In order to best follow this article, it's best to have read 'Backups and how they can work for you'. You'll then have seen how obsessive I am, not only about backups in general, but also how to use them to keep your computers working as fast as they can and ensure that you can recover very quickly from virus', broken hard drives etc. This article concentrates on the single workstation, that may be at home or a critical workstation in a small office that doesn't use networks fully.When I think of backups there are a number of things I want to be able to do, in order to pretty well ensure that I'm disaster proof. There are variations of this for personal and business use:· All my critical data is backed up securely - even against the 'proverbial' office (house) burning down.· I want to be able to quickly retrieve a recent version of that document (or documents / directories) I just deleted. Don't you ever just delete a document for the sake of it?· If I get a serious virus that I can't fix, or my hard drive breaks, I want to be back up and running in the shortest possible time - both OS / System and also data.· I want to be able to get my computer back to peak performance when it starts to slow down.The following recommended procedure is for those of you who are as obsessive as I am, there are simpler versions of this. If followed, however, this procedure will allow you to recover from any disaster or problem, that I can imagine, even if all I want to do is get my computer back up and running at peak performance.In order to do this, I would:· Segregate my data and OS - i.e. all my OS and applications programs are on my C drive and I have a second D drive where my data lives. You may well have heard me say this before, I'll emphasize it again and again. The data drive could be a separate partition on a single drive, but I prefer to keep them on separate drives.· Backup my 'critical' data continuously, on-line, using Carbonite. Usually, a document that I change and save is backed up without my thinking about it within a few minutes. I don't notice any drop in speed because after the initial backup it's only saving the few documents that change. I've rarely used this to restore any documents because the restore process is pretty slow, but the peace of mind it brings is easily worth the low annual 'insurance' fee that I pay. This is typically around $55.00 per year for a single computer and is the insurance against my house burning down. Fortunately my house has never burnt down (although it did come close a few years ago, but that's another story................). Bear in mind though, that computers and software can be re-purchased (hopefully using the insurance money), your pictures and documents cannot.· Have an external USB drive. A 1Terrabyte drive currently costs less than $150.00 and that's a very big drive!· Copy and synchronize my data to the USB drive. I like to use the Goodsync program for this, because the backups are a simple copy, not compressed and it is very easy to restore. I do this every two hours and once setup, I don't know that it's happening. If you do this and use an on-line service, your data is actually backed up in three places - hard to imagine you ever losing it. The advantage of this backup is that it is very fast to restore if the data drive in your computer breaks.· Backup my main system drive every night to the external USB drive, using disk imaging software, and I use a full / differential routine rotating every two weeks, but really this is disk size dependent. This type of backup means that I can very easily restore my system to full operation, very quickly. Note: this backup is OS / system only and can be restored without disturbing your data. In fact this backup is mainly useful as a catchall, just in case some documents have not been save in the correct place - if I need a system restore I usually go back to my main restore image so that I can ensure my computer is running as quickly as possible.· Use and update my restore image to get my computer as fast as possible, even if I don't have a disaster. In fact I use this more often than my system backup discussed in the previous bullet. See Creating and Using Your Customized Restore Image. Because computers slow down over time, I usually 'refresh' my system every 3 - 4 months as a matter of course.To stress one point (although you may have heard it before) - these techniques only work properly and easily, if your data is segregated from your system drive.
