The Simple Guide to Backing up Your Data

I have recently seen not one, but two of my friends have major issues with their home PCs and as a consequence loose the entire contents of their hard drives.

As if this is not bad enough, neither of them had any kind of formal backups. Needless to say, not only were they rather stupid but they were also very, very upset. Photos of family holidays, the kids growing up and documents such as letters to the bank – all gone.

Just think about what is on your PC for a moment. Documents, music, photographs, maybe some video? Is it backed up? If your PC was lost in a fire, or stolen or just crashed could you get it back?

There are many different backup solutions out there. Everything from tapes, to memory sticks to online services. So what’s the best way to do it?

Many years ago I was told about the “Ted Rogers Backup Strategy” and it’s one that I’ve always used and it’s as simple as 3,2,1. Get the Ted Rogers link?

So it’s this simple…

• 3 – copies of your data
• 2 – different media
• 1 – copy off site

OK so how do you do that. Well, this is what I do…

Really simple. I keep 3 copies of my data. One copy on the PC (obviously), another on an external hard drive and a third on an online storage system. Doing this ensures that I follow Ted’s rules.

The online backup solutions runs automatically all the time, so I just don’t need to worry about it, although i do check it's working every now and again. There are a number of systems out there that do this kind of thing and I use Carbonite, but others like Mozy are just as good. They do cost, but at less than $5/month it’s less than a couple of beers and just good piece if mind. This also covers my offsite obligation, so I’m well on my way. Some to the systems keep copies of every version of every file, giving you even more flexibility.

Finally, I use a portable external hard drive to keep a final copy. I keep this fairly current, although I am a little lazy and tend to update this backup when I’ve put put some new photos on the system or such like.

And that’s it. There is no great science and you don’t need to be an IT Guru to do it. So please, please, please get that data of yours backed up. One day you might just wish you had…