Like brushing your teeth

Backups are a MUST!

You should backup your data like you should brush your teeth if you want to keep ‘em!

Yes, one should run a virus scanner, and a spyware scanner (and yes I am talking to you smug apple users, a few viruses (and no virii isn’t a word!) have started appearing on your OS too!), but the one thing that no computer platform can escape is hard drive crashes!

It is not a question of if a drive will crash, it’s a WHEN!

I have had 3 friends lose their hard drives in the last couple of weeks. Oh yes, they were going to take my advice about backups when they got around to it…BUT IT’S TOO LATE NOW!

At minimum if all you do is email and surf, have a flashdrive backing up your email’s archive files and your browsers favourites folder, keep them and your computer original recovery disk and you should be all set.

If you have a more complex computing environment, then you need a real backup solution.

Remember: laptops; they are MORE prone to hard drive problems then the desktop that is stable and never moves.

Even solidstate drives have a limit on writes, and you can have a logic crash or an accidently erased files. Microsoft even has had patches that erased or changed critical files in the OS causing to be unable to boot!

Backup, backup, backup!

For real hard drive security I recommend:

1. Retrospect Backup by EMC, it makes fast great backups and creates a really nice recovery disk, you basically put it in your drive, walk away and it rebuilds everything. Cost: $125
2. Download a copy of Speedfan, not only will it monitor and control your computer’s cooling fans but it will give you SMART status of hard drives and give you warning if one is failing. Cost: Free.
3. If you haven’t taken my advice to backup, backup and backup, then grab a copy of Spinrite from GRC. It might MIGHT be able to resuscitate your hard drive. Cost: $85.00
4. That Drive Clone Pro (see below) is also a great backup system, you have a clone of your hard drive so just slip it in you system if your main drive dies (great on business trips!).
5. For the Apple users; Timemachine and SuperDuper(Also see previous post) are a fantastic backup combination!

I am so paranoid, I have all my systems backing up every nice with two bi-monthly external eSATA hard drives that rotate between the house and my safety deposit box at my bank.

Now go brush your teeth and BACKUP your hard drive! Your mouth and data will thank you!