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Why Didn't I Backup!!!
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Why Don't People Backup Their Computers? Keep a Backup Offsite or Online |
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.
You're regularly backing up your photographs—right?
If not—you're not alone.
We're often fickle when it comes to backing up.
Why?
1) It's boring.
2) It's a task that has no reward 99.99% of the time.
Backing up is a task that pays off only if:
• The hard drive crashes.
• The computer is dropped, stolen, destroyed in a fire, or suffers another calamity.
• The computer comes back from repair without the data.
"That won't happen to me," we say to ourselves.
So, we forget to backup our photographs as often as we should.
Backups must be convenient.
Otherwise, you're less likely to do them
Therefore, use an external hard drive for backups.
You can backup with discs, but they're not convenient.
Skip ahead to External Hard Drives.
If you must use discs, read on.
Use the highest quality discs for backup.
Make two copies of each disc.
Check to make sure the files were properly copied, especially if you're going to delete the files from a memory card or hard drive.
Check the thumbnails, and open some of the files to make sure your photographs are there.
Store discs in a cool, dry, and dark location.
If possible, store discs in two locations, to protect from loss due to fire, burglary, or another calamity.
Go to CD & DVD Care.
Now, let's look at an easier way to backup.
The optimum backup method is to use an external hard drive with software that automates backups.
Why?
1) External hard drives hold many photographs and are reasonably priced.
2) External hard drives require no physical activity.
An external hard drive is always ready-to-go.
This encourages us to do backups.
3) You can use software with external hard drives to largely automate backups.
If we take ourselves out of the process, more backups will be done.
4) Hard drive technology is more stable than disc technology.
You may have photographs on CDs and DVDs.
Soon, you'll be using Blu-ray or HD-DVD discs.
That's four formats.
Eventually, a new computer that you buy won't have the hardware and software needed to retrieve photographs from all of these formats.
As disc technology changes, you have to migrate your photographs from obsolete discs to new discs.
When external hard drive technology changes, you can simply transfer the contents of your old external hard drive to the new one.
5) Discs are not forever.
Yes, hard drives crash.
Discs fail, too.
The discs that we burn use dyes that fade, unlike manufactured discs, on which the data is pressed into foil instead.
Eventually the dyes used in discs will deteriorate.
You have to periodically migrate photographs from old discs to new discs.
How often?
Nobody knows.
When you buy a new external hard drive, it's easy to transfer the contents of your old one to the new one.
What size external hard drive do you need?
First look for how much is on your internal hard drive.
Go to My Computer, and right click on your C: drive.
Click on Properties, and the Properties window will appear.
Note how many gigabytes (GB) have been used, and multiply by 5.
That's the size of the external hard drive that you need.
In the example below, 18 gigabytes have been used.
Rounded from 18 to 20, and multiplied by five, the size need is 100 GB.
The additional space allows for the storage of incremental backups.
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.
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.
Note how many gigabytes (GB) have been used, and multiply by 5.
That's the size of the external hard drive that you need.
The additional space allows for the storage of incremental backups.
Here are a few brands.
Maxtor Bought by Seagate
Reviews
External Hard Drives (01/06)
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.
iStorage Iomega
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, with the third done less often, so that problems can be identified.
If you have OS X 10.5, you can simply add an external hard drive.
You'll be prompted if you want to use the hard drive for Time Machine.
With Time Machine, your hard drive is mirrored every hour.
Go to Time Machine.
Backup software makes it easy to do backups.
The first time you do a backup, the software will have to copy everything.
This can take quite a while.
Thereafter, backups will be much faster.
The software will do incremental backups.
Only files that have been changed are copied, and files that you've deleted are removed from the backup.
If you leave your computer on all of the time, you can schedule backups to be done automatically.
There are two types of backup software.
Files-only backup programs make a copy of your files.
They backup your photograph files, word processing files, music files, database files, and so forth.
They don't back up the operating system (Windows or OS X).
They don't backup your programs.
Many external hard drives include backup software that copies your files.
A few backup programs mirror or clone everything on your hard drive.
They backup your files, the operating system, and all of your programs.
When your hard drive crashes, you can restore it 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.
Here are some backup programs.
SyncBackSE See their tutorial, The Backup Guide
Windows XP Home Edition Backup
EMC Retrospect for Windows Formerly Dantz
EMC Retrospect for Macintosh Formerly Dantz
Backing Up Your Mac (06/07)
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.