This month we return to the subject of backups. There are so many people that simply do not look after their data properly and end up losing it because they just haven’t taken the time to back it up. There are even more that “think” that they back up their data, however when it comes to the crunch their well‐laid plans fail because of an identifiable flaw in their backup solution.
We never really think too much about our backups until that fateful day we need to rely on them to get our data back. Really we should test our backups on a regular basis to ensure that when we do need them we have some confidence that it’s going to be ok..
There are a number of backup programs out there that will help. There are even programs built into your operating system, but all of these tend to take your data and back it up into a single file or a single set of files. This means that when you want to get your data back, you first need to plug the data into your backup program and then rely on it to extract your actual data – I’ve never liked that.
I always prefer, where possible, to make a copy of my data, so that it’s the same in both the original location and the backed up location. I know this all sounds very complicated, but it’s not really! Just think of it like this, ‐ if you don’t have your data (documents, pictures, favourites etc.) in two different physical locations then you don’t have it at all! It’s no good backing up to another place on the same hard drive, because if that hard drive dies (as they tend to) then both sets of your data are gone.
Although it’s better to back up to another hard drive in the same computer, it won’t help if that computer is stolen as both sets of the data will be gone. The point is that your two data sets should be in different physical locations, so the first is on your computer and perhaps the second is on a memory stick (if you don’t have much to back up) or on an external hard drive if you have more data.
Also remember that once you have done your backup you should move the external hard drive or USB stick to somewhere else in the house (the safe perhaps?) or better still somewhere else entirely different, because anyone coming in to steal your computer won’t bother leaving your external hard drive – if they take both then all your data is gone! So, once we have decided how to store our backup, we can then look to use some software to help us make the job of copying it as easy as possible. There is a piece of software called Allway Sync and you can get hold of a free copy from www.allwaysync.com – just hit the download button in the top right hand corner, its free for non‐commercial use.
With this software you can instruct your computer to mirror two locations, the first being the place you store your data on your computer and the second being the location where you want to store your backup (your USB stick or your external hard drive etc).
Once done you can instruct Allway Sync to compare the two locations and to synchronise only those files that have changed since the last backup – this is great if you have lots of data to back up as Allway Sync will ignore the files that it has already backed up as it knows they are already safe.