Backups

By Lawrence Cooper: Wednesday January 26th, 2006

Some people may ask “Why do I need to back up my data?”. The easiest way to answer this is by saying that losing all of your data really SUCKS!

As a “computer” person, I can tell you the only feeling worse than losing all your data from a system failure is getting a call from a panicked friend asking if you can come over and fix a PC problem—with the end result being the loss of all his data because he had no backup strategy in place.

You can see the thought process on their faces as they think of all their information being gone forever. The 10,000 song MP3 collection—gone. All the family photographs—gone. Three years of financial records and tax filings—gone. Emails, address book, and all those saved Emails—gone.

The problem is often not even laziness; it’s a lack of knowledge. What files should I back up? How exactly do I back them up, and to where? How often? Today, you will get answers to these questions.

Types of Backups

With average home PC hard drives now routinely being 200GB or bigger, deciding what to back up can seem like an impossible task. Well meaning friends will often advise you to “just clone the entire drive”. Others will tell you to do a full backup. Then some will tell you to just copy the files you want onto a disk and call it a day. Well, what does all of that mean? Here is a brief explanation of what all that mumbo-jumbo is.

Disk Cloning/Imaging: This means using a third party application like Norton Ghost to copy the entire contents of your C: drive to another hard drive…in essence, an exact duplicate, or “drive image”. Sounds like an easy fix, right? If you have a catastrophe, simply swap your cloned backup drive image and you're good to go.

Selective Backups: This is probably the simplest method one could use. All that it requires is some sort of secondary storage medium (second hard drive, CD, DVD, etc.). All you have to do is simply put anything you want backed up onto said storage medium. The downside is that you can't really set up a schedule or perform any fancy incremental backups; it's up to you to decide when to copy your data.

Full Backups: This type of backup copies all of the files and settings that you specify and puts them on the storage medium you choose. There is an extension to this--it's called Incremental backups. Incremental backups copy only the data that has changed since the last backup and appends it to the master backup file. Pretty handy tool if used right.

Where Do The Backups Go?

Once we have a good idea of what we want to back up, the next question is where to back it up. This depends largely on the user, the system set up, and the type/amount of data. Optimally, a second hard disk in your machine or on another machine on your home network, if you have one, is the best choice. Below are several solutions based on different set ups:

Single PC, 1 drive, no network:

Burn your backup onto CD’s, or better yet, DVD’s. Consider adding a second HDD, either an internal or a portable external when you can.

Single PC, 2 drives, no network:

Install your OS and Apps on the smaller of the two drives. Store your less critical “bulk” items, like music, on the second drive, and back up valuable data to the 2nd drive at scheduled intervals as well.

Two PC’s each with a single drive, on a small home network:

Backup machine A to machine B, and vise-versa. Machine A has an area set aside as backup space for machine B, and B has the same for machine A. Consider adding an additional drive to the faster of the two machines and designating it as the backup storage location for both machines.

Using The Windows Backup Utility

If you use Windows XP Pro, the Backup utility (Ntbackup.exe) should already be installed. If you use Windows XP Home, you'll need to install the utility as follows:

• Insert your Windows XP CD

• On the Welcome to Microsoft Windows XP dialog, select Perform Additional Tasks.

• Select Browse this CD.

• In Explorer, double-click the ValueAdd folder, then Msft, and then Ntbackup.

• Run Ntbackup.msi to install the backup utility.

Now, onto the backup utility itself which you can run by going to:

Start > All Programs >Accessories > System Tools > Backup.

This brings up the “Welcome to the Backup or Restore Wizard", as seen in the first image above.

• Click next.

• Select “Backup Files and Settings”, and click next.

This brings you to the “What to Backup” section. If you’re a lightweight user, and you are in the habit of saving EVERYTHING to the My Documents folder, and you haven’t made the switch to Firefox and Thunderbird yet (you should), then the “My Documents and Settings” choice is OK--although I would advise against it.

• Select “Let me choose what to Backup” and click next.

This brings up a Windows Explorer like dialog where you can select Directories and Folders in the left pane, and by double clicking on them, see the contents in the right pane. Select the folders and files you would like backed up by checking the boxes. Be sure to get any files not saved in your My Documents root file also, like saved game files, etc. Refer to the file paths mentioned in the example above to back up your mail and address book.

• Select the files you wish to back up, and click next.

The next dialog is "Backup Type, Destination, and Name” as seen in the left image above. This portion is pretty straightforward--except for whatever reason, the Type of Backup is grayed out, and you do not get to choose it here despite the title of this dialog. Go ahead and choose a location as discussed previously based on your particular PC situation. Last, choose a name you can remember. As odd as it sounds, people do forget where they stored their backup, and what they named it.

• Select where you want to save your backup, and the name you want to use. Click next.

This brings us to the Completion page of the wizard where we get the chance to review our settings, middle image. There is also an Advanced button that brings up the dialog for “Type of Backup”. Go ahead and select Incremental. An incremental backup is where the only files that are copied are the ones that have changed since your last backup.

• Select Advanced, then select Incremental for the type of backup and click next.

We get yet another dialog, right image. This one asks if we want to enable Verification after the backup, and if we would like to Disable Volume Shadow Copy. The descriptions of what each does is there, but we are only going to check the first box.

• Check the box for “Verify Data After Backup” and click next.

Yes, another Dialog, hang in there, we are almost done. This one lets us choose if this Backup will be appended to the last Backup, or overwrite it. Obviously appending your Backup would consume a lot of space rather quickly if your backings up to a HDD, so select overwrite. There is also a security option here to restrict access to your backup.

• Choose append, enable the file security if you wish, and click next.

This brings us to the last choice Dialog, where we can select when to do out Backup. You can select now, as shown in the image above, or select later, and schedule your Backup for a convenient time such as the middle of the night. You can also schedule it as a recurring Backup on any schedule you like.

• Choose when you want to run the Backup, if you want to schedule it as a recurring event, and click next.

We get the Completed Wizard dialog again, with our choices shown in case we need to revise anything etc. As it says, to close the Wizard and start your Backup click Finish.

Reading through this guide, and setting up your first Backup may seem a bit daunting, but it really is a simple process that pays excellent dividends down the road when your PC eats itself, and you KNOW it will--sooner or later.

Conclusion

As you can see, the mentality behind backup methods can range widely. The one thing all users have in common is the need to plan for problems, and be prepared. Back it up, or kiss it good-bye. Now that you have the knowledge just get away from the laziness because you simply never know what and when a catastrophic data loss could occur.