Backing up your Data
Computers can fail for various reasons. The electronics or the hard disk can simply break! Computers can be dropped or mishandled. Laptops in particular are vulnarable to being dropped or stolen. Valuable data may be accidently deleted.
The very last thing that you want to do is to drop a laptop with six months of your work on it, perhaps the first ten chapters of your book!, and then discover that the only backup copies were on the laptop!!
If you are on a network then you could copy your data to another computer on your network. Otherwise you may need a seperate backup device.
A really simple solution is to buy a number of memory sticks and just copy your data to one of the these devices. Then you put that memory stick away somewhere secure and don't use it again unless you want to get data off it. Also do this at other appropriate times, such as when the work is completed, Christmas, or whenever you feel it appropriate to do. The memory sticks must be in a secure place.
There is no point in backing up successive versions of your data onto the same memory stick!! If that memory stick fails, or gets stolen, then you lose the lot!
It is common practice to backup data to a CD. The main problem is that CDs do not hold that much information, and I would not recommend having a backup on multiple CDs!! Memory sticks are much more suitable for backups. They are relatively cheap now and the available storage is in gigabytes which would be appropriate for most computer users.
A suggested backup procedure
The following description is of a simple backup procedure using memory sticks or CDs. You can adapt it for your particular circumstances.
First, you need to buy four memory sticks. Each one needs to be big enough to hold the data you want to backup up!
Second, you need to label each stick with a unique identifier, such as A, B, C and D. The backup process is as follows:
- The first time you backup your data, copy it to the A memory stick.
- The second backup is copied it to the B memory stick.
- The third backup is to the C memory stick.
- The fourth backup is to the D memory stick.
- The fifth backup is copied to the A memory stick which will overwrite the data you initially backed up. Continue backing up your data using the memory sticks in the correct rotation. (If you backup up frequently you should have more memory sticks in the cycle.)
Remember to keep your memory sticks in a secure place, to avoid them all being stolen. You probably know the proverb about keeping all your eggs in the same basket!
An alternative backup procedure
Email can be an effective way of backing up data. This is more appropriate for text files because images and data files may be too large.
I find that my Gmail account is a very convenient backup option. I simply email my data to my Gmail account, either in the text message area or as an appended file. I use Keepass (a free package) to manage all my passwords and private data. The Keepass file is strongly encrypted and I consider it to be safe to email. Your data files can also be zipped up if the file size is too large.
You can also backup important POP3 mail simply by forwarding it to your Gmail account.
Make your data more secure
The data being backed up is important to you. As well as not losing it, you may want to keep the data secure from even being seen by other people. You may find some ideas with the following suggestions.
Buy a secure backup facility from a reputable company that provides such a service. Then your backups are protected from prying eyes!
On Windows XP professional you can password protect directories so that only the logged in user can access the data.
Use a secure password program such as Keepass (a free package). Store all your passwords, logins, identity details etc in this secure package. I use this to manage all my domains, passwords, login details as well as my personal private data.
Encrypt your your data backups (e.g. memory sticks) so that if they get stolen the data is useless to the thief. Make sure that you do not forget the encryption key or your backups will be useless to you!