Learn How to Create a Simple Backup Strategy For Your Data

The words ‘procrastination’ and ‘backing up data’ really go well together. Ask yourself. How many times did you put off backing up some really important data because you thought that it either wasn’t necessary or that you’ll simply do it next time around? I’ve done it before and I’m sure you have done so as well. It’s not hard to see why though. As a normal computer user, you don’t really see a benefit of backing up data until you actually need a backup copy! But that’s the problem. When you do need a copy, you just realized that you haven’t actually made one and am now panicking on what to do because now you have to type that report in it’s entirety, from scratch once more. It’s time you make a change.

You don’t need to be a IT guru or some hotshot executive to backup your data. If you know how to use a mouse and keyboard, then you’re set to go and I mean that. Heck, the keyboard can be optional at times! In this post I will go over numerous backup methods that you can use to help you backup your important data. It’s so easy, you’ll be wondering why you haven’t done so yet. What I do want to point out immediately is that not all backup strategies work for everyone. What may work for me may or may not work in your situation. Therefore, you have to figure out what is the best way to tackle this and implement the right backup method for yourself. Use this article as a guideline and you’ll be fine. In most cases, you’ll be mixing them up to suit your needs.

# Use a simple USB thumb drive or external hard drive
This is honestly the most simplest method of backing up your data. Not only are thumb drives and external hard drives inexpensive, they also give you tons and tons of storage space! For about $22, I can get an 8GB USB Cruzer thumb drive here at Amazon. If you need something a little larger, check out this 320GB Western Digital Passport for only $89.99. Both of these devices are small enough for you to bring along on your travels and are very convenient. To create a backup of your files, simply just drag them over from your computer to the external device in Windows explorer and that’s it! You now have a simple backup. So now in case your computer crashes, you still have a copy of it on the external device. It doesn’t get any more simple than this.

# Use freeware Freebyte Backup to help you with your backup tasks
Simply dragging files over to your external device is simple enough but what if you have huge amounts of data to backup or what if your data constantly changes? It will quickly get tiresome having to drag and drop so many items and having to actually remember what actually needs to be backed up! Worry not. This is where the awesome freeware of Freebyte Backup comes into play. You can think of this neat little application as a ‘drag and drop’ operation but on steroids. Here is what I mean. There are in essence different backup methods that work differently. These include a manual backup, a copy backup, a incremental backup, a differential backup and a full backup. Freebyte helps you do an incremental backup and I will explain it here. When you manually drag and drop files to your external backup, that is just a manual backup. What happens when edit the original files? How do you know that the copy on your external hard drive is or isn’t the most recent copy? You could manually check the dates on the files themselves and if they are older than your most recent copy, drag them over again but that is a real hassle and isn’t recommended, especially if you have to deal with a lot of data. What an incremental backup allows you to do is when you first make a backup of a folder with files, it will make a full backup, which essentially backs up every single file inside the folder. The magic happens when you alter, change, edit, or add new files into the same folder. When you run Freebyte again, it is smart enough to check which files have been changed since the last backup and therefore, only backs those files up. Under the hood, it’s really simple to see how this works. Every file has a ‘archive’ attribute attached to the file. When this attribute is check marked (turned on), Freebyte (or other backup programs) will know to make a backup of this file. Once it does so, it clears the attribute. If you change that file, the attribute gets turned on again and so the next time you run the backup program, it instructs it to back up the file because it has changed. Those files with the attribute turned off will simply be ignored because you already have made a backup of it. I personally use this method to backup my large music collection. I setup Freebyte to monitor my Music folder and instruct it to make a direct copy to my external hard drive. Anytime that I add a new music album to the folder and run the backup, it is smart enough to backup only the new albums. You can see how helpful this application can be.

