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Backing-up – It's Personal

By Lee Alexander

Data Protection

All entities: enterprise, government, small business (SBE), SmallOffice-HomeOffice (SOHO), and the individual PC user (after all, PC stands for Personal Computer) wants to insure against the loss of data. Even those with any non-volatile memory device – Personal Digital Assistant (PDA), cell phone, or digital camera – should be concerned about the integrity of information difficult or impossible to replace. All of the above are motives to create redundant files.

Few would question your intention to perform consistent backups; it is just a matter of degree. From a minimalist point of view to paranoia, doing backups requires resources and primary is time. Other necessary tools are removable media, a recording device for such media, and the software to accomplish the task.

Types of Backups

Mirroring - A disk image computer file containing the complete contents and structure of a data storage medium or device. Norton's Ghost and Go Back, and Acronis' True Image are leading examples of this type of software. In my opinion, this is overkill for most home users.

By Selective Backup (the other broad category), I refer to the picking and choosing of specific folders and files and frequency of which to make copies.

Full, Differential, and Incremental Backups

Full backup is the starting point for all other backups, and contains all the data in the folders and files that are selected to be backed up. Because full backup stores all files and folders, frequent full backups result in faster and simpler restore operations. Remember that when you choose other backup types, restore jobs may take longer.

A differential backup contains all files that have changed since the last FULL backup. The advantage of a differential backup is that it shortens restore time compared to a Full backup or an Incremental backup. However, if you perform the Differential backup too many times, the size of the Differential backup might grow to be larger than the baseline Full backup.

An Incremental backup is a backup method where multiple backups are kept (not just the last one). These backups will be incremental if each original piece of backed up information is stored only once, and then succesive backups only contain the information that changed since the previous one.

Why should I backup?

Let's stick with a simple scenario. Consider just your PC and its hard drive. It is not a question of whether the hard drive will fail but when. For most of us, the hard drive will be replaced by an upgrade to a larger and faster model, either individually or by a whole new PC, long before its expected lifetime expires. For most drives, the MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure) has grown to almost a lifetime (yours) of use. However, most of us are using it many more hours than when PCs were new. The expansion of file sizes for digital photography, music, and video place a heretofore unimaginable workload on these devices.

Now To Get Personal

From the standpoint of redundancy, I put myself in the minimalist category -- when it comes to computer data. I try to backup relevant data but not programs for which I have disks. There are customizations and settings that are not on the original disks; however, I consider reentering that type of information a small task in the event of corruption of a program. Instances have been very infrequent.

My first line of defense is to separate programs and data. A further step is to subdivide data. Windows XP gives you a leg up by incorporating folders (as a default) for My Documents, My Pictures, My Music, Etc. Aside from the Mattel-like monikers, it is a pretty good organizational scheme.

My first step in separating data is to partition the hard drive(s). My favorite software for this task is Partition Magic, now owned by Symantec. This program will create, modify, and move partitions with no loss of data. The boxed program comes with a good printed manual. Clearly written, it is a good source of information on the functions of a hard drive and filesystems.

On my Dell 4400 desktop PC with an 80 GB hard drive, I have divided it into six partitions:
C:\ ® contains the Win XP Home operating system plus files and shortcuts put there by added applications. The size is 20 GB to accommodate future installs.
D:\ ® is the application drive. Stored on this partition are major programs, such as Corel Draw, Microsoft Office, CAD programs, encyclopedias (Encarta, World Book), and utilities. 10 GB seemed like a generous size and and after four years, the partition is less than half full.
E:\ ® is the primary repository for data, especially that which is often changed, such as checking accounts and health records. Major folders are: CAD for drawings, Health for medical and dental records, Finance for bank accounts, inventories, taxes, and investment portfolios, MUG (Members spreadsheet), MUG Projects (Newsletter, Directory, etc.), and Novice. 10 GB is more than sufficient in my case.

F:\ ® is for Foto. Stored here are photo editors, add-ons and plug-ins, temporary folders for CD burning (other than the backup scenario described later), tips and tutorials - all things Digital Photo related but no digital photographs.

