It’s been a mantra forever. Something that you know you should do. It runs the fine line between “it needs to be done today, but I’ll do it tomorrow”, between bits being there and then being gone forever. It’s backing up your hard drive. In this Tech Tip we’ll be looking at some different options for backing up your drive and see why it’s not only more important than ever to back up but it’s also easier than ever as well.

What’s Bits Got To Do, Got To Do With It?

It happens every day: a hard drive fails, a virus wipes out data, a simple mistake wipes out years of memories. Let’s face it, though information can be broken down to bytes and then to bits – when it’s gone – when it’s REALLY, REALLY gone, that empty feeling hits you like a sledge hammer and you realize that it’s all gone – and that you never did a backup. But, like many, you may be confused by the array of backup options available, and may even be a bit confused about what a backup is.

Backing up simply means archiving your data somewhere other than the place that the data already is. So, something like a system restore point, while very helpful for setting the system back to a point before things may have “gotten out of control” is great for getting a system back to normal – but it doesn’t back up data. Undeleting data accidently erased (such as a picture or a document file) can be done relatively simply by looking in your recycle bin, or using free utilities such as Recuva, this also is no substitution for having a copy of that picture or document somewhere else (very helpful with a drive failure). While there are many ways and strategies cialis costs to back up your data, three very basic solutions work well for many people.

Don’t Be Singing Those Ol’ Backup Blues

In the olden days (like 15 to 20 years ago) backing up was commonly done on tape, a duplicate hard drive or even floppy discs (yes, I still have 45 or so floppy discs floating around in a long forgotten corner of my garage containing my 8088 XT backup). These days with DVD burners, super large external hard drives and even economical USB flash drives, backing up has never been easier. While there are several excellent third party back up programs available – there are simple backup utilities built directly into Windows and Mac operating systems that will work fine for many. For example, if you have Windows Vista, check out the Backup and Restore Center where you can literally back up one file or the entire hard drive. And on Max OS X 10.5, Time Machine offers a terrific way to back up important files quickly and easily. If you have one of these operating systems, I highly recommend checking these utilities out and seeing if they suit your needs. If you have Window XP Professional, there is also a backup utility built in (also available on Windows XP Home Edition, though not loaded by default). Of course, if you’re the adventurous type, you can back up files manually (quick and easy to do with devices such as a USB flash drive where you literally copy the files you want over).

If you’re like most people, you probably are just fine if you have to restore a system back to an original configuration using the original restore partitions or install disks – but what you really want to save is the important stuff. Stuff like music, videos, games, documents and (very important for many people) photos. With nearly everyone having cheap digital cameras, you can easily lose years of photos if you don’t have them backed up. For these crucial, personal files you may want to consider some third party solutions. One solution that is very popular is to purchase an external hard drive with an integrated backup program. Many hard drive manufacturers (such as Seagate and Western Digital) offer external drives to help back up large amounts of data. Some of these external drives even have such cool features such as one touch backup or continuous file saving. With One Touch Backup (sometimes abbreviated OTB), you literally touch a button on the external drive that you plugged into your PC and your files are backed up – neat, simple and quick. With continuous backup, you set it up and forget about it – it’s done for you automatically. Another consideration would be an offsite storage solution (very helpful in situations, such as a house fire, where your backed up data could literally burn up with the original PC). High speed internet and free and pay backup services such as Yahoo! Briefcase or Symantec’s SwapDrive as well as other well-known online sites such as Mozy, Carbonite, iBackup, and iDrive, make these great options to use alone or in conjunction with the backup solutions mentioned above.

I’m Not Crya-crya-ing Over Lost Data

Again, while there are other backup techniques we didn’t touch on in this Tech Tip, using some or all of these backup suggestions (using the programs already built into your operating system, using an external hard drive and using a web based, off-site backup solution), you’ll find that there really is no more excuse for putting off backing up the important files on your computer, easily, simply and regularly. You find that backing up really isn’t that hard to do.