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Your Hard Drive Will Fail

Anecdotally, this writer's experience is that your hard drive will fail.

In a class of about twelve students, there's almost always at least one who has had a recent hard drive failure.

Scientifically, a study by Google of 100,000 hard drives, showed:

• The rate of failure is higher for the first few months.

This was expected.

The following was a surprise.

• The failure rate for hard drives in service for only two years was eight percent annually.

8% doesn't seem to be a high failure rate, but it's one out of every twelve hard drives.

Similar results were obtained by another study.

So, you're hard drive will fail.

Read on, if you're not yet backing up your computer.

Backup at Your Desk or Online

You can backup:

• At your desk using an external hard drive or flash drive.

• Online.

Some photographers do both.

Backup at Your Desk

External Hard Drive

You can use an external hard drive for backups.

They usually come with backup software.

Flash Drive

The capacity of flash drives has increased to make them useful for backups, such as Lexar's Echo series.

Also, adapters can turn any flash drive into a backup drive, such as the Clickfree Transformer SE.

How Big?

What size external hard drive do you need?

This question is less important now that external hard drives are so large for so little money.

You can look for how much is on your internal hard drive.

Then, add some GB's to the result, as you'll probably need the space.

Windows

Do the following.

1) Press the Windows key (flag icon) + e.

2) Right click on your C: drive.

3) Click on Properties.

Note how many gigabytes (GB) have been used.

Mac

Do the following.

1) Open a Finder window for your hard disk by clicking the hard disk icon in a Finder window, or clicking the hard disk icon on your desktop.

2) Select Get Info from the File menu (Command + i).

The amount of hard drive space used appears in the Info Window for your hard drive.

Which One?

Here are a few brands.

Reviews

Backup Software

Two Types

There are two types of backup software, files-only backups and mirror backups

Files Only Backup Programs

Files-only backup programs make a copy of your files.

The files include your photograph files, word processing files, music files, database files, and so forth.

The files-only backup programs don't back up the operating system or your programs.

Many external hard drives include backup software that backups your files.

Windows - Files Only

SyncBackSE See their tutorial, The Backup Guide

Windows XP Home Edition Backup

Mac - Files Only

CrashPlan

LaCie SilverKeeper

Mirror Backup Programs

A few backup programs mirror everything on your hard drive.

Besides backing up your files, these programs backup your computer's operating system and all of your programs.

When your hard drive crashes, you can be up-and-running quickly.

You won't have to reinstall the operating system and all of your programs.

Reinstallation of the programs is especially onerous if many of your programs were downloaded.

Windows - Mirror Backups

Mac - Mirror Backups

Déjà Vu

EMC

IBackup

Prosoft Data Backup 3

SuperDuper!

Synk

Keep a Backup Offsite

If there's a fire, burglary, or another calamity, the external hard drive sitting next to your computer may be gone or useless.

You may want to use two external hard drives, with one kept offsite.

Or, use a single external hard drive and online storage such as those listed below.

Third Backup

You may want to backup three times.

If you backup your computer hard drive, to an external hard drive, a virus could also go along for the ride.

Your backup could be corrupted, leaving you with nothing.

Therefore, consider doing three backups.

The third backup is done less often, so that problems can be identified before you access the third backup to restore your hard drive.

Online Backups

Companies

Backjack Mac only

Backblaze

Backup.com

Carbonite Windows & Mac

CrashPlan

ElephantDrive

iStorage Iomega

Mediamax

MiMedia Mails you an external hard drive for your files, which you send back

Mozy Windows & Mac

Nero Windows only

PhotoShelter

SugarSync

Time Machine Apple

Windows Live SkyDrive

Article

Storing Your Files Inside the Cloud Eric A. Taub (3/11)

Test

You may want to test whether the backup is in order.

Try to recover a file.

Save it to your Desktop.

Recovery

If you don't do backups, write down the phone numbers of the recovery services, such as these examples.

You'll need their phone numbers, because you won't be able to access their websites from your computer.