Backups, Part 2: Backing up just your data

In Part 1 (last week; see "Older Posts" at the bottom of the page), we talked briefly about the 'what' of back up -- should you back up just your data files, or the entire drive? In Parts 2 and 3, we'll start to look at how to accomplish each.

I'll start off by saying that I'm a fan of having a full-drive backup tucked in a drawer or on another drive somewhere. It can be a real time-saver -- reinstalling an operating system and all your application programs is a pain in the ass. Then again, making a full-drive backup can be a pain, too. We'll look at methods for doing that a little farther down the road; for now, let's concentrate on just getting your data backed up.

Once upon a time we used floppies for job storage. Floppies were followed variously by other dead-as-Michael-Jackson media like Syquest cartridges, digital backup tape, ZIP disks, and the like. Each had it's moment, but in 2010 we've outgrown them. Data has started to accumulate exponentially, and older backup media just can't hold it all.

So I'll let you in on a secret: additional hard drives are dirt cheap right now. If you shop it right, you can get a drive two to four times as big as what you have now for well under $100. Depending on what model and vintage your computer is, you may want to get an external drive with a FireWire interface, or you may want a USB 2.0 connection. At this point, USB 2.0 is preferable to FireWire since Apple is starting to phase the latter out, but if you're not sure if your machine can handle USB 2.0, shoot me an email and I'll look it up.

But go out and buy an external drive. Right now. I mean it. Now. I'll wait until you get back.

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Back? Good. With a much larger hard drive, you can now back up all of your data fairly painlessly. Step One is to organize your files (I can hear artists from here to Montana groaning).

Create a new folder and call it "Stuff I Can't Live Without" or something clever like that. On my own system I've given that folder the awesomely uninspiring name "Sync," since my goal is to synchronize what's in my must-have folder with a mirror twin on another drive. Windows users can create their 'Can't Live Without' folder in their My Documents folder.

The key here is to put ALL of your important stuff into that one folder. All of it. Financials, taxes, love letters, client job files, all your pictures, pretty much everything digital you value (except for your music -- we'll touch on that later.).

Now, create another folder on your external drive with the same name as your first catchall folder. That first folder -- the one with all the stuff you want to backup -- is your source folder. The one on the external drive is your destination folder. It's where the files you're backing up will be deposited.

This is where the backup software comes in. I use Chronosync for Macintosh; it's inexpensive ($40), robust, and bulletproof (always a good thing when considering backup software). Windows users can use Microsoft's Synchronization Manager. Start your backups by first telling the software where your source folder is, then your destination folder, and whether you want to backup in one direction only -- copying from your internal to external drive, say -- or make the contents of your laptop's sync folder consistent with the sync folder on your desktop by copying in both directions. You can save these settings as a sync document, so that next time you want to back up, you just have to double-click once.

My Sync folder is a little over 60,000 files, and takes maybe 5-6 minutes to synchronize with my desktop computer (my version of an external drive) over a wireless network. All of my backups are synchronized bidirectionally, laptop to desktop and back.

I actually have six Chronosync documents set up to deal with everything I want to keep safe:

• My email database. I just can't afford to lose my email and address book. Can you?
• Joanne's email database. This way we both have our most current email database, whether at home or on the road.
• My "Sync" folder. This is my life, my everything. All my client files, my technical library, all of our photos (12,000+), our personal info, financial and medical info...you get the idea.
• My iTunes Music folder. Well, there went another 30gb.
• My "Installers" folder. All of the software installers I use regularly, and all the stuff I'm evaluating. It's a lot.
• My iPhone backups. Every time you connect an iPhone or iPad to your computer, the first thing it does is back itself up to the hard drive (provided you have iTunes properly configured). I keep a copy of my iPhone backup on my laptop -- it's that important to me (especially since my iPhone's already been stolen once...having backups, I was able to restore my replacement phone more-or-less painlessly).

You can also create a 'master' Chronosync "container" file that combines all of your various backup configurations into one file. Click one button and they all run. Done.

I usually backup my email three or four times a day -- that way I can start an email on my laptop, sync it, then continue typing my draft on my desktop, as I did with this blog post. It's quick and painless. My container files are set to run automatically at a pre-scheduled time; mine enjoy the quiet of 3:00 am.

Finally, once a week Chronosync automatically does a complete backup of my entire one terabyte (1,000gb) internal hard drive to a second 1TB drive, because I keep a lot of stuff I'm experimenting with outside of my Sync folder, stuff that's just too big to backup to my laptop drive.

Is it too much backup? Probably...but I'm a professional geek. Can the process be simplified? Absolutely. Remember, though -- applications and operating systems can be replaced. Your data can't. It's the past however many years of your life in digital format.

And obviously, there are other ways to go about this -- Apple's Time Machine, Retrospect and others come to mind -- but this is one very tightly focused way to go about preserving your data.

So to summarize: 500Gb external hard drive, $60. Chronosync, $40. Your data: priceless. Any questions?

(If you DO have questions, send me an email and we'll see what we can figure out.)

Next, in Part 3: Duplicating your entire drive

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