Gadget’s Airstream Chronicles

Normally I’d post strictly tech columns over at the Digital RV. Today I’m bending the rules. Why? Well, I want this post in more than one place as it’s really important.

A friend recently made an interesting request. They asked that I put together a full post on making backups. Why did they ask me to do that? Simple. One of their friends had a computer go totally south on them. Photos, music, personal documents, financial data, and everything else that finds its way on to a system was lost. Unfortunately for that poor soul, no backup was ever created.

The person who lost their data is a blogger, like me. And they’re a a little more popular (higher traffic). When they lost their data they posted about it, and here’s where it gets interesting. Many readers commented they too don’t backup, don’t know how, etc.

Alright, when folks who regularly play on the Internet don’t backup, or don’t know how to, I guess it’s worth a sizable tutorial post. And that post can take space here as well as the Digital RV. So, let’s get to it.

A Basic View of Computers

First, let’s over simplify what our computers are. They do a lot, but I’m going to reduce the “computer” to a one trick pony (it has many tricks, but I think you’ll get this one). The most basic function of our computers is data storage. Let’s put that another way.

Your computer is a glorified file cabinet. There, I said it. Engineers across the nation are weeping because that doesn’t sound complex at all. Such a revelation could put them out of work. “Hey, Mr. Tech guy, you’re nothing more than a file cabinet specialist.”

For those who never thought about it that way I bet a light bulb went off just now. Seriously, your computer stores your data. Go back to the 60’s…..what did you store your documents in then? Uh, file cabinets. Today you store documents, music, photos, etc., in your computer. Previously when we weren’t working digital we stored all of those things in file cabinets too. They were physical, and now those documents are digital. Pretty cool.

Now, in the old days if you had a fire in the building where your file cabinet was, you’d loose everything. Unless you made copies (backups) of the contents of the cabinet, and put it somewhere else (a different cabinet). I bet you can see where this is going…….

In order to truly back up your digital data you need a different cabinet. And you need to make copies of your documents in the original cabinet and put those copies in the new cabinet. Fortunately making copies is much easier with digital files (no standing over a copy machine for hours on end).

By the way….it’s an easy leap to conceptualize your computer as a big file cabinet. The manufacturers make it simple really. Ever notice on both Windows and Macintosh that all of your data is stored in cute little FILE FOLDERS? Take a look at the picture to the left…..those little icons look like folders. And what do you put in folders? Files, documents, photos, etc. Yup, it’s a file cabinet alrighty!

I hope this over simplification regarding your computer’s primary function puts things a little more in perspective. If not, feel free to leave comments for clarification. But let’s move on and talk about “file cabinet” options that you can put copies into……

Storage Media for your Backups…in other words, “Your new file cabinets”

Now that we’ve established the need to copy what is in one file cabinet and put those copies in another cabinet (our backup) we need to figure out what type of cabinet to use. There are a few options available, and I think that might be one point of confusion for folks. “What should I use???”

Today we have many ways to store data, and most readers will be familiar with the backup media. Maybe not all of it, but most of it. Currently I personally back my data up in a number of ways. CDs, DVDs, Flash Cards, my IPod, and External Hard Drives. All of these items are in essence new file cabinets, although a few work differently, and we’ll talk about that.

CDs & DVDs

At this point I’m willing to bet everyone knows about CDs and DVDs. Our music and movies come on these little disks. New programs for our computers come on them, fun video games, and more. And all these disks really do is store data (files) for you to use on your computer. When you pop a CD or DVD into a computer the computer can read the files, replay them, or install new programs. They can also be used to store and backup your data if you buy the right types.

Both CDs and DVDs are available as Writable or Re-Writable at this point in time. And if you have a newer computer chances are it has a CD and DVD Burner. That means if you get blank CDs and DVDs you can write files to the disks. And if you make copies from your hard drive (file cabinet), put the copies on the CD or DVD and then burn the disk, you now have a backup of those files.

About CDs…..

CDs have been around for a while. They were great for making backups in the 90’s, but not super now. Why? Not much storage space to be honest. CDs run up to about 700 mega bytes now. Sure, you can store a ton of photos, songs, or documents on them, but not as much as you can on other media. If you have smaller files, few songs, or few files, CDs might be a good backup solution for you.

About DVDs…..

