Backup is the activity of creating copies of computer data files, mainly for data loss and disaster recovery purposes. Being as it is that computers run on data, preserving its integrity – operating system files, data files, your word documents, emails, pictures, videos, etc. – rapidly becomes high priority. The amount of hours lost trying to rebuild a crashed computer can be pretty high, and losing forever valuable documents or files is even higher.
Backups is no small subject and there are different types of it depending on its approach to create copies of files. It goes from creating a full copy of the original computer’s hard disk (cloning) to selecting documents and files to back up within certain folders, and then updating the backups at set periods by adding copies of any newly changed or created files (incremental) to continuous data protection where there is a service running constantly that will log any changes in the system and will enable to roll back to an earlier version of any given file.
Two more aspects should be taken into account when considering backups. One is automated scheduling, which increases the reliability of the activity, and other other one is data validation, to make sure of the integrity of the data backup.
There are multiple software solutions that deal with creating backups, at programmed intervals and with data validation. Some versions of Windows even have their own embedded solutions.
How often should you back up your data? the answer to that question is the same as the answer to “how much time worth of data can I afford to loose? bi-weekly? weekly? daily? hourly?
I personally have an external hard disk that is a clone of my computer’s hard disk, and in which I run incremental backups daily. The software I use for that is Acronis True Image Home 2009. In the event of a hard disk crash, I can swap hard disks and be up and running in minutes like nothing happened. Well, maybe not like nothing happened, like I only lost a few hours worth of data.
Contact me if you need help setting a backup system for your computer(s), or if you need revisiting your existing one.