Happy New Year 2010!

A substantial part of our digital life is stored in our personal and work computers. Photos, music, emails, documents and finances lie in hard discs that can break down, be stolen or destroyed. Files can also be erased by mistake or by viruses.

If you have lost computer files you know the horrible feeling of knowing that memories, information and hours of work are irreversibly gone. By now you should be convinced that you need to backup your files. In this post I will contrast different backup options that are available to any computer user.

CD or DVD
Making a copy of your files in a CD or DVD is one of the first options that users attempt. This is better than nothing but it has major disadvantages: 1) It is a manual process, which means that it is time consuming, therefore requires the user to be disciplined and at the end is not performed very often. 2) Writable CD's and DVD's are less reliable than a hard disc and individual files or the whole disc can be easily damaged. 3) Discs can be lost, stolen or destroyed. 4) Most users need several DVD's to store all their files.

External USB Drive
One of the most popular backup methods in use nowadays is copying files to an external USB drive. Some users have software that automatically creates copies, incremental backups or synchronizes the computer files with the external storage.  The disadvantages of this method are: 1) Unless you have some backup or synchronization software, the process is still manual. 2) Usually users keep many files in the external drive only, making them vulnerable. 3) External drives can also be lost, stolen or destroyed.

Network Drive
Home and office users sometimes have access to store their files in a network drive. This approach may be better than an external drive but it still has disadvantages: 1) Unless the user has some backup or synchronization software the backup process is manual. 2) Unless the network drive has some mirroring or redundancy mechanism the reliability is as good as a simple external drive. 3) Although a network drive might not be subject to be lost, it is still subject to be stolen or destroyed in a home or office environment.

Online Backup Service
This backup alternative has been developed recently. The providers usually charge a monthly or annual fee, and some even have free plans with small storage capacity.

The service relies on a tiny program that runs in your computer which automatically stores files in a remote data center via the Internet. The data center is a facility designed to house computer equipment, which minimizes any risks of theft, fire, flooding, electrical failure and even earthquakes.

The systems where the files are stored use mirroring and redundancy mechanism to tolerate any hardware failure. The files are encrypted so there is no risk of unauthorized access. Most services allow users to download individual or groups of files via their website, which is an added benefit if you need to access your information and you are not close to your computer.

Some of the online backup services available are Mozy, Carbonite, BackBlaze, and iDrive. I strongly recommend BackBlaze for both home and business use because it has a flat rate for unlimited storage, including backup of your external USB drives.

A couple of important notes regarding backup:

• Open Files: Manual backup and many automated software do not handle open files well. This means that if the backup runs while you are working on a Word document, that file will not be backed up. One critical instance of this limitation is Microsoft Outlook or any other e-mail program — these programs are open almost all the time the computer is on, leaving the backup software no time to store its files, so it is important that the system you choose has some special mechanism to deal with open files.
   
• Mac Time Machine: some Apple users say that with the Time Machine application they don't need a backup solution. They are wrong! Time machine only protects you from erasing or changing a file yourself. It does not protect against hardware failure, theft, fire, etc. Mac users also benefit from a online backup service.

You must remember that the whole purpose of backup is to minimize the loss of information. With the use of an online backup system you will have a very reliable and almost continuous backup, for a very affordable price.