Published: January 24, 2006
By Jon Canfield
When is the last time you backed up your important computer file or images? Thought so. Most people have never done a backup of their files for a variety of reasons. Many users complain that backing up is too hard, too complicated, or too confusing until the day comes (and trust me, at some point it will come) when a hard drive fails. Would you like to start over from scratch after losing all your photos?
Backup used to be a royal pain. Floppy discs were slow and held very little, and tape drives were expensive and difficult to work with. Few people had CD/R drives, or, for that matter, a second hard drive. But today, there are a number of fast, easy, and affordable options available to keep a safe copy of your important work.
Hard drives
The simplest option for backing up files is often an external hard drive. Available with USB 2.0 or FireWire connections, external hard drives have the advantage of huge capacity, speed, and convenience. Some, such as the Maxtor One Touch, can start a backup when you press a button on the external drive that starts a copy of files you've previously selected. The Maxtor One Touch is available in capacities of up to 300 GB and costs about $1.00 per GB, making it an affordable and cost-effective choice. The Maxtor drives come with a copy of Dantz Retrospect, which I think is one of the best backup programs available. You can configure Retrospect to make copies of files, folders, or entire drives on a schedule that you determine, such as every night at 2:00 A.M. By pressing the button on the drive, you can start an immediate backup. And, as in most good backup utilities, you can choose to back up only the files that have changed and therefore greatly reduce the amount of time required to make subsequent backups.
The SimpleTech SimpleDrive is very affordable and high-quality, features USB 2.0 or USB and Firewire, and is available in up to 400 GB capacities. SimpleTech includes StorageSync backup software with their drives.
You might consider adding an internal hard drive to your system as well. The absolute best in data safety is a RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Drives) configuration. This setup takes a minimum of two identical drives that are treated as either one larger drive (for example, two 250GB drives appear to the computer as a single 500GB drive) or as single drive that has duplicate copies of everything. In this configuration, every time a file is saved, it's saved to two drives. If one drive fails, you can replace it with no data loss—the system will immediately duplicate itself to the new drive.
If you're working with multiple computers, or even if you're not but prefer to have your external storage in a different location from your computer, network storage is the way to go. SimpleTech offers the excellent Network Attached Storage device. These drives connect to your system with a standard Ethernet cable and can be shared between multiple computers such as a Macintosh and Windows PC for transparent access to images. They are available in capacities of up to 400 GB and can be linked to provide over one Terrabyte if you wish. A secondary but extremely nice feature is their ability to serve as a USB print server. No more moving printer cables from one machine to the other!
The final choice in hard drive-based backups is the Mirra Server. The Mirra device is an external hard drive that connects to a Windows computer (sorry, no Mac support) by Ethernet. The included software lets you identify folders that should be constantly monitored and backed up. What makes Mirra unique is that you can access these files from anywhere via the Internet (a functionality that works with all computers, not just Windows).
Finally, there are CD and DVD writable drives. Most new computers include at least CD/RW, and many are now including DVD/RW. For effective backup you'll likely want the higher capacity of DVD (4 GB versus 700 MB on CD). Whichever disc type you choose, it's important to use good media. All discs aren't created equal and I wouldn't trust my critical backups to those discs that come in a 100 pack for $10. Delkin Archival Gold is the absolute best CD media available, in my opinion, and is now available in DVD media as well. I also use the TDK Armor Plated DVD-R. These discs are very scratch-resistant and have a longer shelf life than standard DVD-R discs.
For backing up to CD or DVD, most software—such as Roxio EZ CD Creator and Nero Express—includes utilities to perform simple backups. I suggest investing in a dedicated program such as the Dantz Retrospect mentioned above. These programs make it much easier to copy only new and changed files to disc, and if the need arises to restore files, they make it easy to find the right disc out of many.
Conclusion
Don't wait any longer to back up your important—and in many cases irreplaceable—memories. It's easier than ever and more affordable than you might think.
Jon learned about the importance of backup the hard way years ago. His latest book is Print Like a Pro: A Digital Photographer's Guide. You can reach Jon at jon@joncanfield.com or his website www.joncanfield.com.
