Good backups will save you time and money.

When (not if) your computer meets with a disaster, be prepared!

Backups. No one likes to think about the possibility of a computer crashing, but it happens every day. Computer crashes can happen without warning and can be catastrophic.

Performing regular backups doesn't fall on anyone's list of fun things to do. But, you will save yourself the time needed to recreate data, the monetary cost of lost productivity, and the heartache of losing data that is not reproducible.

Many people think they don't have important data on their systems, but almost everyone has something they would be upset to lose.

Home users

• E-mail from friends and family.
• E-mail addresses of your friends and family.
• Pictures from your digital camera.
• Your resume.
• Financial information (MS Money, Quicken, Quickbooks).
• Any documents you've created (letters, journal, homework).

Corporate users

• Important business e-mails.
• Business contacts.
• Financial, budget, and payroll information.
• Project plans and documentation.

There are many different solutions for backups. No one solution is right for every situation. Here's a list of some common solutions with their good points and bad points.

• Tape Backup
  Pros—Affordable for home users. About the only realistic choice for large multi-gigabyte backups.
  Cons—Most tape backup software is confusing to set up and use. The backup routine can be automated, but tapes still need to be switched manually on a regular basis (unless you can afford an expensive auto-changer). Many tape drives need to be "cleaned" with a special cleaning tape regularly (once a month). The backup software needs to be monitored to verify that files were backed up with no errors. Test restores should be performed periodically to ensure the data is really on the tape as expected. Your data stored on tape is not portable to another system unless it has a similar tape drive and the same backup software.

• CD-R
  Pros—CD-R blanks have become very cheap over the last few years. Your data is permanently written to the disk when the backup is done. Software exists to let you write one file at a time to the CD-R, much like a big floppy disk. Blank discs typically come in 650MB and 700MB sizes. The large size makes this good media for large multimedia files. The data written to a CD-R should be readable in the vast majority of CD-ROM drives, so taking data to other systems is very easy.
  Cons—While CD-Rs do hold a large amount of data, it is quite possible that you have more than 700MB of data to store. A backup which spans several CD-Rs can be cumbersome to work with.

• Zip Disk
  Pros—Zip disks come in 100MB, 250MB, and 750MB sizes. These are perfect sizes for small backups of critical files and for exchanging files with other people (see Cons).
  Cons—Not all Zip drives can write to all disks. For example, the 750MB drive can read any kind of disk but cannot write to 100MB disks. The 250MB drive can read and write to 250MB and 100MB disks, but can not read 750MB disks. In order to move data to another system you either need a portable external Zip drive or the system needs to have a compatible drive. You should not rely on this as your only means of backup. Zip disks are small and easily misplaced. And, like any magnetic media, the data on a Zip disk can be destroyed by getting too close to magnets and magnetic fields.

• Floppy Disk
  Pros—Floppy disks provide a cheap way to transfer data from one place to another. Almost all systems have a floppy drive.
  Cons—Floppy disks are not very reliable. You should not rely on a floppy disk as your only means of backup. Disks go bad, there are a lot of low quality disks for sale which will increase your chance of losing data. Some newer systems are being shipped without floppy drives.

• Online Backup
  Pros—Sending files over the Internet for backup purposes is a relatively new service offered by several companies. Connected is one such company that we have had experience with. A program runs on your computer and sends your data to a secure data center. This data center is itself backed up. You can retrieve a version of your file from any computer connected to the Internet. Multiple versions of each file are saved, so rather than retrieving yesterday's version of a document you could retrieve last weeks version. Once the initial transfer of data only the parts of files that have actually changed are sent across the Internet. This saves time and money by reducing bandwidth charges or Internet connection charges. If your computer is completely lost or destroyed Connected will ship you CD-ROMs of your data for a small charge.
  Cons—You must have an Internet connection to perform the backup. The initial load of data can take a very long time on a slow connection.

If you have any questions about backups or would like to discuss having a professional set up a backup solution for you please contact Starbeam. We can help you safeguard your data before disaster strikes. We can also help you recover your data and put your computer back in working order if you've already been the victim of a disaster.

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