I agree totally. Besides, raid configurations don't help in case of user error, such as saving a document with the wrong filename en thus overwriting another etc.

That's one reason we went to DVD drives for our Raid 5. We can lose half our drives and not lose any data. Yes, striping is a wonderful thing.

You RAID on DVDs? What is your latency like? I've toyed with that idea for my home systems, butI'd rather not have to invest the money to find out it going to have wicked lag.

I will admit that I am fairly competent with computers. Most of the time I am the go to guy for family and friends that have problems...but I have never really tackled the backup aspect. So, I ask this question in search of answers. I would prefer not to spend additional resources..but might if the solution was the best choice.
I have a home computer..nothing fancy..DVD player, also has CD Burner. I hear about people backing up their data..but honestly have never done it. I do have lots of files that I would hate to lose. So how exactly is this process done?

Is it as simple as manually burning every single folder I have to a CD...or does Microsoft have a backup program installed on XP that makes it simple..you know pop-ups with instructions?

Living in the wilderness for weeks would be a vacation for me..but I would like to get a better handle on how to do this properly. Thanks in advance for the advice. I know from reading previous posts..this one in particular that there are many others that live computers everyday and could assemble one as fast as I can an AR-15. <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

I'm sure many people will have some great advice and there are many possible ways of doing this, but there's one distinction you might want to think about first, and you can prepare for either or both contingency.

Usually a traditional backup is for a situation when something bad happens to your computer, you replace the part or fix the software glitch, and your aim is to get your computer back running like it was before, including all your old files. Having a hard drive go bad is one example.

But another serious catastrophe is when you simply want your data and can't/don't care if your PC is running. E.g. there's a fire that destroys your house or you need to evacuate from New Orleans to Houston and don't know when you'll be back. In this case, a "backup" is really just a second set of data that won't get wiped out if your computer is destroyed, and which you can access the files without much additional hassle. A basic version of this approach, as you alluded to, is simply dragging your My Documents folder onto a thumb drive which you then store offsite or EDC. If you end up in another town, you can still access your files simply by plugging the thumb drive into another fairly modern computer. It'll be much more difficult for you, in such a situation, if you simply did a traditional backup and just had a stack of DAT backup tapes with you at some random friend's house since you won't have the hardware/software to access your old files.

Personally, I prepare for the latter case. If my computer is fried, I don't mind reinstalling the operating system and software first, then copying all my files back from an external hard drive. On the other hand, some people have very complicated setups, with lot's of software installed, so using the traditional backup will save much time and labor to get yourself up and running again.

Oh, the options that are right for you will also depend on how much data you want to protect, so it would help if you mentioned the amount of stuff you're talking about. You mentioned having a CD burner. If you don't have too much data, then that's a fine way to store data away from your computer. But if you have a huge mp3 or video collection, then you'll need to find a different way.

It depends on what you want to back up, and how comfortable you are recovering your own system. It also depends on if you are sure you can keep the same hardware, becuase the drivers will come into play, or if you are looking for the critical stuff, and if the coputer is a melty pile of goo at the bottom of a lake in Oz and you are putting your data on new hardware.

My personal favorite for a personal machine is RAID 1, which is a second, clone drive in your machine. Especially if you put it in an exeternally accessable, removable carriage. Pull out the back up drive, and put it in, and you are up and running with a few minutes screw driver time if you main drive sizzles. And most mobos support it these days out the box. Downside is, it takes a little bit of homework to set it up, and if youa ren't comfortable opening your box, don't do it. It also reduces the number of internal harddrives you can support, effectively by half.

Similar to that, you can get a second hard drive, and some kind of stand alone partition manager (Partition Magic is always useful). When you feel the need, stick the second drive on an IDE or SATA cable, and boot into your partiion manager. Tell it to clone A to B. Take B out, put it in a safe place. Almost as good as RAIDing, but it won't be as up to date.

The next option is something called Ghost. It's from Norton, and it makes a compressed image of your drive, which you can then move onto something like one of the big (multi-gig) flash modules on the market. Pricey, and Ghost sometimes has the rep for beating the snot out of your drive physically, not so good for long service life. This will let you move your machine's "mind and soul" to another body, and once you've tracked down all the drivers for the new hardware (if any), all back like you left it. I like this if you have a lot of machines with a common configuration, but for most people, I'm going to hold my yahs and neas.

