Plan B: Why You Should Always Have a Computer Backup Plan

There is an old saying, "If it ain't broke don't fix it",data on their secure servers, but the upload times
many people subscribe to this philosophy with theircan be really slow, even with broad band.
computers. If they can turn their computer on andI recommend getting a large capacity external hard
access their email or play a game, then preparing fordrive, preferably with USB 2 or FireWire capability.
an eventual disaster is usually the last thing on theirBuy the largest capacity drive you can afford, a
minds.minimum of 120 Gigabytes. Now if your main hard
If you use your computer for business or storedrive fails, you will have a current mirror image of the
important files like family pictures or tax records, it isdrive you can restore using a special boot disk
imperative that you formulate a plan to backup yourcreated by your backup software.
computer on a regular basis. Even if your computer is2. Buy a Computer Backup Program and Use it. There
brand new, or just a few months old, hard drives canare a lot of software solutions out there, Norton
fail, power surges and lightening strikes happen, andGhost is probably the most well known. For various
viruses or malware can wipe out your data at areasons I won't get into in this article, I don't
moment's notice.recommend Ghost as your primary backup software.
Recently, the main hard drive failed in one of theI have tried many different backup programs and the
computers I manage for a busy Real Estate office.one I use most frequently is Arconis True Image.
They had a backup plan in place, but they failed toRegardless of what program you choose, learn to
routinely follow it. The latest backup data on theuse it effectively, develop a computer backup plan
external drive was over a year old. They lostand stick to it.
hundreds of contacts and thousands of dollars inYou may want to backup once a week, every other
labor spent building data bases and specializedday or even daily if you are constantly adding new
software files.and important data. I perform an incremental backup
I restored all the old data I could and immediatelyof each computer every five days. This gives us
instituted a regular backup schedule that they haverecent enough data files to work off of should we
been following religiously. They were not worriedexperience another failure. Whatever schedule you
about a catastrophic data failure because they hadchoose, stick to it, no excuses.
installed new hard drives in their computers just over3. Create a boot disk and know how to use it. The
a year ago. But hard rives are very delicate andmost recent backup in the world is useless if you are
complex, and one never knows when there may beunable to restore it. If your hard drive fails, you must
a failure.be able to restore your backup data to your new
So how do you go about setting up and following adrive or computer. To do this you will need a
proper computer backup plan? Here are mybootable CD or a set of bootable floppy disks to
suggestions:restore your backup image. Each program does this a
1. Get Some Form of External Storage Capability.bit differently, be sure to read the manual and fully
Windows XP has a built in restore feature, but that isunderstand the process.
worthless if you have a catastrophic hard driveBy following the Best Practices I listed above, your
failure. To be truly effective, your computer backupsdata will be safe from eventual loss. Hard drive failure
must be stored outside of your computer. You canwill no longer be a major catastrophe, if you have a
do this by writing the data to CDROMS or DVDs, butproper backup plan in place you can be up and
this is a rather slow and cumbersome method. Thererunning in a matter of hours.
are online services which allow you to store your