Many Americans Don't Back Up Digital Data

[Jason Dunn]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://news.designtechnica.com/article8309.html' target='_blank'>http://news.designtechnica.com/article8309.html</a><br /><br /></div><i>"Are you amongst those who flirt with digital disaster by never backing up your data off of your PC or laptop’s hard drive? If so, join the ranks of the many, according to a new survey conducted by Harris Interactive for hard drive maker Maxtor. The survey, will polled 2,299 U.S. adults in late July, found that 35 percent have never backed up their files, while an even larger number – 76 percent – don’t back them up often enough. Also revealed was the fact that 44 percent indicated they have somehow lost important information on their hard drive as a result of something like a computer virus, hardware or software malfunction or some other reason."</i><br /><br />The survey was of people in the USA, but I have a strong hunch that this is less an issue of geographical location, and more an issue of human nature. I see the problem of data loss happen again and again with people I know, and no one takes backup seriously until they experience data loss for themselves. If you haven't done so already, back up your data!

[randalllewis]

I changed my habits after the number of pictures on my computer crossed the 2000 mark a few years ago and after I had aquired a large music collection as well. I bought a stand alone 160Gb drive and backed everything up. I still do so, manually recopying my doc, music and photo files to the other drive. The biggest problem has been trying to make this an automated process. I bought Norton Ghost for this purpose and set it to make a full copy of my C drive once a month with incremental back-ups each week. A while back, while prowling the stand alone drive, I noticed the dates on the Ghost back-ups were several months old. Checking the history log of the program, I saw that it had dutifully tried to copy on the schdule I set, but that each attempt failed. The log doesn't indicate why it failed however and the computer is never turned off so that wasn't the reason. And there had been no notifications to me that a scheduled back-up session wasn't completed. If I hadn't checked the log, I would have never known.

I am motivated to do my back-up manually, but if we want more people to do back-ups, there needs to be reliable and easy to use back-up software. From my experience, Ghost doesn't fit the bill.

[jlp]

Amen.

I used to backup regularly then when I had PC Tools and what else under DOS.

I did some backups recently by copying some folders to a DVD burner, but there are no backup programs that come with XP or DVD burners that I'm aware of; and I mean a program that does NOT compress files, I want to be able to retrieve individual files seamlessly if I need to, because I want to be able to quickly open the files to check if they contain what I look for; something that's impossible to do seamlessly when a program compresses files, often using proprietary formats.

What program could do this easily and if possible automatically, including daily incremental backups?!

[Jason Dunn]

Randall - I'll try to whip up a post or a ThoughtCast that will talk about the issue of data backup.

[Bob12]

I quit doing backups as such when a software change rendered all of my backup files incompatible. Since then, I do a straight copy to an external 250gb hard drive on a regular basis. Yes, it's manual but it is also independent of proprietary file formats and, I can easily retrieve individual files whenever the need arises. In addition to this step, I also write all of my photos for a given year to DVD at the end of the year.

[Jason Dunn]

I quit doing backups as such when a software change rendered all of my backup files incompatible. Since then, I do a straight copy to an external 250gb hard drive on a regular basis.

What you need then is a backup tool that will keep your data in it's original format. Since a huge chunk of data now is already compressed formats such as JPEG and MP3s, there's not much point in compressing them.

[jlp]

I quit doing backups as such when a software change rendered all of my backup files incompatible. Since then, I do a straight copy to an external 250gb hard drive on a regular basis.

What you need then is a backup tool that will keep your data in it's original format. Since a huge chunk of data now is already compressed formats such as JPEG and MP3s, there's not much point in compressing them.

That's exactly why i hate proprietary backup file formats that I talked about.

And Jason what good program would you recommend?

[jlp]

No recommandations??

[Jason Dunn]

No recommandations??

www.handybackup.com is the program I use when I want to run scheduled backups and burn CDs. I'm planning on going into this topic in more detail in the future.

I send you a PM about your sig but I haven't heard back from you - could you please remove most of it? Somehow you bypassed our code that limits sigs to three lines.

