need thisOriginally posted by Ito_^:i have 3 external drives and 2 internal ones, and i still dun have enough space to do backups. -
a 1TB hard disk is hardcore...
but it will get more and more TB in the near future...