The Computer Backup Dilemma
RTA Information Technology, Tempe, Arizona
"What's a mother to do?"
That was the question raised by a decades-old television commercial, lamenting the dilemma of getting children to do what they should do to keep heathy and happy. Which leads us to computer backups.
Hard drives fail all the time. The mean-time-between-failure for recent hard drives is about eleven years. More or less. Practically speaking, the odds of a hard drive failing are about one-in-ten each year you use it.
What happens when your hard drive fails? At a minimum, it means getting the drive replaced and re-installing all your software. If you have any important data (like irreplaceable pictures of you departed grandmother or your family's financial information), then, hopefully, you have backups.
At worst, you lose everything. Do you have important data? Do you have backups of that data? Have you ever tested those backups to make sure they are good?
How much is your data worth to you? Hundreds of thousands of U.S. computer owners have to ask themselves that question every year. Their hard drives have failed or their operating system has failed and they have to decide how much they are willing to pay to recover their data.
Yes, data can often be recovered. The cost and difficulty depend on what failed. Recovering data, at a minimum, will involve removing the hard drive, installing it into another computer, and copying the data. That takes hours. Frequently, the problem is more serious than that. The drive's electronics have failed. The drive must be taken apart and repaired before data can be recovered. Even worse is when the drive's internal platter or head is damaged. Data recovery will cost thousands of dollars in that case.
Two Kinds of Backups
Want to save money and avoid the pain and sorrow of data loss? Make backups.
In general, you can make two times of backups: System and data. Frequent data backups are a must. The frequency depends on how often you change your data and how easy it is to re-create it. In other words, the frequency depends on how valuable the data is to you.
System backups allow you to easily recover your operating system, your applications, your settings, and your passwords. For many computer owners, system backups may take up more space than data backups, but need not be done very often. For many of us, a yearly system backup, which makes it easy to recover our basic PC and the applications we use most often, is adequate.
How to Backup
There are a multitude of ways to backup critical data. Copy data across a network to another PC. Copy the data to a CD-R or a DVD-R. Copy it to an external USB hard drive. Or put a memory card into your PC and copy your files to that. The best way for you depends on how much data you have to backup.
"What's a mother to do?"
That was the question raised by a decades-old television commercial, lamenting the dilemma of getting children to do what they should do to keep heathy and happy. Which leads us to computer backups.
Hard drives fail all the time. The mean-time-between-failure for recent hard drives is about eleven years. More or less. Practically speaking, the odds of a hard drive failing are about one-in-ten each year you use it.
What happens when your hard drive fails? At a minimum, it means getting the drive replaced and re-installing all your software. If you have any important data (like irreplaceable pictures of you departed grandmother or your family's financial information), then, hopefully, you have backups.
At worst, you lose everything. Do you have important data? Do you have backups of that data? Have you ever tested those backups to make sure they are good?
How much is your data worth to you? Hundreds of thousands of U.S. computer owners have to ask themselves that question every year. Their hard drives have failed or their operating system has failed and they have to decide how much they are willing to pay to recover their data.
Yes, data can often be recovered. The cost and difficulty depend on what failed. Recovering data, at a minimum, will involve removing the hard drive, installing it into another computer, and copying the data. That takes hours. Frequently, the problem is more serious than that. The drive's electronics have failed. The drive must be taken apart and repaired before data can be recovered. Even worse is when the drive's internal platter or head is damaged. Data recovery will cost thousands of dollars in that case.
Two Kinds of Backups
Want to save money and avoid the pain and sorrow of data loss? Make backups.
In general, you can make two times of backups: System and data. Frequent data backups are a must. The frequency depends on how often you change your data and how easy it is to re-create it. In other words, the frequency depends on how valuable the data is to you.
System backups allow you to easily recover your operating system, your applications, your settings, and your passwords. For many computer owners, system backups may take up more space than data backups, but need not be done very often. For many of us, a yearly system backup, which makes it easy to recover our basic PC and the applications we use most often, is adequate.
How to Backup
There are a multitude of ways to backup critical data. Copy data across a network to another PC. Copy the data to a CD-R or a DVD-R. Copy it to an external USB hard drive. Or put a memory card into your PC and copy your files to that. The best way for you depends on how much data you have to backup.
posted by Myron Johnson | 8:37 AM
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