NWA-PCUG Newsletter Article, August 2003
Backup Basics
by David Hinds, Vice President
dlhinds@cox-internet.com
(click to email author)


Recap of July Meeting

Some of the reasons that everyone should backup include: hardware failure which can be as disastrous as a complete hard drive failure due to the driver motor or other components of the drive controller failing, or corruption of the master boot record or file allocation tables. Less disastrous hardware failures such as power supply, cpu, motherboard, etc. failure can result in interruption of productivity and may result in data loss. An emergency boot disk should always be on hand in case the system fails to boot, especially as most all computer manufacturers are only providing restore CD’s that will only reformat the hard drive and reinstall the programs that were on the computer at the time of sale. As long as the hard drive itself is working, data can be recovered by simply installing the drive in a working computer as a slave drive and copying the files to another storage device; Viruses can range from total file corruption/deletion to a minor annoyance or anywhere in between; Power failure can result in corruption of open files; Operator error can cause unintentional file deletion or overwriting by using the same filename for different files; Theft/vandalism and fire are things we seldom think about, but are arguments for offsite storage of backups. Installing new software (including Microsoft Updates) can also cause system crashes resulting in data loss.

What should you back up? Each individual’s needs will vary. The operating system and installed software when the time to reinstall them could take an unacceptable amount of time. For my own purposes, I find that a duplicate hard drive (I use Power Quest’s Drive Copy) removed from the computer allows me to get back into operation without spending days reinstalling the OS and all the other software I use. Between times that the drive copy is made new data is backed up to a zip drive or superdisk or written to CD depending on the size and type of data. Data is generally much easier to back up than to reenter so any data of value should be backed up.

There are several types of media available for backing up, whether backing up operating system, installed software, data, or everything. A second fixed hard drive can be used to mirror the contents of the primary hard drive; however, the second drive is running as much as the primary drive and just as likely to fail. External hard drives are becoming more reasonably priced and can more easily be removed and connected to another system for data recovery. Removable hard drives are another option, but require a docking station when moved to another system. Tape drives have been another popular backup media and are still used extensively in business, but are being used less and less for home use with the decrease in cost of hard drives, CD burners and DVD burners. CD/(CD-RW) and DVD/(DVD-RW) costs are continuing to decrease and are highly favored because the disks are easily inserted and removed and can store large files. Internet websites also offer storage space, but personally, I don’t recommend them as an option.

Back ups can be accomplished manually using DOS commands or commercial software, or automatically using batch files or other backup software.

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