It should be well known and understood that all computer data should be backed up. What is less understood are the reasons for backup, backup strategy and the different types of backup solutions. This article aims to provide a high level overview of backup reasoning.
There are many ways that a computer user can unintentionally lose information on a computer. Deciding what to back up will depend on each individual. However, the golden rule is that anything that one thinks cannot be replaced easily or is extremely vital should have the priority to be placed first on the list.
As suggested before, it would be easier to organise if one is to make a checklist of the files to back up. This will make things easier for one to determine what to back up, and also as a reference in the event when one eventually decides to backup.
The following list showed some files to which are being backed up most of the times:
Hard drive holds three things, namely, the operating system, applications or programs and data.
The operating system can be Windows, Mac or any other operating system. Although you might lose some settings that may have been customised, the operating system can be restored from the original CD that came with the computer.
Programs - Disregarding some the personal settings, theses can also be restored from their original CDs.
Data includes all of the files and documents that one has created their favorites and/or bookmarks that are used in to surf the internet, settings, and all of the photos, graphics, and other files stored on the computer.
Certainly, there are many important things to backup. The best way to ensure that we don't lose important documents is to always back up our data in multiple locations and not hoard it all in one location. The more conscientious we are in our backup habits, the less likely we will face frustration, and even unsuccessful recovery efforts.
Study papers, notes, research, thesis, dissertations, address books, and bookmarks are all files that are difficult to almost impossible recreate. Software applications, on the other hand, can be reinstalled; although again we may need to spend time configuring or customizing the software each time.
Keeping multiple copies of important files in different folders on the same hard drive won't help. Hard drives can break down and fail, just like any piece of hardware. Consider the worse-case scenario, where the computer/laptop is stolen and the information data AND backups are all on the same hard drive.
Malware (Viruses, spyware and more)
One of the most common problems these days are virus/spyware infections and hardware failure. Many users choose to repair their machines to resolve these malware infections or hardware damages (due to impact or and any other external forces). To recover back their lost data in situations like corruptions or hard disk crashes; they would have to turn to companies which provide professional recovery services.
Backup strategy
Backup strategy is a plan to ensure that one can recover data whether it's lost, deleted, or destroyed under whatever reasons. Having a good data backup strategy can guard against data loss and more importantly, even protect one's life hood from disaster.
The list below is a four-step approach on how to create a backup strategy.
The following are several common back up solutions which are used generally:
All of these solutions are manual, meaning that you have to manually find, select and copy the files that you want backed up. Also note that all of these solutions are limited in the amount of data that they can store and they typically can not backup your entire hard drive, only data files.
USB Hard Drives
The benefit of this solution is that it's a one-time charge, assuming you buy a hard drive that is large enough and you can buy external drives that are as large as your computer's hard drive. The biggest problem with this solution is that it relies on yet another hard drive, which is prone to failure, just like a laptop hard drive. This solution is also subject to a virus attack which could be designed to delete all of your data files. If your computer is stolen and your USB HD is nearby, it may be stolen as well.
USB Thumbdrive
A USB thumbdrive is a portable storage device that uses flash memory and connects to your USB port. Thumbdrives have a reasonably large space for you to store files and are compatible with many different operating systems and computers, which make it ideal for data which you are going to bring around and use. The size of these devices can range from 2MB to 4GB or more, but they don't (yet) come close to the size of hard drives. The price per size ratio is much higher than with regular hard drives. Although they don't have physically moving parts, they are so small that they can still be physically or electrically damaged and your data destroyed.
CD/DVD Writers
CD and DVD combo drives are inexpensive and widely used. DVD media offers a storage capacity of up to 4.7GB of data, easily dwarfing the 700MB offered by CDs. Recordable discs are very cheap, making them an economically smart solution for backing up your data. They are great for archiving data that you don't need often, but they aren't the best solution for constantly changing data. Discs can also be scratched or damaged by the sun, which may result in the loss of data. A CD/DVD Writer is simply a CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive that can save information to recordable CDs (CD-R or CD-RW) or DVDs (DVD-R or DVD-RW). CDs/DVDs are more flexible than most media because they can be used in many different types of players (computer, home stereo, etc.).
Computers are taking a bigger part in people's life than ever before. People shop, work and play using computers. They've replaced CD player, encyclopedias/ dictionaries, and even the postman. They have become an essential working partner with the population.
What can happen?
"When I was studying for my final year of school, I was shocked when I realized that all my work folders were missing! All my research and report materials we just disappeared overnight for no reason. I panicked as my report was due the next week!" - Student Z
Sounds far fetched? It happens more often than you think. And by the time it does, it's too late. Thus once you have decided to backup and planned what and where to backup to, it is time to do the actual process.
There are 3 ways for you to backup, straight copy, imaging and ghosting.