G:\ ® is my Backup partition. As the title says -It's Personal. Let me try to explain my logic. It may seem wasteful of storage to have copies of files on a single device. Having an older version of a file, especially one that is often updated, provides protection if an open file becomes corrupted. Events such as power glitches, kicking the tower during a write operation, or an inadvertent keystroke can darken a sunny day. Folders include Finance, Health, registry backups, Outlook archives and the like. Often used files are Dragged and Dropped much more frequently from E:\ to G:\ than they are burned to CDs.

H:\ ® is labeled INET. It's size is the remaining 15 GB. There are two major uses of this drive: a Download folder for most things downloaded from the Internet and it is where I moved My Documents with all its subfolders. The subfolder, PICTURES, is the location for almost all of my digital photos. If I must reinstall the operating system (and I have had to), My Documents is safely off the C: drive. Programs and utilities you find on the Internet are typically compressed files that Extract to multiple files. In case of a problem with a program or utility, you can reapply the installing file from the Download folder without going on-line to download it again. This is really convenient if you have a dial-up connection. Other items are casual games and miscellaneous files I have yet to categorize.

This organizational effort is my way of selecting relevant and current data for backups to CDs. The advent of reasonably priced external and NAS (Network Accessible Storage) large hard drives is an efficient and quick solution to backups. However, off-site storage is not quite as convenient as a handful of DVDs or CDs. An outstanding example is the Maxtor One-Touch III, USB2 connected, 500 GB, 7200 rpm unit. It is also available in 200 and 300 GB (less than $200) sizes. Although it will run on USB 1.1, the slower speed drastically reduces performance.

Optical Media Recording

If you enter CD backup as a keyword in a Google search, the result is 113 million hits. Based on reviews in computer magazines, I tried the recommended SyncBackSE (30 day free trial, $25 to buy) from 2BrightSparks, combined with Win XP's included burner - in my version, a limited program for Roxio. Although I have other burning programs, I wanted to stay generic.

My backup library consists of three CD-RW discs. They are labeled G_Bkup1, MUG, and Novice_Bkup. From the foregoing you can guess their contents. SyncBackSE allows you to create profiles of target files and their destination. For Win XP, the destination is C:\Documents and Settings\<user name>\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\CD Burning. This will provide temporary storage for the files and a pop-up tool tip to let you know the files are ready for burning. Clicking on the balloon will open a window; click on the File menu and choose "Write these files …” to update the CD.

Backup Schemes

Covering the multitude of backup possibilities would take many more words than allowable in this simple article. The simplest and minimal user involvement is a large external hard drive with accompanying software that does its entire operation in the background - if cost is not a factor.

Another (recently affordable) technology is RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Drives - originally the ID stood for Inexpensive Devices). It is widely used in new mid-priced desktop PCs. By using multiple, midsized hard drives, RAID1 create a mirror image of the primary drive. Other RAID configurations, using more than two hard drives, employ parity and error checking for greater security of data.

When planning your own backup strategy consider how much, how often, time involved, and at what cost. After all, yours is a PERSONAL Computer.

Digital Photos

These files present a unique problem when considering backup . From the camera, or its memory card, files are named only with a sequential numbering system. When editing we typically will give the photo a more meaningful name. In Win Explorer you can "batch" rename multiple files with a common alphanumeric title and sequential numbers. There is a wealth of photo organizing programs and if you have come across one you like – great. If you are still looking, may I suggest Photos Forever from Acoustica.com (30 day free trial, $15 to buy). The program is pretty much a one trick pony, as you might infer from its price. It searches your drives (you can restrict it to specific drives and file types) and offers to backup images found. It displays thumbnails from which you can select or choose all. Wizard-like windows guide you through the process.

After the disks are burned, CDs or DVDs, the program offers to print a list of images in thumbnail view and even tells you how many pages are required, depending upon the size of the thumbnail you selected. However, here are some cautionary notes:

If you are burning DVDs, disable auto play (from Nancy ).

CDs are finalized, i.e. you can not add anything to the disk in the future; wasteful if you select a low number of small file sized photos.

If you elected to burn from selected folders, the printed sheet will use a line to show the path of the folder. I find this very useful but you could do a workaround by temporarily moving desired photos to a single folder. This would give you more room for thumbnails on the page.