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Following a recent personal experience, i'll be doing a piece on how to keep your computer system backed up.
Trust me, this is something you need to do!
Question: If the hard disk in your computer failed now, what would you lose?
If the answer is ‘Nothing, I have a complete, current backup’, then feel free to skip this article.
However, if your answer included any of the following...
- Family photos
- Business invoices
- Music
- Clients work
- Home movies
- E-mail
then read on...
...Now you know you have a problem, how do we solve it?
I firmly believe that the best backup system is one you don’t have to think about. If you have to open an application, make some choices, select a destination and so on the chances are you won’t bother, you’ll ‘do it next time’. So how do you automate things? For the Mac I use a great little app called Deja-Vu . All you have to do is select what you want copied, where to and when. It has options for daily, weekly and monthly schedules, as well as a manual ‘do it now’ choice. If you choose to copy your whole startup disk, it’ll even be bootable, so you can get straight back to work if something horrible happens. Deja-Vu is shareware and comes free with LaCie Hard Disks.
With a laptop, automated backups are not always possible, as it maybe off or closed at the required time. The Western Digital Dual Option drives are perfect for this as they have a push-button back-up feature. You just install the software, tell it what to back-up and, well, push the button(s). You could make one back-up your whole drive (press once a week) and the other do just your home folder (press every day). It also has an 8 in 1 card reader and front mounted USB port.
If your paranoia means that you don’t trust a single hard disk as backup, what about an array of them? RAID (Redundant Array on Inexpensive Drives) used to be an expensive option limited to web servers and information centres. Now though, you can buy 1 terrabyte of formatted storage (1.25 TB of actual disks) for just £1250+VAT. The FIREStar Raid contains five 250GB disks in a RAID 5 array, this basically means that if one of the drives fails, you can replace it without losing any data. It connects using Firewire 800, 400 or USB2. It is also available with five 500GB drives.
Can you minimise the chance of needing your backup? Of course you can....
Treat your computer well, don’t drop it (especially with the drives spinning), always shut your computer down nicely (don’t just pull the plug) and avoid power cuts.
How do you avoid power cuts? Use an Uninteruptable Power Supply (UPS).
Since we moved into our new London shop we’ve protected our computers using APC Smart UPS 1000s . This will not only keep your computer running during a power cut, it also filters the mains supply, removing spikes and boosting power during brownouts. At £239+VAT this is something every serious computer user should have, you just never know when someone might stick a spade through your power cable!
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