Backups, Part 1

Let's face it -- doing backups sucks.

Everyone knows they need them, nobody wants to do them, and far too many people get caught short without them when disaster strikes. If your primary hard drive were to suddenly blow up, a comprehensive backup strategy would (in a perfect world) allow you to simply switch startup drives and go back to work with all your files intact and all your applications ready to go.

Alas, it ain't a perfect world. Get over it. It's probably best to think of backups the same way you think about car insurance: needful, reassuring, and something you never want to use -- though everybody does, at some point or another. So let's look first at what data we have to be concerned with backing up, and later we'll discuss the easiest way(s) to deal with making sure it's all safe and sound.

What material do I need to back up?

Let's say your hard drive has crashed (and remember, it's not a matter of "if" so much as "when"). When your drive goes down and you have your operating system installation disks at hand, plus all the disks needed to reinstall your application software, you're in pretty good shape. In a case like this, all you really need to be backing up on a regular basis is your personal data -- your job files, personal financial info, photos, music, your email and address book -- all the stuff that makes up your digital life.

In a scenario like this, all you'd need to do following a drive failure is install a new hard drive, format it, reload the operating system and your application software, and then restore your personal data. All of this can probably be done in an afternoon -- if you have all the disks and are current on your personal data backups.

If you DON'T have your operating system and application install disks, things become a little more difficult. Without an OS or the programs to open your files, your data is just so much junk. So if you don't have those software installation disks, your backup strategy needs to include not only your data, but all your apps and possibly your OS as well. This probably means 'cloning' your drive, or making an exact duplicate of it, before the meltdown happens.

Of the two general backup methodologies described above, the first is probably the easiest to set up and maintain; the second is the most comprehensive. What I'd like to do over the next few days is explore the pluses and minuses of each method, and talk about doing it with a minimum of fuss and bother.

A couple final notes: this discussion won't cover every possible backup method -- the techniques used in enterprise-level backup is a whole 'nother can of worms -- but it does cover some of those that I've found effective in the small office environment. And finally (for today, anyway), while a lot of the comments will be Macintosh-centric, the principles involved apply to any platform. If you want to talk about applying some of these procedures to your Windows network, send me an email and let's talk.

Next, in Part 2: Backing up just your data

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