Backup 1: File Copy
The first method of backup is to copy and paste the relevant data from your hard disk to the backup media. For small sized data like word documents, spread sheets or even short songs, you can practically drag the files from your computer to the backup media. This is the simplest and oft used method.
Backup 2: Disk Image/Ghosting
These two methods are used to backup a whole disk where file copy, although possible, is not really practical. This is due to the large number of files and file sizes and the risk of having the process getting interrupted and corruption occurring is high.
Thus disk imaging/ghosting would address those problems. However, imaging/ghosting would require a software, of which there are many and range in costs.
Personally, I'm using ADRC's data recovery tools not only does it has imaging and ghosting tools, it is free to use.
Download ADRC's data recovery tools.
Disk Imaging
Once you have downloaded the application, run it and in the application, under "tools" menu, select "image restore/backup". Then select "Create Image from Disk" radio button. Then, I specified the "Image File" target location. The location in this case was the backup external hard disk.
Under "image disk" select the disk which had the lost data and click transfer. Then wait for process to finish.
Ghosting
The difference between ghosting and imaging is that in imaging a disk image file is created, thus you can "burn" the image file into a cd or dvd should the image file be small enough to fit into the optical disk. In ghosting, the entire contents of the disk are copied directly from disk to disk.
For ghosting, we are going to use ADRC's data recovery tools still. Under the "tools" menu, select "raw copy instead' Select the "source disk" (the disk you want to backup) and the "target disk" (the backup disk) and click transfer and wait for the process to finish.
Conclusion
Computers aren't perfect. Files become corrupt, hardware may malfunction which all contribute to losing of precious data.
For this reason, the best resolution is data backup. In this article there are 3 methods of backup which you can apply, depending on your data size and needs.
Backing up data is crucial for businesses; lost information can cause unwanted situations and worse, lead to business failure. Individuals who don't backup computer data run the same risk. While this may not cause financial ruin, it can certainly be frustrating and distressing.
Therefore backing up data requires a degree of level-headedness. No one can ever predict when their data can be loss due to any reasons, but come to a point if disaster strikes, that backup will be your most appreciated precaution made.
There are many ways that a computer user can unintentionally lose information on a computer. Deciding what to back up will depend on each individual. However, the golden rule is that anything that one thinks cannot be replaced easily or is extremely vital should have the priority to be placed first on the list.
As suggested before, it would be easier to organise if one is to make a checklist of the files to back up. This will make things easier for one to determine what to back up, and also as a reference in the event when one eventually decides to backup.
The following list showed some files to which are being backed up most of the times:
- Bank records and other financial information
- Digital photographs
- Software purchased and downloaded from the Internet
- Music (MP3) purchased and downloaded from the Internet
- Personal projects
- One's e-mail address book
- One's Internet bookmarks
Hard drive holds three things, namely, the operating system, applications or programs and data.
The operating system can be Windows, Mac or any other operating system. Although you might lose some settings that may have been customised, the operating system can be restored from the original CD that came with the computer.
Programs - Disregarding some the personal settings, theses can also be restored from their original CDs.
Data includes all of the files and documents that one has created their favorites and/or bookmarks that are used in to surf the internet, settings, and all of the photos, graphics, and other files stored on the computer.
Certainly, there are many important things to backup. The best way to ensure that we don't lose important documents is to always back up our data in multiple locations and not hoard it all in one location. The more conscientious we are in our backup habits, the less likely we will face frustration, and even unsuccessful recovery efforts.
Study papers, notes, research, thesis, dissertations, address books, and bookmarks are all files that are difficult to almost impossible recreate. Software applications, on the other hand, can be reinstalled; although again we may need to spend time configuring or customizing the software each time.
Keeping multiple copies of important files in different folders on the same hard drive won't help. Hard drives can break down and fail, just like any piece of hardware. Consider the worse-case scenario, where the computer/laptop is stolen and the information data AND backups are all on the same hard drive.
Malware (Viruses, spyware and more)
One of the most common problems these days are virus/spyware infections and hardware failure. Many users choose to repair their machines to resolve these malware infections or hardware damages (due to impact or and any other external forces). To recover back their lost data in situations like corruptions or hard disk crashes; they would have to turn to companies which provide professional recovery services.
Backup strategy
Backup strategy is a plan to ensure that one can recover data whether it's lost, deleted, or destroyed under whatever reasons. Having a good data backup strategy can guard against data loss and more importantly, even protect one's life hood from disaster.
The list below is a four-step approach on how to create a backup strategy.
- 1) Decide on what is needed to back up. Do you want to save everything? Only documents you've created? What about application settings? Things you've downloaded?
- 2) Decide where to back up the data to. There are plenty of options: network servers, a USB drive, a Zip disk, a rewritable CD or DVD, a second hard drive and so on.
- 3) Make it easy to back up the data. Set up your system so that you can back it up with one command (or at the very least, in the fewest steps as possible). This will take a fair amount of work, but you'll realize its worth when your system crashes.
