Back It Up

In both Vista and OS X it is now extremely easy to create a backup of your files. Additionally, the cost of large external hard drives has dropped so low that even in this economy most people can afford to purchase half a terabyte or more of external drive space. Despite these facts, the percentage of people who back up their home computer is still very, very low.

I think most of my readers would agree that the time to find out that you need to back up your files is not after you've experienced a hardware failure. However those are exactly the circumstances under which many of the users that I interact with on a daily basis will eventually come to this discovery. Every time I sign up a new client I advise them to implement a backup system that, at a minimum, backs up their important files weekly, and only 10% of them take this advice to heart, even after years of continued admonitions regarding the risks of not keeping backups.

So, to keep you from becoming another statistic for me to blog about, here is a quick and easy guide to backing up your computer:

Macintosh OS X

The Leopard version of OS X includes about the simplest backup system in the world, Time Machine. To keep your Mac backed up, all you need to do is buy an external drive (either USB, Firewire, or wireless) and plug it into the Mac. You will be prompted to use this drive for Time Machine. Say yes, and you're done. As long as you connect this drive for a few hours once a week you will have a running backup of your important files.

Vista

The Vista operating system offers the Backup and Restore Center which allows you to configure an automatic backup of your PC. You can access the Backup and Restore Center under your Control Panel. If you've been using your computer without a backup for a long time, I always recommend making a backup image of your whole PC on CD-ROM or DVD prior to setting up your scheduled backups. Luckily the Vista Backup and Restore Center has wizards that make this easy for you; simply select "Back Up Computer" and follow the wizard, once this is done go back into the Backup and Restore Center and select Back Up Files to set up a daily or weekly backup of your PC.

XP and Third Party Vendors

If you have Windows XP, it is easier and more reliable to use a third party application to back up your files. Fortunately, most external hard drives come with some kind of backup software. Be sure to check the packaging for the hard drive that you buy and make sure that the included software is not a trial version! At the very least you can use the included XP backup application (under Start -> Accessories -> System Tools -> Backup) to manually run a backup, having some kind of backup is better than none.

Lastly, I want to advise that a backup of some kind is made a couple of times a year and stored off-site in a safety deposit box, at a friend or relative's house, or uploaded to an online backup service like Upline or Mozy. If a natural disaster occurs, you don't want to lose your backups along with your computer.

Now more than ever most of our important photos, correspondence, music, and financial information are in digital format and it's important that these things are protected from loss.