back-ups

Okay, okay, reading about backing up your data files is not exciting and I am trying to trick you into taking action. Sex sells.

But, if you’re not enticed to action by the thought of hot juicy backups, let me revert to the other sure-fire sales technique: fear.

Everywhere I went on vacation over the summer I ran across people who were in trouble because they have no effective backups of the information on their computer.

Here are some conversations I had:

• One friend has created a huge iTunes music library on her laptop PC.  She’s spent hundreds of hours feeding CD’s into the machine. She’s now getting strange errors when she runs her five-year-old laptop and she thinks its disk may be going bad. What will happen to her music if the disk crashes?
• A fire destroyed 11 homes in the town I was visiting. A client said she regularly backs up her financial information to an external hard drive.  But, she wondered, how she could recreate her data if the flash fire had burned her home to the ground.
• Another client was very proud how she backed up all of her digital photos to her home computer.  She said she unloads the camera every time she returns from vacation.  The fire got her pondering how many memories she’d lose if her PC picture depositary was incinerated.

Be Very Afraid

The short, succinct take-away from all these situations is that if you do have a copy of your music, financial information, or photos physically distant from your home, you are at risk of permanently losing important data or memories.

That truth isn’t sexy (unless you’re turned on by disaster scenarios).  But, face it. Your information could be irretrievably lost if you don’t have a remote backup of your files.

What Can You Do?

A basic solution is to do regular manual backups of all of your data and store them in a safe deposit vault or with friends or family in another town.  Buy a couple external disk drives, copy the information, and then ship a disk to your remote storage location.  Do it again next week, and have your friend ship you back disk #1. This is a very workable solution, but you have to back up regularly and stick to your schedule.

Why this solution didn’t work for me was that I needed to create a list of files to back up, and I had to keep adding and modifying the list as I changed information on my computer.  In addition, the manual process required me to be in front of the computer.  I had to drag the files to update and wait for them to copy. Then I had to the same thing for the next group of files.  Finally, I bought a backup program that let me synchronize the files on my internal drive and the external drive, but then I had to do that backup manually, update the file list, and manually run that back up.  Ugh.

What Should You Really Do? — Mozy

Try Mozy

Fortunately, a couple years ago the cost of backing up files over the Internet fell a lot.  I investigated a couple services and am now recommending Mozy.

Here’s why:

• It backs up all data files on a computer for a fixed price.  Out of the box it backs up files in the default locations (like “MyMusic”), and you can specify any folders or individual files on your internal disk.
• It backs up files in the background.  If you’ve changed a bunch of files, Mozy will upload them overnight or whenever you’re not using the computer.  You don’t have to do anything to start your back-up.
• It backs up files to its remote site over secure connections on the Internet.  Your data will survive even if your PC is burned, damaged in an earthquake, or stolen.

The cost is pretty cheap, too. First you can try it out and backup 2GB of data for free. Then, it’s $5.99  a month (price updated 9/2012) for up to 50GB or $9.99/month for 125GB.

Mozy has features like allowing me to go get a single file from the backup.  So, if you accidentally delete a file, you can retrieve it easily.  Plus, Mozy keeps old versions of your files for 30- days..  The versioning feature will save your life you when accidentally update a Word document — say, erase the whole contents — and stupidly save the new version. Just get the original document back from Mozy.

What’s Not to Love? Or, Why Wait?

I know your disk drive won’t go bad today. Your home isn’t going to explode in a molten mess this week.  And, the 7.1 destructo earthquake isn’t due this year.

But, if your reading this and you don’t have a backup of your photos, music, or Quicken/QuickBooks data that is less than 7 days old, just stop it!  Stop denying that your data is at risk.  Try Mozy.  Or one of their competitors (contact me and I can give you more info). But, do something today.

My fear is having to see your face you after your disk drive has crashed, your data is gone, and it’s too late. Please do your backups so I can sleep soundly at night.