If you've ever erased something and wished you hadn't, you understand why you need one. However, most computer users consistently fail to back up their data. Backing up data simply means having a copy of the data stored somewhere. It can be on the same computer, or on a computer miles away. It can be transferred from a computer on to some form of storage media - a technical term for something that stores data.

If you want to get the data back at some point, then you should consider how that will happen. There are many ways to backup data, and the clearest way to categorize them is by the ease and efficiency of restoring the data once it is backed up. While it would be nice to have all backed up data instantly available to you anywhere, this is not yet a reality - or at least one that is easily affordable. So, if compromises must be made, you must also be able to differentiate the value of the data you are backing up - separating the stuff from the stuff, so to speak.

Some data you certainly want instantly available - like the last sentence you typed. Most modern software is packed with "undo" features, and while some don't work the way we want them to, most function by storing recently inputted data in the computer system memory (not necessarily your hard drive, more likely your RAM memory - the little green stick kind) - now, this data is only available to you as long as you are running the program, at most - once the program exits, the memory is discarded, and freed up to be used by other programs. So, in the event of a power failure or something else that causes the program to close, we need something better. This is where the hard drive comes in - the file gets saved there (if you do so, or if you are using a program that auto-saves), so you can easily go back and open the file if the program closed since the last time you were working on it.

The next consideration is what most people concern themselves with - when the data is no longer available on the hard drive. It could be because you deleted it, either accidentally or on purpose. It could be because you wrote over it with other data, and you want your original data back. It could be because the hard drive quit working and is now a sizzling hot box of melted parts - or it could be because the hard drive mysteriously disappeared while you weren't looking - or even worse, while you were!

Getting the data off your computer's hard drive and backed up somewhere else is where Avineo Inc. comes in. There are many ways to do this, which we'll briefly look over below. One immediate consideration is why we use our hard drive in the first place. Generally, it might be better if the data was saved elsewhere, thus relieving us of the responsibility to worry about it. In recent years, this has been a major focus on the internet - using "cloud storage" - where the data is saved to somewhere on the internet, instead of on your machine.

In the best possible reality, the data is never really on your machine at all. Such is the case with most blogs, including this website. As I finish typing this and save this page, the data is saved into a database somewhere in the USA, which is on a hard drive being monitored and backed up by GoDaddy. Cool beans, no worries for me - I trust them to do their job, which in this case is preserving my data. More and more, people are saving their photo albums and personal musings to many places on the internet, and I think we are better for it. Even our spreadsheets can be fully online, thanks to Google Docs.

That depends on how much value you put on your data, and how quickly you need it available. If either your online storage service has a service outage, or you are away from the internet, you won't have access to your data until those issues are cleared up. Also, if the data is highly confidential, and you don't trust it on the internet, you may not want to store it there. Internet security has gotten a lot better, but there's still that chance that you take. There's still an intermediate step, storing the data on a local network file server - not on the internet, but also not on your computer. With a local fileserver, you are again responsible for backing it up, however.

It depends on how much data you want to back up. First, let's consider automated backups. It's generally unnecessary to back up your entire hard drive, although some do so. Usually restoring all the operating system stuff on to another hard drive doesn't work out well in the end, and is more bother than just re-installing the software from disk onto a new drive. So, you should be identifying data you want to back up, and putting it somewhere that can easily be backed up. Sometimes just backing up your "My Documents" folder is good enough - if you are aware that only data in that folder is being backed up. Generally, if I am going to back up a workstation, I end up backing up the entire user profile - so in Windows XP, C:\Documents & Settings\[User Name].

The other way to back it up is to manually copy the data somewhere else - either on to a disk, a USB storage drive, or a file server. This works great, but the responsibility is on you, the user, to remember to copy it there. Generally, either not having the data on your computer to start with, or having an automated backup procedure are better options, because you don't have to remember to do anything (except perhaps to leave your computer on).

