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Repair Central / Tutorials / Security / Backing Up Documents

Backing Up Documents

Overview

Backing up is a necessary evil for everyone who relies on their computer for work, research, or just keeping up with friends and family. Losing work files, website addresses, tax forms, or email address often results in having to recreate these resources - if this is even possible at all. Many loose years of work with no way to reproduce them.

{xtypo_rounded_right2}Article Links

Backing up Documents
Local Backups

Remote Backup

{/xtypo_rounded_right2}The problem is that computers fail. Period. Given enough time, the drives that store all the information in every computer will fail. These drives are whirling moving mechanical devices with motors and tiny fragile parts inside. The problem isn't that they are made to fail (well, at least most of them aren't), it is that the more complex something is, the more likely that one of its parts will fail.

There is hope! The old saying that there is strength in numbers applies to computers in a big way! If you have your priceless files, pictures, and other digital nic-nacs stored in at least two different places then your odds of recovering a "crash" has just went from 0 to at least 50%. Given that it is highly unlikely that two computers will have hard drive failures at exactly the same time, then your changes are much higher than 50%. If you have your data backed up in a different location, say a portable drive or an Internet based backup service, then your changes of recovery are very close to 100%! Why not 100%? Well, in the world of computer data, there is no 100%, meaning that no matter what, there will always be a chance of complete failure. Sorry, it's the digital truth!

Increasing your odds - on the cheap - or not...

When it comes to years of work, I suppose cheap is relative. However, I'm defining cheap relative to the backup options available. Depending on what you may already have available, backing up your data may be as cheap as 20¢ / 4GB (Giga bytes - more on that later) to hundreds of dollars per GB. Why? Convenience! Usually, the cheaper it is, the more you will have to be involved in getting it done. My wife's favorite expression here is "It costs you money or time!"

Local Backups
On the cheap end you can backup your documents "by hand" to some sort of removable media such as a DVD or external drive. The 20¢ version of this plan requires that your computer came with a DVD writer and software and all you would need to buy some DVDs to store the data on and can be bought as cheaply as 20¢ each.

Increasing in price but still fairly inexpensive these days is an external drive such as a thumb drive. Depending on how much stuff you need to backup, you can purchase a "thumb-drive" for a few tens of dollars with the current large capacities running in the $20-$40 range.

Next in line after thumb-drives are external hard drives. These are larger, higher capacity laptop hard drives stowed away in a flashy little box. With space comes expense - at around $100 to $150 per unit.

Links:

  • What do I need to backup? - This is a basic article on where your stuff is stored.
  • Copy and paste files - This article can be applied to both backing up and other areas where copying and pasting a file may be needed.
  • Windows backup - What is it and how to use it.
  • Guide to removable storage - This general guide outlines what defines "removable or external storage" and what the best uses of these types are.

Online or Remote Backups
There are also serveral online services that use special software to automatically backup documents on your compute. The prices for these automated will range and are determined by the amount of space you need for remote storage. This service is a wonderful tool in that it solves a lot of problems in one service such as:

  • Remote storage - your data is stored in a totally different area of the country usually in a different state than you.
  • Automated Backups - your backups are usually made at night or at a time when the computer is not likely to be interupted.
  • Low user learning curve - you don't have to know a lot about backing up software to use these services. However with the less expensive services you still need to know where your data is stored and include it in your list to be backed up.

The downside of these systems is that they can be more expensive than backing up on your own AND your data is now potentially available for others to access - although there are usually safegards against this.
Links:

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