Local backup is great, as long as your backup is independent of your PC, is at least as reliable, and is portable. Backing up your files on the same drive as the operating system is a poor choice, since it’s that drive which will most likely fail. Backing up to a separate disk on the same PC is still asking for losing it to a system-wide failure (such as a power surge from lightning). Network backup between different PCs is a good choice, as long as the other machine is always on.
Until recently, I relied on automatic periodic backups to external USB drives. For compatibility, I used the Winzip jobs function to produce scheduled full and incremental backups in plain vanilla zip format with date and time stamps embedded in the file name to the external drives. In case of emergency, the USB drives are small enough to wrap in plastic, take along, and access with a laptop on the road.
Great idea, but that means you have to leave the USB drive plugged in all the time, as there is no way to put them asleep and to wake them up on schedule with Windows XP. Meanwhile, the disks on the PCs themselves can be powered down during periods of inactivity, extending their lives compared with the hot/small drive enclosures, which cook drives quickly.
After having several IDE drives in USB drive enclosures fail much quicker than the drives on the PCs they were supposed to back up, I finally decided on going to on-line backup. The free accounts are great for a few GB of files, but they’re not enough for all the photos, music, and E-mail I’ve accumulated over the years.
So I expanded my free Mozy account to unlimited backup for $4.95/month. It took several days to do the initial backup of 22 GB, during which the performance of the PC took a hit. But after that, the incremental backups were scheduled for off-hours, and the bandwidth used was limited. After the initial backup, the incremental backups have been painless and I don’t have to think about them. The on-line backup shows up a drive so you can see what’s backed up. All I do is to periodically check to make sure everything I care about is being uploaded. If not, it’s been easy to expand the file types and directories in the configuration program. The files can be accessed from the web and restored to another PC, if needed.
Recommended.
