Why back up? This ought to be fairly easy to answer and yet it is surprising how many people overlook the need. Although computers these days are pretty reliable they are not infallible and they can and do go wrong - sometimes quite disastrously. We all keep information (data) on our computers and tablets that is important to us. Invariably it comprises memories in the form of photographs, videos and other records. We also write quite a lot and send and receive emails from friends and businesses. Those who may be writing professionally or who are, perhaps, documenting their family history (for example) would be horrified if all their efforts were suddenly to disappear. Think of the heartache if you were to lose hundreds of much-loved family and holiday photos. Common sense should dictate that you keep a copy of the most precious material.
Think about where to keep copies. It is very easy to make a copy of something and keep it alongside the original. However, you would be surprised at how many people will think they are religiously copying data only for me to find that they are - but on the same computer! They lay themselves open to the same risks as not making copies of the data in the first place. If their computer fails completely they simply lose two copies of their data. The golden rule about copies is that they must be kept in a different place or on a different medium to the originals.
Keep copies safe, secure out of sight. Exactly where this “different place” is will depend on how you perceive your vulnerability to other risks such as burglary, house fire or flood. Keeping a copy of data in the same house is better than not keeping a copy at all but it still potentially leaves you open to loss. You can minimise this loss, of course, by investing in a secure, lockable and fireproof container that is not easily removable. A wall safe is ideal. Alternatively it is possible to make copies and store them “off-site” in a separate secure location. Many businesses will do this in a secure back-up building outside their main premises. The only drawback to this is that every time you wish to update your copies you must retrieve them from wherever they are stored in order to do so. The way to overcome this is to keep digital copies of data (not physical ones such as disks) and keep those digital copies on someone else's computer. These days that someone else will most probably be computer storage provided on the internet - commonly called “in the cloud”.
Is one copy enough? Lastly, it is worth considering whether keeping just one copy of your data is sufficiently safe. If, for some reason, your backup location fails what will you then do. Although this is likely to be a rare occurrence it is not impossible for an internet/cloud-based company to go out of business with disastrous consequences for its customers. Maybe, if you are from the “belt and braces” school you might feel that a second copy kept at a different location might reduce your risks to the minimum. Many businesses follow this rule. For the average home user it is most probably 'overkill'.
Did you know? In fact I didn’t but there is actually a World Backup Day! This year it is on 31st March 2021. You can find out about it on a dedicated website which contains many of the messages I have already outlined. You can read it here.
Type of Backup
With these points in mind the rest of this article will look at the different types of backup and leave you to decide what is best for you. I’ll cover them under the following headings:
- Local In-Built
- Local External
- Off-Site
- Internet-based
Do note of course that, although you may have your data held on its own drive, a D: Drive, this is only the original version of your data. It is not in itself a copy. People therefore feel that by making a copy of this data elsewhere on their computer they have somehow met the requirements of a backup. That is fine until the whole computer fails. This argues for backups to be held externally to the computer as in the next section.
Local External There are two options in this category the first of which is becoming far less used. They are CDs/DVDs and Removable Hard Drives.
CDs/DVDs
Data can be stored on a removable medium such as a CD or DVD disk. Some computers come complete with a mechanical drive that slides out of the computer and into which one places a recordable disk. Most people will be familiar with this. The slide out tray may be held in a laptop or computer tower.
Originally the only available disk was a CD (Compact Disk) but these are much less used now for data storage since they can only hold a relatively small amount of data. The norm now is the DVD (Digital Video Disk - sometimes called a Digital Versatile Disk). The DVD can hold up to 7 times more data than a CD. It is worth mentioning here that there are lots of different kinds of CD and DVD. Without going into the variants, it is important that the one used must be capable of being read and written to (usually denoted by the abbreviation R/RW) and not just a read only disk (RO or ROM).
Removable Hard Drives
Far more regularly used now are removable hard drives. These can be of varying capacity mostly limited by how much you wish to pay. For the average home user, however, a drive holding 1 or 2Terabytes (TB) of data is ideal and is quite cheap. Expect to pay about £50. Anything less than 1TB is not really recommended. These external drives are very compact and typically the size of a cigarette packet. Like a removable DVD drive, they plug into a USB slot and are powered by the output from this slot.
These days you can also buy a large capacity memory stick instead of an external drive. It will plug into the computer in the same way and is essentially another form of external drive. Memory sticks are sometimes called 'Flash Drives'. Their data capacity varies up to and exceeding 2TB but the only word of caution to offer is that they are easily lost or mislaid because of their small size. This photo is courtesy of SanDisk - one of the typical memory sticks. Many other makes are available.
Word of warning. Many people use an external drive as extra (overflow) storage (if their inbuilt storage is running low) and it is quite acceptable to leave it plugged in. However, if you are using it for backup (as opposed to overflow) purposes, do remember that it runs the same risk as keeping backups on the internal storage. If the computer is stolen or destroyed the chances are your connected backup data will go the same way. Therefore, when you use an external drive or a memory stick for holding backups, do remember to store them in a safe place away from the computer when not in use.
Off site storage. This type of storage tends to be used mostly by businesses who keep their backup disks at a safe place away from their main premises. Sometimes this is a dedicated second building. In the same way, the home user might consider keeping their external drives and memory sticks away from their home if they hold really precious data.
Internet-based. Internet-based storage is becoming the norm these days as it is so readily available, reliable and reasonably priced. Often called “Cloud Storage” it requires you to take out a subscription with a particular company (which may be storage offered by your internet provider or a third party) and trust them to look after your data. Provided you choose a well-known and well-established company you can now have peace of mind regarding long-term retention of your memories. Some of these internet-based products available act simply as online storage and you upload your data to them on an as-required basis. Others act in conjunction with your computer and regularly update the internet store with any new data you have created since the last update.
Summary
Which brings me on to some final points that concern backups in general. You need to pay particular attention to which copy of your data is the latest. In the jargon this is called ‘version control’. It is especially important when using some of the backup programs that are available on the market. When backing up data there is a need to differentiate between incremental and non-incremental backups. In order to make the backing up process as quick as possible most backup programs do what are called incremental backups. They compare the data on your computer with the data from the last backup and only copy across any changes. This is much more efficient in terms of computer processing time than if they were to copy the whole data file across. If trying to do the latter you will probably get a message asking if you want to make a copy or to replace the data on your external storage. If you make a copy you finish up with duplicated data. On the other hand, if you replace data you may find that a change on the computer that (for example) deleted an earlier version of a file, overwrites what is held on the backup store and you may lose earlier versions of the file. This does not happen with incremental backups.
A similar problem can exist with programs that synchronise data. In this form of backup the program compares the computer version (the source) within the backed up version and makes them both exactly the same. This can result in the program deleting some older material on either the source or the backup to ensure they look the same. That older material might be extremely important.
If this is all confusing you then don’t forget to make good use of Google (or whatever internet searching tool you prefer) to find out all about backups and synchronisation. You’ll find some useful links as well as helpful videos on YouTube to guide you.
Lastly
"That's all well and good." you might say "You've described all the different types of storage but you haven't actually told me how to make copies. I hope to be able to return to this in a follow up article at a later date.