Hack 100 Do Your Backups

Admittedly, backing up your datafiles is not the coolest thing you could be doing with your PC. Backups rank right up there with cleaning out the rain gutters, giving the cat a bath, calling your ISP for support, and having a root canal. That said, spending an hour or so setting up the right backup process and then launching it manually or letting it run at a scheduled time will be a blessing sometime in the future.

Depending on the method and software you choose, your first backup may be a whopper—but the subsequent ones, incremental or differential backups, may take very little time or trouble.

Windows provides its own limited backup program—sending files off to diskettes, tape drives, or other logical drives, including network drives. Apparently the developers of Windows XP had not counted on using the included backup program with CD-ROMs as a media of choice to hold the backup files. At least you can back up to a network drive on a file server.

More versatile programs such as Stomp's BackUp MyPC (http://www.stompinc.com) and Newtech Infosystems NTI Backup Now! (http://www.ntius.com) support placing backups on CD and DVD media as well as tape drives and other logical disk drives. BackUp MyPC's wizard and scheduler are as simple as can be to get you going, and after your first backup, it's almost a set-and-forget process—just make sure you leave your PC on and have writable media ready to accept the data.

You can also back up with disk imaging/cloning software [Hack#95], making it much easier to recover from a totally dead disk drive on a replacement drive. Whichever method you choose, even if it is as primitive as copying your datafiles to diskettes, Zip drives, CD-ROMs, or DVDs, consider adding backups to your new PC's configuration.

If your backup media choices are limited to a program like Windows Backup, then the simplest and fastest way to store your data is to add a second hard drive to your PC and use it only for backups. If you clone your first hard drive to your second and then store backups on the second drive, you have a bootable spare with all your programs and data in one place. You can put the second drive in a removable hard drive tray (see the hardware solution under [Hack #86] ) and use it to back up other PCs as well. Backing up to another hard drive is the fastest method of saving your data, but I do not recommend leaving the backup drive in a system or running anywhere all the time. Disconnect your backup device to save it from mechanical wear and tear, as well as possible electronic damage if you experience a power surge.

The second, bootable hard drive concept is available in an off-the-shelf product from CMS (http://www.cmsproducts.com) called the Automated Backup System, or ABS. The ABS is available in desktop and portable/laptop models. The ABS software can make the backup media bootable as a clone of your main hard drive and then perform full or incremental backups of your data in the background with very little impact on system performance. After the first full backup and careful selection of the files and folders you want to back up in the future, you'll never even know the ABS is there.