Backing-Up your work and online services
Better be safe than sorry
How many of us have been working on a project on a computer, possibly something as simple as an MS Word document, when suddenly there’s a power cut or some numbskull inadvertently unplugs your computer and you lose all your work. You were certain that you’d saved your work, only to realise that you had - but over an hour ago!
It’s easy enough to do isn’t it - remember every 15 minutes or so to save your work to disk or at least have the ‘auto save’ function turned on so you can retrieve your work.
Things can of course be worse! You’re nearing the end of a project or assignment, all you’ve got to do is tidy up the files on your computer - you turn the computer on and ..….. nothing - not even the ‘blue screen of death’!
If you’re at a good college like Hampshire College in Western Massachusetts, off you go to the campus IT services. Then, after much sucking of teeth and shaking of heads they pronounce your computer - dead!
Now what’s going through your mind is: When did I last make a copy of my work onto my memory stick, when did I last back-up or even worse did I ever back up the whole system? The following sets out some simple procedures to follow regarding backing-up your work and computer system.
Backing-Up a computer
For the purposes of this piece I’ll presume you have only got a computer that you do your college work on and are not responsible for several, or other peoples, computers. Basically, whilst you need to protect yourself against losing all your data and files you do not need to a full blown grandfather-father-son rotation back-up system. Also, the following is generic information regardless of whether you’re running a MS, Mac or Linux operating system on your PC or laptop. There are some simple things to think about.
Having bought a new computer and installed the software you’re going to use on it, you really should follow the manufactures instructions and create a set of restore disks on CDs or DVDs. It’s also a good idea to periodically, say every six months at least, to re-create these restore disks as you’ll undoubtedly install more software as time goes on. But, remember these restore disks only back-up your system and applications files - not your data files.
Apart from regularly saving your work or data files to your hard disk you should also get into the habit of making back-ups of them too. At one time floppy disks, zip disks or CDs would have been used. Today the vast majority of people will use a USB memory stick. A 2 GB memory stick that can store double the amount that you can get on a CD can be bought for about $20 and even the latest 8 GB ones are now less than $100. They are easy and quick to use as well as being very portable. Another alternative would be to back-up your work on to the Hampshire College network servers.
The back-up habit
As most computers fail at the time when they are turned on, at the very least, before shutting down your computer copy your current work onto your memory stick. Also, when I’ve got to the end of a major piece of work I’ll back up all my work files onto DVD, just so I’ve got a copy of all my work, right up to the latest completed project. I also saved the digital pictures I make when I do some sightseeing in the area or at parties with my friends in regular intervals, because I definitely don't want to lose those memories. I was really fed up. So I can tell that there are definitely many advantages to data backup. Therefor you should consider one of the many options too.
Another idea along this line is to buy a secondary storage hard disk on which you keep a mirror image (copy) of your hard disks contents as a back-up.
So, you’ve got your work backed up at least once if not twice and everything’s now safe? Mmmm! Unfortunately that’s not 100% accurate. If your computer and your back-ups are all in one place, what happens if they were all to be stolen or even lost in a fire - ridiculous you might think, but it happens.
One solution is to keep one of the back-ups at a different location, perhaps post a back-up CD or DVD to home. Another and increasingly popular option is to use an online back-up service.
Online computer back-up services
You can back-up data over the internet onto Hampshire College's network servers, but also if you do a search on the internet you’ll find many independent companies that will store a back-up of your data over the internet. In earlier times online backing-up services were expensive and time consuming.
Now with broadband widths seeming to be for ever expanding online backing up is a speedy and safe option to consider. Some internet service providers are offering up to 2 GB online back-up service for free and there are plenty of companies offering seemingly unlimited low cost back-up services for under $100 a year.
The big advantage of these services is that your data is stored remotely, away from where you’re located. This means a disaster in your location will not affect the back-up of your computers data, even better the back-up can be a daily automated event. What can beat that, you now don’t even need to remember to back up your computer data.