Freebyte Backup

# Use Microsoft’s Free SyncToy utility
Freebyte is a good backup utility but if you want even more power in how you backup your data, you’ll want to look at this free Microsoft utility called SyncToy. It works pretty much the same as Freebyte in that you setup two folders to ‘sync’ with each other (therefore, making a backup). However, any changes you make on one of the folder whether it be deleting certain files you don’t need or adding new files, that action will get replicated to the other folder as well! All you need to configure is which two folders should be synchronized with each other. You can then choose from 3 options on how you want the folders to be synchronized with each other.

SyncToy

# Use your email!
I’m not kidding! Your email can be an excellent choice as a quick file archival and backup location. Major email services like Yahoo Mail, Google, Hotmail etc. allows you the ability to send attachments to other people. What you can do is attach the files you want to backup or archive as an attachment but send the email back to your own email address. You now have a permanent backup of the files, unless of course you delete the email yourself. You can even setup filters in Gmail so that every time you send an email to yourself, it will automatically give the email a label of your choice so that you can always find it back easily. Be aware though because most email services have a maximum attachment file size. This is usually around 10MB to 20MB. Therefore, you wouldn’t want to use this backup method for your digital video collection (technically, you can’t anyways). This does help you backup important word documents, PowerPoint presentations, PDF files, and even some music files.

# Use a online backup service
Large companies purchase online backup solutions because they then don’t have to worry about hardware failures on their external hard drives (which holds their backups) or whatever devices they may use. This is sort of like emailing the documents to yourself as described above but you have much more freedom and space. There are two outstanding services that give you free online storage. Microsoft’s Skydrive service gives you 25GB of free online storage! No strings attached! If you already have a Hotmail or Live account, you can use that account to sign up for their service and have immediate access to 25GB of storage. Once you start backing up files, you can opt to share your files with your friends and family members or make them private for your use only. It’s very simple.
Another awesome backup solution is from Adrive. Are you ready for this? They offer you 50GB of free online storage! That’s insane! All you need to do is sign up for a free account and you’ll have instant access to 50GB of online storage at your disposal.
Backing up files ‘in the cloud’ as they call it has its advantages and disadvantages. Because you don’t have to worry about hardware malfunctions of your external hard drives or thumb drives, you can rest assure that once you upload your files to their servers, it will always remain there, ready for you to access anytime. Now the disadvantage is that you will always need an Internet connection if you want to download any of those files you have backed up. Also, the main concern is that uploading files to the Internet has always been way slower than when you download files, at least to the regular consumer. This is due to your Internet Service Provider’s limitation, whether you are using DSL or Cable broadband. Because of this limitation, it makes it extremely difficult for you to upload and backup your digital movie collection or large amounts of music files. It certainly is possible but be prepared to wait a long time for the process to complete.

# Using plain old CDs and DVDs
Physical media such as CDs and DVDs, although fading out, still can play a role in your backup and sharing methods. If you quickly want to share large amounts of data with a friend but don’t want to lend them your external hard drive, simply burning them on to DVDs can be quick and painless. You can also choose to burn on the most important of your files to DVDs and store them away in a safe location.

Simply put, you need to create some sort of backup strategy sooner or later and sticking with it! It shouldn’t be an afterthought. External drives are cheap and they offer you the most storage. Buy one! If you don’t, you’re basically saying that your data is worth only $100 or however much it cost for a external hard drive. If you actually lose those files, can you get it back for $100? I highly doubt it. Is it worth $100 to lose more than 50GB of your music collection and have to re-download every single album again? I doubt it. So why hesitate?! Price should not be a deciding factor anymore. The only factor is your habit. Get into the habit of creating backups of your crucial documents and files. I’ve listed many ways, simple ways mind you, of doing just that. If you lose a file again, you really have no one to blame but yourself. It won’t matter how loud you scream in frustration, how hard you punch the wall, how hard you try to rewind back time or how hard you try to explain to your boss as to why you lost the file. All you need to think about is how by simply spending just a couple minutes making an extra copy of those files could have avoided the situation. But I understand though. I mean who actually have the time time to plug in a USB drive or send an email to themselves? Right?