Mark Leong

Backup you Data – You can't afford not to!

Filed under Computing

I was prompted to write this when I heard the news of a friend who had her laptop and iPod stolen when her house was broken into. I hope it will help you think through how worthwhile it is to establish a backup procedure to prevent data loss.

One of the effects of the rise of PCs is that documents and multimedia that would have once been distributed between the office, living room, car, bedroom and desk are all stored on our computers.

Types of data on our computers
Academic work (essays, dissertation, lecture notes), documents (lists, recipes, health records, financial data, contact info) and media (music, photos, videos, audio recordings).

How data gets lost
Hardware failure (electrical surge, wear and tear), virus attack, theft, fire, flood or earthquake.

Backup options
A backup works by copying data and storing it somewhere so it can be used to restore the original in the event of data loss. Options:

• Online backup
• External hard disk
• DVD stored off-site

A comparison of the three options follows my recommendation.

My recommendation
Combine online backup with DVD stored off-site.

1. Sign up* for a free 2GB account with Mozy online backup using https://mozy.com/?code=NT9BTG. Use this to backup your really important but small file size data. Set it to automatically do a backup every day.
2. Burn the music and videos on your computer onto DVDs and store them at a friend’s place. Update this regularly.

Comparison

Good	Bad
Mozy
Free Off-site Easy to use Scheduled automatic backups	Limited storage space – 2GB probably won’t allow you to backup all your music/videos/documents
External hard drive
Large storage – backup all your music/videos/documents Reasonably priced (500GB for under £50) Easy to use	Vulnerable to theft, fire, hardware failure Need to remember to do backup manually
DVD stored off-site
Cheap (100 for £10) Large storage – each DVD holds 4.7GB	Need to remember to do backup manually Need to transfer DVD/CDs off-site regularly

* Disclaimer: I do have a vested interest in getting people to sign up with Mozy. Mozy’s referral scheme means that each person that signs up using my referral link (https://mozy.com/?code=NT9BTG) gets me an additional 250MB of backup storage. Don’t let this put you off – I would still recommend it even if I didn’t get any benefit!