Backup Nice and Easy

Common wisdom holds that backing up files on personal and business computers is essential, yet this crucial task is often ignored. The only way to ensure timely and reliable backups is to devise a clear strategy and stick to it. We'll help you consider all aspects of your backup strategy, so you can make informed decisions. But simplicity is our watchword, because you probably won't back up if the process is too complex.

Why back up? Like the manuscript for your great American novel, some files are simply irreplaceable. Regular backups ensure you don't lose such files. But most files could be recreated given an unlimited budget for time and effort. Consider just how much time, money, and effort it would take to recover a system whose files were destroyed by mechanical failure, a virus attack, or user error. Also consider how much money you would lose simply because of downtime. A major purpose of backing up is to avoid such expenses. This is important to remember, since a strategy that costs too much time or money to implement may be counterproductive.

What to back up. In the dark ages of computing, a "large" hard drive held 10MB, and floppy disks were the only option for backup media. Then it made sense to back up only the most essential data files. But with today's immense drives, reinstalling a modern operating system is quite a job, not to mention reinstalling and configuring dozens of applications. Even if you wanted to back up only data files, they may not all be in one handy location. Perhaps your computer is used only for Web research and e-mail. You'd still find it frustrating to lose all your bookmarks, cookies, settings, and e-mail addresses. Configuration settings for your applications are scattered in proprietary files, INI files, and the Registry. The simplest strategy is to back up everything, and simplicity is essential.

How to back up. Traditional backup has involved copying data to removable media such as disks, tapes, or CD-Rs. If you're backing up 20GB of data onto a 5GB-capacity tape drive, however, you've got a problem: Somebody must hang around and feed in new tapes as needed. That's not easy, and when backup isn't easy it doesn't happen.

If you opt for removable media, choose a type that's large enough to hold one entire backup. That probably means tape, since modern tapes can hold 60GB or more. Tape autoloaders automate the process of backing up to multiple tapes, but they're quite expensive. When using removable media, you can save space by using differential or incremental backups. (See the sidebar "Differential and Incremental Backups.")

You can also back up a precise image of an entire drive's contents by using a product such as Norton Ghost or Symantec Ghost (both at, or PowerQuest's Drive Image 2002 ( When you restore a drive image—whether to the same drive or a different one—the contents remain precisely as they were when the image was made.

You might think the image file would be as large as the drive's entire capacity. Fortunately, the file is compressed, and unused disk space is not stored, but the files can still be quite large. Depending on the file size, you can copy the image to CD-R, to another drive, or to a server on the network.

Many sites offer to back up your data on the Internet. One example is Connected TLM (, which received an excellent rating in our issue of February 26 (First Looks). Typically users are charged a fixed subscription fee per month for a specific amount of storage. The initial upload can be daunting, and you'll want to find a solution that lets you split the process into multiple sessions. Thereafter, only changes are uploaded, so the process goes much faster, but a broadband connection is a must. The amount of storage provided may not be enough for a full backup of all files, and you can't necessarily restore operating-system files. (Internet backup is really intended for data files.) Also, you generally don't have the option to store multiple backup sets, so if a backed-up file is corrupted, it may not be recoverable. Internet backup can be a good second line of defense for your most essential data files.

When to back up. You should back up your data every day that you work on your computer. A business that's open on weekdays should back up at the end of each weekday, for example. If a virus wipes out data on a Wednesday, you can restore Tuesday's backup and lose no more than a day's work. But what if the backup files are also infected? What if the virus actually entered the system last month? A backup strategy with depth will also retain older backups at specified intervals. Backup administrators have devised strategies that rotate backup sets on a schedule that provides depth while balancing other needs. (See the sidebar "Rotation Strategies for Removable Media.") All but the simplest rotation strategies require the attention of a dedicated backup administrator. If you back up using drive imaging, the limiting factor is not the cost of removable media but the availability of disk space. The same rotation strategies can apply, but instead of reusing a tape, you simply delete the corresponding old image.

Some backup systems can operate in the background while the computer is in use. Others must run at the end of the day, when regular work has ceased. Some drive-imaging solutions actually require the computer to restart in order to back up. You'll need to consider these time factors when devising your strategy.

Where to keep backups. If removable-media backups are stacked next to the computer, a fire or other disaster will probably destroy both. A secure off-site location is best. At the very least, you should securely store them as far from your computer as possible. With the rotation strategies described in the sidebars, consider keeping only the daily tapes in the office and storing all others off-site.

If your backup is an image file on another drive in the same computer, a virus could wipe out both. The best location for image backups is a high-capacity server on your network, preferably in another office, or at least a drive on another computer.

Internet backup is about as off-site as you can get, but the data is completely out of your reach. Although it's unlikely, the backup company could lose your data or go out of business. If you rely on Internet backup, consider using more than one site just in case.

Who should do the backup. In an ideal world, nobody would back up, because the process would be completely automated. Your backup strategy should hew to this ideal, automating the process as much as possible. In a small business, assign a backup administrator to be in charge of the entire process. If you must rely on individual users, make the process as painless as possible. For removable-media backups, make sure an entire backup fits on a single tape or other medium. The simpler the process and the fewer people involved, the better your chances for full recovery.


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