For the last ten years, most heavy duty file servers tried to keep their own backups by using multiple hard drives - called RAID arrays. Unfortunately, these tend to have a high failure rate, unless you buy into a really expensive kind - which is sort of counter-intuitive, as RAID stands for Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks - but inexpensive disks generally have a higher failure rate, and aren't able to hold as much data. Also, the RAID controllers (what the disks are attached to inside the server) tend to fail as well, or not report when one of the disks is failing, which causes a lot of problems for businesses on a budget that thought they had a good backup strategy all in one box.

Since a file server already has its data in a specific place (by design), it's easy to copy the data elsewhere. The only questions left are where and how often, and in most situations, I like to take a mixed approach. A hard backup (backing up a fileserver to things like DVDs, for instance) should really only need to happen when the data is going to be transferred somewhere else - like to a safety deposit box, or an attorney, or a bookshelf. In most cases, transferring the data to another hard drive should suffice, and tends to be much less time consuming and dependent on humans - with a DVD, someone has to put in the computer, and someone has to take it out and put it somewhere. Now, the other hard drive could be on the same fileserver, another fileserver in your office, or on a remote fileserver (like the one in my shop, miles away from your company)

Where the data is simply translates to how long it will be before you will be able to access it. If the data is on another hard drive in the same computer, then getting to it will be very quick, unless the computer itself stops working - which, if you lose your primary hard drive, is too often the case. If it's on a second computer, it can be accessed very quickly as well, and you don't have to worry about the original file server. I tend to prefer this method. However, if your business burns to the ground, or is flooded or robbed, you may not have either the fileserver or the second computer - so a remote offsite backup is also a good idea.

Again, it depends on the method you choose for backing it up. Most backups fit into either the hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly categories. Now, if you have a daily backup, and you make a change to a file on a Friday afternoon, and come back Monday morning, it will have the changed file backed up, but not necessarily the Thursday version of it. If you also have a weekly backup, the most recent unedited version you might have is the Friday prior, or 10 days old. Sometimes this is OK - other times not, especially when you're looking at working files on a fileserver. So, in addition to simply copying a hard drive on a schedule, we have to look at what sort of version history we want to keep. Companies used to do this by using a file cabinet full of magnetic tapes. They would either have a weekly or monthly rotation of tapes available, and those tapes would be manually inserted into their server every day, and the previous day's tapes put back in the cabinet. This was a big headache, especially if a tape failed, which they would over time, because it wasn't always obvious this had occurred. There are better ways now, and I generally recommend a system that uses snapshots of a file server to keep historical versions of files intact. So, only files that changed since the last snapshot of the server happened are saved, and they are saved in such a way that you can find them. Most files on a file server don't change every day, or even every week, so only a few copies of them are on the backup server, while the few files that change frequently may have copies saved for each day of the month. I tend to like have a week's worth of daily history, a month's worth of weekly history, and so on, back at least two years, and in some cases 5 years or 7 years.

Well, it depends on a lot of things, but I like my backup server to have between 4 and 10 times the amount of space used on the primary file server - so, if I am using 50 gigabytes on the primary server for file storage, I want 200-500 gigabytes available for file storage on the backup server. Now, with 500 gigabyte drives down in the $100 range, that's not that big a deal.

Generally, if you have a backup server on-site, then you still should be keeping at least a monthly or weekly copy of everything off-site - so if natural or man-made catastrophic failure occurs to your location, your data is still at worst a week old. If you don't have the on-site backup server, you might want to consider off-site daily backups.

In several ways. First, we can help you take a realistic look at what data you have, where it is currently stored, and how you might want to proceed with backing it up. We provide some off-site storage for little or no additional cost, and can easily set up file servers and backup servers while keeping things affordable, as we tend to use free open source operating systems and re-purposed hardware for these servers. We can get your My Documents or your entire Windows profile to back up automatically, without paying for additional software. The exact steps we end up taking with your backup will vary based on your company and your data - there really is no one-size-fits-all solution here, and you shouldn't expect there to be.