Issue 41.15
Regular readers of this column will know that I place a high priority on backing up everything that is important to you. Today we are going to examine the different types of backups available.
Removable Media – This includes things like flash drives (also known as thumb drives or USB sticks), blank CDs or DVDs and external hard drives. Flash drives typically hold from 8-32 Gigabytes of information which is much larger than their capacity just 2 or 3 years ago. We are seeing 64 and 128 Gig versions in the stores now so they are capable of backing up most people’s data. The positive is the price and convenience – plus they take very little room in your drawer. The drawbacks are that copying to and from them is fairly slow and they are easily damaged and seem to wear out after a few years. Cost is under $10 for the smaller drives and up to $100 for the new 128 versions. They are OK as a secondary backup, but not that great as the backup you depend on.
CDs only hold about 700 Megabytes (not even 1 gigabyte) and DVDs only hold about 4 ½ Gigabytes. Blue ray records about 25 Gigabytes. These are a little more reliable than flash drives but they hold less and cost about the same per Gig of storage space. Good for pictures and videos because you can play them on media players, but limited in size compared to the other options. External Hard drives typically run in size from 500 Gigabytes to 4 Terabytes (4000 Gigs) and costs run from under $100 to around $200 depending on capacity. This is the most reliable of the backups, but they eventually fail as all products with moving parts do. Expected life is about 4 years. If you have a lot of data, this is the best option in the removable category. The smaller portable backup drives (they use USB for power instead of a power cord) are good but they do tend to not last as long as the larger power-plugged versions.
Internal backups. This requires a second hard drive which you can use to back-up everything on your system. There are two approaches to this type. The first is a managed backup which means that you either schedule or manually backup the info from your main drive to the backup drive. The other is a special type of setup that is called mirroring. The backup drive is invisible under normal use, and everything that is saved to the main drive is also saved to the backup, usually in real time. This approach has the advantage that, if your main hard drive ever fails, you can switch to the mirrored drive and pick up where you left off. Then you replace the drive that crashed and set it up as the mirrored drive to continue to protect you. This will cost you around $100-$200 for the basic approach and about twice that for the mirroring option if your computer supports that.
Finally is the off-site or online backup. This is a system that backs up some of your drive contents every day through the internet. Once it is set up, you just need to check every week or so to make sure it is working. Costs are usually $4 or $5 a month per computer. You can quickly access a few files or folders if you need them and some of these offer access to your files through your smart phone. The biggest advantage is that, if your computer was stolen or damaged in a fire, you could recover fairly quickly, though if you need all your data put on a new hard drive and shipped to you, there is an extra charge. Downloading all your data from these services could take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks depending on how much you back up.
Remember that backups of your programs probably is unnecessary since programs have to be re-installed if they ever fail or are erased. You mostly need your data, files, documents, pictures, music, etc. I recommend having two backups of anything important in case one fails – and, as always, make sure you always have a backup of anything important.
Shaun McCausland has worked in the computer industry for over 33 years, 26 years of it locally with Bits ‘N’ Bytes and Musicomp and currently works as a computer consultant. If you have questions you can reach him at 435-668-7118 or shaun@musicomp.net.