For 2008: Backup, Backup, Backup!
Posted on January 3, 2008
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Still looking for a New Year’s resolution. SugarRae’s latest post coincides with events in our house.
Shortly before xmas my wife’s computer failed to boot up, failing the disk check every time.
Like SugarRae, my wife has irreplacable files on her computer, years of personal photos, files related to her worek and her studying. With great trepidation I ran the tool the error messages were suggesting I run but were also saying were virtually guaranteed to lose some data..
We seem to have gotten lucky so far. After the tool ran the computer booted up and my wife was able to log into her account. We have not yet come across any corrupted files. If there are any, hopefully they will be configuration files rather than personal files.
However, if the hard drive has become corrupted once it is only a matter of time before it happens again. The new hard disk is sat on my desk waiting for work and family commitments to abate. It has to be installed soon before we find ourselves in the same unfortunate position as SugarRae.
In my case I already have a network attached disk for backup (currently non-functioning and I haven’t had the time to investigate that either!) but I haven’t had the time to set up an automatic backup process. Again it clearly has to be done as soon as possible.
- Backup regularly and frequently. Daily if you can – it only has to be the changes since the last backup.
- Automate your backup. It’s the only way to stop your backup routine going the way of the rest of your resolutions.
- Every so often make sure you have a full backupoff site. Copy it to some form of removable media (tape, CD, DVD etc) and leave it with a friend or family member, or save it to an online storage or backup service.
- Check your backups. It is no good waiting for the worst to occur before finding out that there has been a problem with your backup routine.
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