How to Backup and Restore Your Data
All of the data on your computer is stored on one or more hard disks. While these are very reliable, they do fail occasionally. If this happens, then all of the data stored on that disk may be lost. You could also lose files by deleting them accidentally, or if your computer becomes infected with a virus. To avoid these problems, it's essential that you regularly backup your data, just in case.
Where to Backup Your Data To
There are several different types of media you can backup your files onto, each with their own advantages and disadvantages:
Second Internal Hard Disk: Some computers have more than one hard disk, which makes it possible to backup data from one disk to another. This provides protection against disk failure, accidental deletion of files, viruses etc., but it won't help if your entire computer is damaged (for example, in a fire). It's a quick and efficient way of backing up data, because it's faster to read and write data to an internal disk than, for example, to an online backup system on the internet.
If your computer only has a single hard disk, but has a slot available for a second, then you could buy and install another relatively cheaply (from about $40 upwards, depending on the capacity). The installation is usually reasonably straightforward, but does involve removing the cover of your computer and a little tinkering inside it (specific instructions for doing this will depend on the make and model of your computer and disk, and should be available from the manufacturers).
External Hard Disk: If you're not confident about adding an internal drive to your computer, or it doesn't have a spare slot for you to do so, you can always add an external hard drive, which again are relatively cheap (from about $60 upwards, depending on capacity). This is another disk drive that is contained in a separate box, and connects to your computer via a USB or firewire connection, so the physical installation is just a matter of using a cable to connect it to your computer (you will still need to install the driver software).
As with an internal disk, this will provide protection against disk failure, accidental deletion of files, viruses etc. Because it's in a standalone box, which can be disconnected and moved to a separate location, it provides more protection in case of physical damage to your computer. However, if you want an automated backup process (where your data is automatically backed up daily or weekly, for example), then constantly having to reconnect and disconnect the disk before and after each backup becomes tedious. In practice, you're much more likely just to leave it connected, which means that there isn't actually that much more protection from something like a fire.
DVDs/CDs: If your computer has a CD or DVD writer (which most reasonably modern computers do), you can back up files to one or more DVDs or CDs. A regular DVD can hold about 4.7GB of data, while a CD is much more limited at about 700MB.
An advantage of this method is that it's easy to store the backups in a different physical location, which means that your data is more secure in case of something like a fire. A big disadvantage though is that it's a more manual process – while it's easy to schedule backups onto an internal or external hard disk, it's difficult to do onto CDs or DVDs, because if you have any significant amount of data then you'll need to be present to change disks part way through.
USB Flash Drive: The advantages and disadvantages of using these are almost the same as for DVDs/CDs. The amount of data you can store will obviously depend on the capacity of the drive you're using, but for most people, their personal data would be too large to fit on a single device. As for DVDs/CDs, the biggest drawback is the need for manual intervention during the backup process.
Online Backups: There are many companies now offering online backup services. You pay a monthly fee (you can get unlimited storage space for about $50 per year from several companies), and then use their software to backup your data to their servers, and download it again if and when you need to restore it. These systems provide protection against disk failure, accidental deletion of files, viruses etc., but because the storage is physically remote from your computer, they also provide protection in case of disasters like fires as well.
The downside is the recurring fee, rather than a once-off fee if you purchase a separate disk. Some people also prefer the comfort of knowing their data is on a disk in their personal possession, rather than residing on a remote server somewhere. Finally, transferring large amounts of data over the internet can be much slower than transferring it to a local disk, so backups (and restoring data) will take longer.
What to Backup
At a minimum, you should back-up the personal data (documents, pictures, music, email etc.) of all of the users on your computer. This means that if you do have a problem with your disk, you won't lose any of this.
You can take this a step further and back-up everything on the disk. This includes all of the personal data, plus the installed programs, system files and everything else. This means that if your disk does fail, you can create a new disk that's exactly the same as the old one – with all of your personal data plus the same installed programs, settings etc.
Backup Types
The main types of backup are:
Full: This copies everything from the source directory to the destination. It does not check whether the files and folders being copied have already been included in previous backups – it just copies everything regardless. When you do a backup for the first time it's a full backup, but after that subsequent backups are usually either incremental or mirror.
Incremental: This only copies files and folders that have been created or modified since the last backup. Most backup software performs a full backup at first, and then incremental backups after that. With an incremental backup, files and folders that have been deleted are not usually removed from the backup copy – so the backup copy is a superset allowing these to still be retrieved if they've been accidentally lost.
Mirror: This is like an incremental backup, except that files and folders that have been deleted from the source are removed from the backup, so the backup becomes an exact mirror of the source.
How to Backup Your Data
If you're backing up your data to an online system, that system will provide its own software application which can be configured to backup your data automatically. The details vary depending on the provider that you choose, but most are fairly intuitive and provide good documentation and tutorials.
Windows XP doesn't provide either of the backup solutions that come with the various versions of Vista. So, you'll need separate backup software to do this. As mentioned in the previous section, we've used the freeware version of SyncBack from 2BrightSparks, and found it to be very good. It's available for download from http://www.2brightsparks.com/downloads.html#freeware (you can also download SyncBackSE, which is a more advanced version which you need to purchase), and its use is explained in our page on How to Backup and Restore Your Data Using SyncBack.
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