Backup Your Data Now!
I lost all my data...
Everyone knows that the data on their machines is important. Some files are irreplaceable. If the only video of your baby’s first steps or the photos of your wedding are on your computer and something happens to the drive, it could be a disaster. So is losing all your business’s financial records and customer information in a fire. Data recovery for a hard drive can cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars, depending on the size of the hard drive and the state that it is in. That’s if the data is even recoverable. If you have a flood or a fire, recovery becomes more difficult. Or even worse, if a computer or laptop is stolen, they aren’t usually recovered. So, in that case the data is lost. Despite knowing this, most people and many businesses, don’t backup their data frequently enough, if at all. Of those that do, most don’t have offsite backup.
To have backups that you can count on, you need both onsite and offsite backups. Onsite backups are important, so that you can quickly get back up and running if your computer dies or you accidentally delete an important file that you need to recover quickly. Offsite backup is important in the case of natural disasters or theft. They allow you to get another computer and restore your data. Offsite backup could be as simple as backing up your data and then taking it away from your computer, such as taking a work backup home or a home backup to work. It could also involve an online backup services such as:
- Dropbox: 2-5GB free, 50GB – $10/month, 100GB – $20/month
- LiveMesh: 5GB free
- Apple’s MobileMe: 20GB – $69/year
- Mozy: (home not pro) 2GB free, Unlimited – $4.95/month
- Carbonite: (personal not pro) Unlimited $55/year
- Amazon S3: Variable based on data storage & data transfer
Depending on the speed of your internet connection and the amount of data you backup, it might take you awhile to restore your data from an online backup service, but you will get it back.
How do I backup?
I do backups here on two externals. The onsite backup is a Drobo that backs up all of our important files using a RAID-like multiple drive setup. The offsite backup is a portable Toshiba drive that I keep with me when I leave the house. Now that our internet connection is snappier, I plan on doing online backups of our data after I consolidate a bunch of data on my older machines onto the newer machines they will be residing on.
Why do I care about this subject?
I’m passionate about this subject because I have seen several businesses that have data that, if lost, could potentially lose them thousands or tens of thousands of dollars and countless man hours (or people hours) trying to recreate the data. Don’t be that stupid. Yes, I said it. Stupid. Backing up is easy now and relatively inexpensive. Do it. I don’t want any of you or your businesses to suffer because you were trying to save the cost of a latte or two a month.
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I’m backing up my Mac Mini locally using Time Machine with an external drive. I’m creating offline backups using Backblaze over the ‘net. If you pay yearly, Backblaze is around $50.00. It gives you unlimited storage for your backups, and the Mac client is pretty robust. It’ll backup from external drives, and many of the ‘net-based backup services won’t. I’ve also tested their file recovery system and it works well.
Now, that reminds me that I have to come up with some kind of strategy to backup Jen’s machine. She can only go up to OS 10.4.11, so Time Machine’s not an option. In the past, I’ve just manually copied files from her computer to mine, which in turn, included them with my backups. I need to do some research and see if there’s a script that’d do that for me automatically.