Sorrentino's Notes (09/05)
A Practical Approach To Backups
by Phil Sorrentino
Member of the Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc.
W all know that you have to
backup everything on your computer, but just how to do it is not always obvious. Let’s look
at what has to be done and what is available to do it. There are a lot
of software applications available that can help you get the job done.
But, just what is the job? For most computer users, there are two things
that need to be protected; let me call them Data and System. Like all
things that need to be protected, we need to have insurance against the
event that destroys them. We buy life, car, boat, home, and health
insurance to help out when the item is damaged or destroyed. Backing up
can be considered insurance. Hopefully, you will never need it, but if
you do you will be very happy you have it. So we need to protect our
Data and our System. Some software applications treat these the same
way, and some treat them differently. Here is a reasonable view of
backup and a practical approach to getting the job done.
The “Data” segment is all of the files that you have created or
collected. Your pictures, music, videos, financial records, downloads,
correspondence, historical documents, medical research, collections of humor
sent to you by friends, etc. The “System” segment is the Operating System
(XP or Vista) and applications (Word, Excel, Photoshop Elements, Firefox,
Virus Protection Software, Drivers, Utilities, etc.) that you have loaded on
your computer, which you use all the time. The System can be reproduced,
even if it takes a new computer and many hours to load it, but it can be
reproduced. The Data can be reproduced in some instances, but cannot in many
others. Just think of the pictures you have taken and put on the computer,
and then deleted them from the camera, or the paper pictures you scanned in
and had the originals damaged, or the .mp3 music you converted from your
vinyl discs or tapes that you have since given away.
So, the first step in this practical approach is to separate your Data
from your System. Conceptually, this can be done by keeping all of your Data
in the My Documents (XP) or Documents (Vista) folder. But the operating
system has located these folders on the C: drive, the same drive that
contains the System. If you have only one drive on your computer and you
can’t separate the Data and System into separate partitions easily, this
approach will still work. The only difference is that the Data will be
duplicated in the image when the image is taken (and the image will be
bigger than it needs to be). If you have only one drive on your system you
may be able to separate Data and System by creating a second partition on
the C: drive and calling it Data, and moving all of your Data to it. An even
better solution would be to have a second drive for the Data. Either way,
with this separation of Data and System, we can approach the backup of each
segment, separately.
First let’s look at the “Data” segment. It would be nice to have a copy
of your Data in a safe location that would not be affected if, or when,
something happened to the “Source Data”, the data that you use every day. A
practical way of doing this is to just create a second copy of your data,
regularly, and keep it in a safe place. To implement this, all we need is an
external disk drive that will be connected during the backup process and
then kept powered off in a safe place. The external drive will have an exact
copy of your Data.
(If needed, it can be connected to any computer and all of your data will
be accessible to that computer, without any type of conversion.) You could
even keep a second copy on a second external drive. The next item we need is
software to create this Backup Copy on the external drive. This can be
accomplished with many backup or synchronizing software applications (eg.
Synchromaster, Synctoy), most of which are reasonably priced and some are
even free. For this practical approach, let’s select Synctoy, which is free
from the Microsoft web site. Synctoy helps you keep two folders in sync,
meaning that the syncing process updates the destination (Backup Data)
folder with any changes that have occurred in the source (Source Data)
folder. This is usually a quick and easy process to accomplish. Being easy
means that you will probably do it regularly. (Note: you could accomplish
this with a simple copy of the source Data, but each time a source file was
added or changed, you would have to remember what changed and then copy the
changed files to the destination folder. The synchronizing software does all
of this for you.) So, an external hard drive and synchronizing software
insures the Data segment.
Next, let’s look at the “System” segment. Remember, the Operating System
(OS) and the Applications (Apps.) are combined and are on the C: drive. If
your hard drive fails, or if a virus renders the OS un-useable, the OS and
the Apps. will need to be re-loaded from your source material. This is not
the end of the world, but it could take many hours to re-construct the
system and get it to where it was before the disaster occurred. (Just think
of all the applications and all the updates that may have to be installed).
To ease this problem, there is software available (eg. True Image, Ghost,
unfortunately not free) that takes an “image” of the System and compresses
it (to between 40% and 60% in size) and saves it on another drive, like an
external drive. Any of these software applications allow you to create an
image of your System segment. This image is a representation of the System
at the time the image is taken. If the image is stored on an external drive,
it can be used to re-construct the System with the Restore function of the
software. The Restore will take the image and convert it so it can be loaded
on to a working C: drive. After the Restore is performed, the System will be
exactly the way it was when the image was originally taken. Hopefully, that
is not too long before the tragic event that disabled the computer. So, an
external drive and imaging software insures the System segment.
So in summary, in order to insure your total system you only need
synchronizing software (Synctoy for example), imaging software (True Image
for example) and an external hard drive. One remaining question is the size
of the hard drive. The hard drive should be at least large enough to house
the expected size of your data within a reasonable time in the future. In
other words, if your data now is about 40 GB, and you have been adding
pictures and such to your collections at about 15 GB per year, then a 100 GB
disk drive would probably do the trick. Actually, a simple way is to just
get an external drive that is about twice the size of the sum of your Data
and System partitions on your computer. This allows for a complete Data
backup and multiple System “Images”. How often to backup is the final
question. Data and System segments are separate and handled by different
backup processes. The Data should be synchronized regularly, maybe daily or
at least weekly, depending on how much your Data is changing. The System
should be imaged monthly to make sure there are not too many updates to
apply to the Restored image. With the Data and System segments insured, the
computer owner can now sleep peacefully each night. Sweet Dreams.
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Copyright 2009. This article is from the May 2009 issue of the
Sarasota PC Monitor, the official monthly publication of the Sarasota
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