- 4) Make daily backups a habit. The longer the period between backups, the more you have to lose if anything is to happen suddenly.
The following are several common back up solutions which are used generally:
- Manual Data Backup Solution
- USB Hard Drives
- USB thumbdrive
- CD/DVD Writers
All of these solutions are manual, meaning that you have to manually find, select and copy the files that you want backed up. Also note that all of these solutions are limited in the amount of data that they can store and they typically can not backup your entire hard drive, only data files.
USB Hard Drives
The benefit of this solution is that it's a one-time charge, assuming you buy a hard drive that is large enough and you can buy external drives that are as large as your computer's hard drive. The biggest problem with this solution is that it relies on yet another hard drive, which is prone to failure, just like a laptop hard drive. This solution is also subject to a virus attack which could be designed to delete all of your data files. If your computer is stolen and your USB HD is nearby, it may be stolen as well.
USB Thumbdrive
A USB thumbdrive is a portable storage device that uses flash memory and connects to your USB port. Thumbdrives have a reasonably large space for you to store files and are compatible with many different operating systems and computers, which make it ideal for data which you are going to bring around and use. The size of these devices can range from 2MB to 4GB or more, but they don't (yet) come close to the size of hard drives. The price per size ratio is much higher than with regular hard drives. Although they don't have physically moving parts, they are so small that they can still be physically or electrically damaged and your data destroyed.
CD/DVD Writers
CD and DVD combo drives are inexpensive and widely used. DVD media offers a storage capacity of up to 4.7GB of data, easily dwarfing the 700MB offered by CDs. Recordable discs are very cheap, making them an economically smart solution for backing up your data. They are great for archiving data that you don't need often, but they aren't the best solution for constantly changing data. Discs can also be scratched or damaged by the sun, which may result in the loss of data. A CD/DVD Writer is simply a CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive that can save information to recordable CDs (CD-R or CD-RW) or DVDs (DVD-R or DVD-RW). CDs/DVDs are more flexible than most media because they can be used in many different types of players (computer, home stereo, etc.).
Computers are taking a bigger part in people's life than ever before. People shop, work and play using computers. They've replaced CD player, encyclopedias/ dictionaries, and even the postman. They have become an essential working partner with the population.
What can happen?
"When I was studying for my final year of school, I was shocked when I realized that all my work folders were missing! All my research and report materials we just disappeared overnight for no reason. I panicked as my report was due the next week!" - Student Z
Sounds far fetched? It happens more often than you think. And by the time it does, it's too late. Thus once you have decided to backup and planned what and where to backup to, it is time to do the actual process.
There are 3 ways for you to backup, straight copy, imaging and ghosting.
Backup 1: File Copy
The first method of backup is to copy and paste the relevant data from your hard disk to the backup media. For small sized data like word documents, spread sheets or even short songs, you can practically drag the files from your computer to the backup media. This is the simplest and oft used method.
Backup 2: Disk Image/Ghosting
These two methods are used to backup a whole disk where file copy, although possible, is not really practical. This is due to the large number of files and file sizes and the risk of having the process getting interrupted and corruption occurring is high.
Thus disk imaging/ghosting would address those problems. However, imaging/ghosting would require a software, of which there are many and range in costs.
Personally, I'm using ADRC's data recovery tools not only does it has imaging and ghosting tools, it is free to use.
Download ADRC's data recovery tools.
Disk Imaging
Once you have downloaded the application, run it and in the application, under "tools" menu, select "image restore/backup". Then select "Create Image from Disk" radio button. Then, I specified the "Image File" target location. The location in this case was the backup external hard disk.
Under "image disk" select the disk which had the lost data and click transfer. Then wait for process to finish.
Ghosting
The difference between ghosting and imaging is that in imaging a disk image file is created, thus you can "burn" the image file into a cd or dvd should the image file be small enough to fit into the optical disk. In ghosting, the entire contents of the disk are copied directly from disk to disk.
For ghosting, we are going to use ADRC's data recovery tools still. Under the "tools" menu, select "raw copy instead' Select the "source disk" (the disk you want to backup) and the "target disk" (the backup disk) and click transfer and wait for the process to finish.
Conclusion
Computers aren't perfect. Files become corrupt, hardware may malfunction which all contribute to losing of precious data.
For this reason, the best resolution is data backup. In this article there are 3 methods of backup which you can apply, depending on your data size and needs.
Backing up data is crucial for businesses; lost information can cause unwanted situations and worse, lead to business failure. Individuals who don't backup computer data run the same risk. While this may not cause financial ruin, it can certainly be frustrating and distressing.
Therefore backing up data requires a degree of level-headedness. No one can ever predict when their data can be loss due to any reasons, but come to a point if disaster strikes, that backup will be your most appreciated precaution made.
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