Data: When It's, It's Gone!

As someone who is intellectually curious about and places a great of productivity dependency in hands of technology I am a bit embarrassed that recently my hard drive took a turn for the worse and died without having performed a recent backup of my data.  Truly, I couldn't believe!  Probably what most people say as a response to this unexpected event.  I had been rather religious about backing my files until I moved out of my home office and into a place that did not aesthetically and functionally allow for my external hard drive to be permanently set up which it was when I was located in my home office.  In my previous arrangement I had set up my Time Machine to perform automatic weekly backups which were running smoothly.   I recall having an inkling that without automatic back up cycle running I would need to rely on myself and would be vulnerable to losing data, so I would just need be sure to manually attached the external hard drive and run the backups on my own.   That lasted about 3 three weeks.  Five months later my hard drive died.   Argh!

I place a high level importance on productivity and should have known this was not a productive decision.  Anything that involves doing something "manually" usually isn't.  We tend to take for granted the reliability of our technical support staff who arduously oversee the protection of massive volumes of data at our places of business and forget that similar chores are also required for our personal computers.  So I wanted to share this as a friendly reminder to those of you who may have let this critical exercise fall by the wayside  And for those of you who don't even know where to begin, what follows is a brief overview of ways in which you can perform data back-ups.

• DVD/Jump Drive/Etc.:  I really don't recommend using DVDs discs or jump drives to perform data backups for your computer, I only mention it here for two reasons.

a.)  When working on a critical document or file and you want to ensure it's protection you can make a copy or back it up to have on hand until your next full system backup is performed.

b.)  If you truly do not place high priority on data backup and have no plans to do so in the future, then you probably don't have much on your computer that you fear losing, or at least you believe that's the case.  For this reason I would encourage you at a minimum to pick up large capacity jump drive (e.g. 16G or so) and take 30 minutes out of your day to take another look at yours files.  Chances are that you will find an important document or two, pictures from a special event, or music files you would rather not lose.  Copy them over to the jump drive and place it is a safe place.

• External Drives (Local Backup):   There are so many options now available for external drives both in capacity and physical size.  And the cost is coming down as well.  CNET has done a fairly extensive review and comparison of external hard drives and I would encourage you to take a look at their review before you buy.   Also, before you buy you should check out your computer's system requirements and the capacity required to backup your system.   One thing to consider with an external drive is that the backup of your data is still vulnerable to theft, loss, fire, etc.  If this is a factor that concerns you then consider the use of a remote or online back up service.

• Remote/Online Back Up: These are services that can backup your entire system via the internet with very little work required on your part.  Though some are free there is usually a monthly or annual fee and different service levels are also available usually dependent upon capacity.  The more you require backup for, the more you'll pay.  The amount of data you are backing up also needs to be considered for how long it take for a remote backup.  While most remote backups will take about a day for the typical user, some could take as long as two or three days versus a local backup which can be done in a much shorter time and even minutes in some cases.  In addition to cost and backup time you will also want to understand what it will take to set it up, how easily you can access your data if needed and whether or not the service provider offers encryption services that protects others from viewing your data.  In February of 2010 Techsoup, which offers technology solutions for nonprofits, conducted a review of top online backup service providers and discusses these questions in more detail.

Once you've decided upon your method of backup, then do it!  It's one thing to have a backup plan in place but if you aren't undergoing regular backups then what's the point.  So the last bit of food for thought is to make sure your backups run automatically.   This will surely help you avoid huge headaches because when it's gone, it's gone...or be subject to costly data recovery fees to get at lost data that could have so easily been saved.