DVDs, specifically writable DVDs, haven’t been around as long as CDs. They can store more data, even though they look just like a CD. How can they do that? Why can’t a CD store as much. Hey, let’s not get bogged down here and pretend we’re engineers…..DVD’s can store more than a CD. Accept it and be happy.

Actually, DVDs can store about 4.5 Giga Bytes. One Giga Byte is the same as 1000 Mega Bytes. Remember, CDs can store about 700 Mega Bytes. So, you can see pretty quickly that a DVD can store about 6 times as much as a CD. If you’re looking to store a sizable amount of data, a DVD will beat a CD.

Burning Questions…..

So, once you’ve selected the documents you want to copy, and decided between a CD or DVD, you simply copy the files to the disk. But you’re not done. See, if you pop the disk out immediately it won’t work. You must BURN the data to the disk. Burning a disk is the process where the data is committed to the disk, written to it, and forever imprinted on the disk (unless you use a re-writable, which does what the name implies).

Mostly, when you use a CD or DVD you’re looking to make a permanent, unalterable copy of your data. Once a disk is burned it cannot be undone. You can’t add to it afterward, edit the file, delete the file, etc. It is there for all time (or until someone tosses the disk into one of those cool new shredders that eats credit cards and disks).

So, if you want a permanent unchangeable copy of your data (files), a CD or DVD might be the way to go.

Other Media Options….Flash Drives, and External Hard Drives

Like CDs and DVDs, I’m willing to bet you’re familiar with flash drives too. Even if you think you’re not. External Hard Drives are another story, and I’ll bet about 50% of the readers have seen them, but probably not everyone knows all about them.

Flash Drives

Do you own a Digital Camera? If so you’re already familiar with Flash Drive technology. The memory cards that go into your camera are “flash memory”. There are many different types of cards, but they all do the same thing. Basically, they’re portable file cabinets that know how to talk to your camera. And when you take a picture your camera creates a document (photo) on the card. It has stored a file in the portable file cabinet!

The fun thing with flash drives is that they’re not relegated to being for photos only. They can be used for any file type. So, when you hook that flash card to your computer you could in theory copy documents to it rather than just downloading your photos. When you copy documents to the card you’ve in essence created a backup once again.

Unfortunately, flash cards, flash drives, etc., can’t store too much data. Right now on the market we’re seeing flash cards and USB flash drives going up to about 8Giga Bytes. So, almost twice the storage space of a DVD. Not bad if you’re backing up personal documents, but lousy if you’re backing up an ITunes Library or giant photo collection. So, let’s say you’ve got huge amounts of files you want to backup…..what’s the option?

External Hard Drives

External Hard Drives are the holy grail of backup in my opinion. Why?

• New external hard drives offer hundreds of Giga Bytes in storage.
• External hard drives are portable.
• They’re dirt cheap at this point in time.
• You can treat them just like your computer’s hard drive.
• You can use them between multiple computers, making it easy to copy large amounts of data between computers.

Only a few years ago I paid $350 for an 80GB external drive. Recently I paid $149 for a 500 GB external drive (more than 6 times the capacity at half the cost). Currently my computer’s hard drive is only 80 GB (older model), and my portable drives are much larger than the computer’s internal file cabinet.

Not only are external hard drives great for making backups, they’re also fantastic for expanding your computer’s storage capacity. As I noted above, my computer’s drive is 80GB. I take about 5 GB of photos per month. As you can see, it wouldn’t take long to fill my computer’s drive…..so I started getting external drives to store my data, as well as make backups.

The latest screen shot shows part of my Macintosh’s desktop. As you can see, there’s a device named “Macintosh HD”. That’s the original hard drive on my computer. There’s also a little folder “webgifs” where I put photos that are going up on to the internet (like all the pictures in this post). Finally there are two more devices, “500GiG” and “LaciePortable”. These are 2 of my many external hard drives. One is used as a regular hard drive (the LaciePortable) and the other is used to back up EVERYTHING else!

See, my computer’s original hard drive is only 80GB, and the external drive “LaciePortable” is 320GB. Totaled, that’s 400GB of storage over all. The 500GiG drive is 500GB. More than enough room to copy everything on my original hard drive and my external that I use for new files!

So, what do I need?

That really depends on what you’re doing. CDs and DVDs will work great if you’re only storing a little at a time, and you don’t want to alter the backed up files (once you burn it, it’s permanent). Flash drives will work well if you’re only storing a little, and if you want to change the files on the drive over and over again. And external drives are great if you want to keep writing to them, and altering the files as you go (just like your current hard drive).