[craigf]

If you haven't tried Second Copy 2000, look into it. It's a steal $-wise and is as flexible and reliable a backup app as I've seen. I've turned on at least a dozen people to it and nobody has yet to say anything negative about it (and I regularly get emails from folks thanking me for the recommendation after they've had a data "incident").

Now, my most important data are automatically backed up at least 3 different places, one of which is portable so I can grab it and run in case of disaster. The best thing is that I don't even think about it anymore...it just happens.

One thing I'm surprised hasn't gotten more business model attention is Internet-based offsite backups for consumers. Businesses use this a lot, but individuals almost never. Google should consider this, given all their storage capacity.

[duncanhbrown]

First, I keep 3 copies of all files, in open (non-compressed, non-proprietary) formats.
1. One copy on my computer's hard drive
2. One copy on my network server (when the server FINALLY dies I'll switch to the external USB HDD I bought)
3. One copy burned onto CD, then moved off-site to my safety deposit box. (I test backup CDs every 2-4 years for data integrity, reburning any that have failed, and never depend on only one CD backup of data.)
For MP3 and WAV-format music, and for JPG photos, I have a series of directories under My_Music and My_Pictures, a 2-digit numeric sequence (01, 02, 03). In each of these directories I copy up to 700 MB of files, then go on to the next number in the sequence. When I backup to CD, I can simply drag over one of those numeric-sequence directories, and fill up all (or most) of a 700 MB CD-R. (I'm considering backup onto a DVD, but I'm not convinced yet that the format is so universal that I'll be able to take my DVD backups to most any computer anywhere and get access to my files.)
For synchronizing all my files from HDD to NW server (and/or external USB HDD) i use FileSync, great shareware/freeware software (available at downloads.cnet.com) that compares the contents of the Source and the Destination locations, and offers (with your approval) to copy over any new or changed files to the destination. It's fast, reliable, and easy to use once you get used to it.

[Crocuta]

I did some backups recently by copying some folders to a DVD burner, but there are no backup programs that come with XP or DVD burners that I'm aware of; and I mean a program that does NOT compress files, I want to be able to retrieve individual files seamlessly if I need to, because I want to be able to quickly open the files to check if they contain what I look for; something that's impossible to do seamlessly when a program compresses files, often using proprietary formats.

What program could do this easily and if possible automatically, including daily incremental backups?!

I second craigf's recommendation of Second Copy 2000 (http://www.centered.com/). I've used it since 1999 and it is exactly what you're looking for. There's no proprietary format, it simply copies files, but it's so flexible that I can't imagine a backup task that it cannot perform. In six years, it has never made a mistake (e.g. copied an older file over a newer) or lost a file.

Here's how I use it. With the exception of photos and DV items, I keep an exact copy of all of my data files on three hard drives: one is at work, one is at home and the third is a tiny 60GB external USB hard drive that I carry back and forth.

Before I leave work each day, I use Second Copy (SC) with it's 'synchronize' setting to update the files I've worked on during the day with the external USB drive. Now my latest files are on both the work and USB drives with my home drive having yesterday's files.

I do a lot of work at home, so when I get home, the first thing I do is again to sync with SC between the USB drive and my home computer. Now the files on all three drive are identical and I can work on any file, knowing it's the latest version.

Last thing before shutting down at home, I sync one more time and the newer files on the home computer update the ones on the USB drive. Now my latest files are on the home and USB drives and my work computer is behind by one 'generation'. When I get to work the next morning, I do another sync and all three drives are again identical until I start to work.

And so it goes. I have three copies of my files at all times in at least two different physical locations. Anything that could take out all three copies would be catastrophic enough that my data would be the least of my problems.

In addition, I copy my entire data set (including images and DV files) to a large external HDD at home using SC's 'exact copy' setting. Unlike the work-home-USB system, where either disk might have the new files, in this backup, SC just makes a duplicate of my HDD files on the external HDD, deleting or replacing individual files as needed to make the external drive duplicate the internal.

So I really have four copies of my files in 2-3 locations. That takes care of backups and, more importantly, solves the problem of keeping track of versions when you regularly work on more than one computer. Try it out. It's inexpensive and there's a free trial so you can check it out with no risk.