The other option is a basic back up of your data files. This is what I recommend for most people. Burn the data files you want to keep, along with your email and bookmarks and everything else you can't live without. (Me and my umpty-thousand fonts.) Put those and your install disks for your applications in a safe place. That way, you can reinstall your apps, then reload your datafiles. Not the most elegant of the three, but the cheapest, and the least frightening for many computer users.

I don't like Microsoft's backup utility. I tell everyone, turn it off, and keep it off. The reason why is, ifyour computer catches something, you just backed up the virus, to. All of these options have that problem, but this one is such that the virus will just reinfect your machine as soon as the wipe is done. <img src="/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" /> It also has a failure rate which is much higher than I consider acceptable.

We can talk the pros and cons of different hardware used, but I will only talk about your data. I assume that you already have copies of all programs installed so they can act as program backups. If you have any downloaded programs that you do not have a copy of on CD, back them up now.

The first thing you have to do is work out want data you need to keep backed up, then data that would like to keep a backup of. This can determine how often you backup critical data and how often you backup the rest of your data.
Then you need to find where that data is located on your computer.
At this point you might like to relocate data so its all in one place.
For example, your email files maybe stashed away in a directory but you may not know where that is. I relocated my Outlook data directory under my My Documants folder. That way I backup the My Documents folder and all the data I need is in subdirectories.
Check all of your programs and find out where the data is located, move it to a folder under My Documents and change the default data location in each programs settings.
Now you can backup from one location, either as a total backup of everything, or a sellective backup of individual program data.
Now you need to work out which hardware you will use to back this up. If you use your CD burner, your data might exceed the capacity of your CD's. This is where you can selectivly backup different data so it fits onto the CD's. I have this problem with my pictures and have to divide them up into different folders to make them fit.
When your data is organised into one location like this it makes it easier to manage.
Another good idea is to not overwrite data on your backup media. If you have a series of backups, you have a buffer in case you back up corrupt or changed data. If you backup a file that you have made a change to, and you want to go back to the original you can go back through the backups until you find the original version of that file to restore.

When I read this back, I realized that I have used the terms directory and folder in the same sentence. These are the same thing but I was brought up in the DOS days and tend to still use directory when talking.

Hi,

I've found that the simplier and faster the backup method, the more likely it is that I will actually use it. I used to occassionally copy files to a zip disk. I used to occassionally burn files to a CD. However I would always get lazy and skip backing stuff up because it just took too much effort.

I now have a staged method of backing up files.

• For my OS and programs, I keep the original CDs. For downloaded programs, I burn the installer to CD.
  
  
• For old data files that I don't anticipate changing anymore, including old photos, I burn them onto CD and store them in a binder. I burn new CDs once or twice a year.
  
  
• For active data files, I copy them onto my iPod. For some files (like financials), I copy them after every session. For other files (like my cookbook, or photos), I wait and copy them when I'm doing a backup for some other reason. I create a new folder on the iPod with the current date and drag whatever I want to backup to that folder. Occassionally I copy the folder with all of my projects. Usually I just copy whatever projects have changed since I last backed them up. When I run out of room on the iPod, I'll start deleting the older backups.

I really like having the iPod for my everyday backup of active files because (1) it's fast and easy, (2) in an evacuation situation, it's really easy to grab and it'd be nice to have along anyway, (3) frequent backups don't take up any more media, unlike CDs which get filled up and stack up.

I like CDs for my "archive" backups because (1) CDs are cheap, (2) CDs don't take much physically space, (3) CDs can be read by any computer, and (4) I have a CD burner but no DVD burner. As soon as I get a DVD burner, I'm putting my archives on DVD.

I haven't found an easy way of backing up my music. However with only a couple of exceptions, all of my music is from CDs, so I could still re-import them.

I don't use any of the backup utilities. I find that it's much easier (both backing up and restoring) to just copy the data files as is without any compression or name changes.

If something happens to my computer, between my binder of CDs and my iPod I should be able to get copies of everything I need.

-Kuovonne

I'll second the approach of using a USB thumb/keychain drive to backup your most important documents and data. It's simple, small (although easily lost), and can plug right into most newer computers that have a USB port.

Mine is stashed in one of my BoBs. I keep all important files/documents in one particular main folder. Then I just copy that main folder over to the thumb drive every week or two.

Although there's a CD burner on my computer and two packs of blank CDs in the house, I found I was only backing up via CDs maybe two or three times a year. (Shame on me! I should know better after losing two hard drives in a year.) <img src="/images/graemlins/blush.gif" alt="" />

You forgot to mention its good to have in case you have to emergency land your glider <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

(reffering to the Another Another Lucky Unprepared Soul thread)