Hard Drive Backup Checklist

Hard Drive Backup Checklist

How do you select and organize your data to be backed up?
What things do you need to create a reliable backup?

This page contains the following sections you can go to immediately:

Setting up backup right to protect from viruses, corruption, and lost files.
The Checklist

Setting up backup right

How to protect from virus contamination of your files

After you remove a virus being active in your computer, you still have to make sure that your files do not have any sleeping viruses waiting for an opportunity to reinfect your computer.

A virus scan usually catches the sleeping and active viruses, and usually removes the ones it finds (or tells you it didn't remove them).

But what if your data has viruses sleeping in them? You have to replace those infected files with files you backed up earlier.

What happens if my only backup has viruses as well? This can happen when you did not know you had viruses when the backup ran. You are probably stuck, and have lost your data. If your antivirus software did not remove the viruses (usually the case), then there is no way for you to disinfect that data.

These days viruses are usually designed to fly "under the radar" and avoid detection as long as possible. Some manage to ramain undetected for weeks or longer.

This is one reason why it is so important to keep multiple copies of your backed up data, and going back at least a week or two.

How to protect yourself from scrambled or "corrupted" files.

This happens. Sometimes it is due to a voltage surge from the electric outlet, when the computer does not use a surge protector or a computer UPS.

It can happen in a summer brown out when electrical power is cut back by a small percentage because of a shortage. Your computer is protected from this by having a computer UPS, but a surge protector offers no protection in this area.

A static electric charge at the wrong time can do this also

It can also happen for other reasons that are hard to track. When computers save files, they are saving millions bilions

The solution is the same as for viruses above, since you may need to go back to days or weeks to find the file in good condition. We rarely know when files get corrupted.

A file was deleted that you need back

You may not discover this right away. Use the same approach as above, for scrambled files..

Checklist
What do you want your backup to do?

Backup frequency
Run automatically weekly
Run automatically daily (recommended)
Run when you realize you need it (manually).

Backup runs:
Backup manually. (You might forget to backup.)
Backup automatically (recommended)

If backup is to run automatically:
Set up backup software on your computer See here.
Online backup (Easier. More reliable.)

Protection in case of hardware failure (For explanation, click here.)
Use RAID or NAS device (Recommended)
Use online backup (Highest recommendation)
Use single external drive (not recommended)

Which computers?
Back up just one computer
Backup multiple computers that are networked to share data. Recommend you get a competent technician to set this up internally. Online backup is simpler and you may be fine doing it yourself.
Backup multiple computers. Not networked to share data. (Will require backup software installed on each computer, or online backup installed on each computer.)

Choose between online backup and conventional backup
Online backup This requires a payment each month (unless you get a free account from Mozy to protect up to 2 GB of data on each computer. - great deal.) Even at that, a bare bones account may only cost six to twenty dollars monthly. Other than that fee, online backup is a no brainer most of the time. It is far easier to set up, more reliable, and simpler to run. It requires little or no tech time. There is generally much better technical support for on line backup, although with the less expensive service like Carbonite, it is by email only, and you may need to wait a day or so to hear back from them. Goes slowly.
Conventional backup We recommend you choose conventional backup when you want to avoid the cost of online backup, and it will acutally be less expensive to buy whatever hardware you need and get it set up with software, network connections, technician time, and your time. This cost of online backup will become most significant when you have more than 10 GB of data to protect AND you need to backup databases, Exchange data, or other complexities of multiple users. Of course, the cost of conventional backup increases with these demands, as well.
Consider this very basic list of files for backup:
Email. Find your PST files that hold your Outlook mail, calander, and other data.. (It is usually on the "C" drive under Documents and Settings -> [your login name] -> Application Data -> Microsoft -> Outlook. Look at the data modified to see what you have been using recently.)
Email address books (In Windows the .wab file holds addresses for many applications. To find it, do a search on your computer for file using name *.wab. files that end with .WAB are Windows Address Books. Outlook uses the PST file for this. Microsoft Exchange uses `.PAB` In Vista, that was renamed Windows Contacts. In Windows NT and in Windows 95/98 with user profiles enabled, the Windows Address Book is located in the <Windows>\Profiles\<Username>\Application Data\Microsoft\Address Book folder.
Financial records
Documents Many people now store on their computer documents like legal documents, marriage certificates, bills, etc Include your handy list of all your passwords, family addresses, Christmas or Hannakah lists, .
Photographs you value. Look out! These can add up to a lot of space on a drive.
Music and audio files (of Johnnie's first word, etc.) Same warning as above, These can add up to a lot of space if you have many.
Any database of business, family and personal contacts.
Software you bought online and have no CD for.
Manuals you downloaded for the camera, car, ice cream maker, etc.
Newspaper clippings and other things you have scanned in.
Ebooks
Recipes

OUR GREEN SUGGESTION:
To us, the more green solution is an online backup solution.
It is not really "green" until it causes no damage to the Earth, which all electronic hardware and most energy consumption does today.

But online backup is at least better. Less computer hardware is purchased and less energy is used than if you bought and ran your own solution. If you are not a tech, it will take a lot less of your time. AND it is more reliable. If you have a lot of data, it may be a little more expensive. For less than 2 GB to protect, online backup is free.

For more info, check out the Wikipedia article at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backup.