Backup Misconceptions
The personal data we have stored on our computer is for most of us and in most cases irreplaceable. For those that don’t agree, then you would agree that the effort to replace it would be significant and very time consuming. Think about it, if they are photos that you have lost, how do you go back and take more, maybe scan in printed versions? Not much fun.
Your personal data goes way beyond what you have saved in Documents, or in music or video folders. It includes all your bookmarks,the contacts you have in your Address Book, and the email you have received and sent.
Having a good backup plan and process gives you peace of mind that, when disaster does eventually occur you are prepared.
If you’re aiming to minimise the stress when the time comes where you need your backup, you have to be prepared. Once things start to go wrong, you may not have much time to save the situation.
Misconceptions:
“No problem”, “I keep all my personal data on my external hard drive”.
If you only have your personal data in one place, it isn’t a backup.
It doesn’t matter if your only backup is an internal hard drive, an external hard drive, USB stick, or DVD’s. If you only keep one copy, then you can lose it just through having whatever it’s stored on dying.
So you need more than one method of backing up your important files.
“That’s easy, I back up my computer to an external hard drive once a week with CCC!”
Now here comes the second principle:
A manual backup isn’t as good as an automated backup.
If your backups are done automatically, you know that they will get done (you should always check). If your backups are done manually, there is a good chance that they will get delayed or skipped this week because something more important comes along, you have a busy day, you forget to connect the hard drive, or your busy working on the PC and don’t want to be interrupted.
A backup that relies on you actually doing something to make it happen is far less likely to be truly useful than one that happens automatically.
“I don’t need a backup, all my data is on a NAS and that’s using RAID!”
RAID is not a backup.
RAID will keep your system running and you working even though you have had a hardware failure. Its fantastic technology. You do however require redundancy. Now if your have a hard drive failure not only will your systems keep working but you won’t lose your data.
When you look at this situation it’s easy to see why it could be mistaken for a backup. You don’t lose data when hardware fails.
Even with a RAID, you can still accidentally delete files. RAID will not help you get them back. Making sure its backed up will. RAID helps your systems keep running when hardware fails. A backup, though, is what you need when you lose data.
So there you have it, some common misconceptions regarding your backup. Next week we will go into some of the strategies you can use to built a strong backup process.