In my case, I do the following backup plan:

1. ITunes Library (music, movies, everything): This library grows and changes. I make incremental backups of the library as it grows to DVDs (ITunes helps me do this). I also backup the entire library to an external drive (500GiG). I’ve got two copies then. One on an easy to access backup drive, the other on a permanent set of DVDs.
2. Photo Libraries: If you’ve followed my site for a while you know I take a lot of pictures. A LOT! My main photo library from August through today has 35.8 GBs of photos in it. Way too much to store on my regular hard drive since it has so many programs on it. My main photo library lives on the external drive “LaciePortable”. It is backed up once a week to the drive “500GiG”. Also, about once a month I copy the latest photo folders to DVDs as well. That way if I have a real disaster (2 drives dying….nearly impossible, but it could happen) I can always restore from my DVDs.
3. The Mac Hard Drive: I have backed up my entire Macintosh hard drive to the external drive “500GiG”. Once a month I back it up again, that way any new files that have been added will also show up on my backup. All of my personal documents, financial stuff, etc., get caught in this backup.

There’s my personal backup plan. In most cases, I copy incrementally to DVD. But mostly I use external hard drives to store backups. Having backups in more than one place is useful. Backing up to DVD is more of a pain, which is why I do it only when I’ve added enough data to make it worth my time. Backing up to the external hard drive is simple and easy. Copy from your main drive and paste to the backup drive. Done.

I thought there were backup programs out there…..more complex, right?

Yes, there are many backup programs out there. And you can get more complex. But let’s tone it down for a moment. All you really want to do is copy your important stuff from one cabinet to another. That’s all….breathe….there you go!

So, what’s up with backup software? Why the big deal? Why do people get paid tens of thousands of dollars to create complex backup plans for big companies??? Oh, I’m going to hyperventilate….

Backup programs can help make life easier. I use one. I know, I just told you copy and paste, that simple. Backup programs do the same thing. You tell them what to copy, and where to paste it. The nice thing about them is they can then do it automatically for you going forward.

My LaCie external drive came with a wonderful program called Silver Keeper. The program asks me what I want to backup (copy), and where I want to back it up to (paste). It then asks me when I want to do it. Once a week. Once a month. Daily? Only when I tell it to…..etc.

Look at the last screen shot. Pretty simple. On the left side I selected what I want to backup. I wanted to backup my music. On the right side I told it where to back up. The drive “500Gig” and into a folder called “Music”. Not so hard, right? The program does a few cool things though. Instead of recopying everything it checks to see what’s already in the backup, and what’s new. It only copies the new stuff, never touching the original stuff. All that does is save me time.

So, I could copy and paste entire folders every week, every day, every hour. Or I could let a simple backup program do it for me. By the way, all the external drives out there come with one form or other of backup software. For me, Silver Keeper meets my needs, and it’s not complex. Without it I’d simply copy and paste files, but that’s just me.

Wrapping up    

That’s about it for backing up.  Copy from one place, paste to another.  Basically, document copies in 2 file cabinets.  Not too hard.

If you want to see it in action, let me know.  Leave a comment.  I’d be happy to do a video podcast or two on backing up.  If I do it I’ll post it over at the Digital RV Podcast site.  :)  Be specific in your request on podcasts, as I don’t want to go too generic if I do them.

What’s your bottom line?  Here’s what you need to do before you run off to make your backups.

1. Determine what things you want to backup.
2. Once you’ve picked the files and folders you want to backup, find out how much space they take (right click in Windows and select properties…the file / folder size will be displayed….similar for Mac, but select Get Info instead of properties).  Total up your required backup space.
3. Select the best storage media (file cabinet) for your needs.  If you have under 8 GB of stuff to backup, a flash drive, DVD, or CD might work for you.  If you need to backup more, check out an external hard drive at your local computer shop.  Externals are cheap, run mostly on USB 2.0 connections (almost all new computers have USB connectors), and for under $200 you could backup your entire computer easily.

***Note:  If you do an external hard drive, I recommend LaCie’s drives and Western Digital’s “MyBook”.   I’m using both products, and I’ve had great success with each.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 24th, 2008 at 10:04 am and is filed under Notes from Gadget, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.