Why and how to back up your files

In this increasingly digital world, it's no surprise that instead of paper files, most of us now keep thousands upon thousands of digital files. Bank statements, correspondence from around the world, photos of the family, your address book — it's nearly all digital now, and instead of being secured in a cupboard, filing cabinet, or safe, it's all on your hard drive. Hard drives can fail at any time — a lightning strike, a mistake performing a computer upgrade, a virus causing trouble, or simple mechanical failure as they wear out — so it's wise to take precautions, just in case.

Why back up?
The scary truth is, your hard drive can fail at any time. Hard drives are generally good for years, but like all things, they wear out, and whether it's a gradual decline or a sudden event, it's never convenient. If your hard drive were to fail today, is there data that you would miss and have trouble replacing? Chances are, you've got a lot of memories and important files that you don't want to lose.

Fortunately, making backups is easy and, in most cases, inexpensive. A backup is simply a copy of a file on your computer that you store somewhere else, whether that's on another hard drive, a separate computer in your home, or online using cloud storage. You can back up the entire contents of your hard drive, or just your important personal files (things like contact lists, documents, and photos). Then, if your hard drive crashes, you have a copy that can be quickly restored once your computer is back up and running properly.

Making a home backup
The quickest and easiest kind of backup uses a portable, external hard drive. It's exactly the same as the hard drive in your computer — but it's portable, so you can unplug it and store it in a safe place.

The only real complication is choosing the right size hard drive.

• If you only intend to back up important documents (a folder or two full of financial documents, for instance, along with your email address book), something as modest as a USB data stick will be enough.
• If you want to back up everything — all your system files, your installed programs, and every LOLcat you've ever downloaded — you'll need something bigger — something like a 1 or 2TB  external hard drive. A good rule of thumb is that you'll want a backup hard drive that's at least half the size of your computer's drive, if not the same size, so you don't need to worry about running out of space and having to decide what to backup, and what to leave to chance.

If you're a Windows user, there's a straightforward a Backup and Restore feature, which allows you to back up all or part of the information on your machine to a second hard drive or disk partition. It's just a matter of telling the backup software where to save your files and scheduling when you'd like it to happen.

If you're a Mac user and you have OS X 10.5 (Leopard) or newer, the built-in Time Machine utility is the thing to use. Our Mac 101: Time Machine guide will walk you through the entire process; as with almost all things Apple, it's very simple.

Once the backup is complete, unplug your portable hard drive and store it somewhere secure, such as in a safe, or at least in a cool, dry place. Remember to label your backup drives, even if it's just with a Post-It note, so you know which data is on which drive (especially if you're a multi-user household), and don't forget to jot down the date!

Restoring from a home backup
In both cases, restoring from a Windows or Mac backup is very easy. Just plug in your backup drive and launch your backup program, then simply follow the prompts to restore your data. The folks who design backup software know that losing data is stressful enough without having to struggle with complicated restoration procedures!

Backing up to the cloud
The other option, if you don't want to mess around with portable hard drives, is storing your data in a remote location — whether that's on the internet or just another computer. In general, it's both more expensive and slower than using a portable hard drive, but it's a lot more convenient and flexible. You can also access your data from any computer that's connected to the internet, which is useful if you travel or work with multiple computers, or if the computer you backed up suffers a complete breakdown and needs to be replaced.

One new twist that's a boon to folks who have several computers is the ability to back up one computer's information to another; so it's not stored on the cloud at all, it's just on another computer you've got access too. One service, CrashPlan, even allows you to back up your data to a friend's computer, and they can back up to yours. Talk about a literal interpretation of "I've got your back!"

Sign up
If you want to store more than a few gigabytes of files, cloud storage will cost you a monthly or yearly fee. In general, if you're just backing up sensitive documents, you might be able to get away with a free package — but if you want to back up all of your files, you'll need to subscribe to one of the cloud storage services' premium tiers to have enough space for everything.

Once you've signed up, you'll be prompted to download some software. Install it, open it, and you'll be walked through a very simple quick-start setup process. Basically, you'll be asked which folders you want to back up — which folders will be synchronized — and the software will get to work uploading your files. Whenever you make a change (by saving a document to one of the synchronized folders, for instance), that change will be made to the online copy, too, so you'll have up-to-the-minute data protection.

Restoring from a cloud backup
If your hard drive fails or if you're just bought a new computer, simply install the backup client you used to store files remotely, run it, and it will automatically download all of your backed up files. Easy!

There's never a good time for a hard drive to fail, but with a good backup strategy, you'll be back up and running, with minimal data loss, in no time.

[Image credit: fDhooghe]

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