Our computers today store all kinds of important information: schedules, work documents, family photos, annual audits and various Internet account details. Whatever we're working with on the computer, we daily rely upon the information it provides us with. Despite this, few people today are backing up their data to secure both private and company information. This article is a quick and easy guide to how you set up your own backup system and avoid a future disaster.

Why Backup?

No data is ever safe on any computer. This is what can happen to it:

- The information can be stolen

- The file system can become corrupt, making the data inaccessible

- The operative system can malfunction

- The hard drive can physically malfunction (all hard drives do, it's just a matter of how many years they last)

- The lightning or any other electric instability can break your computer

- The data can accidentally be overwritten or deleted

What To Backup?

First you need to decide what information you wish to backup. Larger size of information means larger storage medium is required. If you're trying to secure a few office documents (<1MB), a simple floppy disk might be the appropriate medium to use. For media like pictures, music or movies that usually take up much more space, you will be looking for using either CD-Rs or DVD-Rs.

For many people, backing up the entire system is a good idea. It lets you restore the entire operative system and all information stored on your hard drive(s). For this end you need an external hard drive; a medium you externally connect to your computer via USB or FireWire. LaCie sells stable, fast and reliable hard drives to good prices. Remember that the storage space of the backup medium must be larger than the total size of the hard drive you wish to backup!

How To Backup?

To backup your data you need backup software. What this does is not only to copy your information to the backup medium, it will also have the option to compress it (reducing the size), secure it with a password and automatize the process to make it easier for you.

If you buy an external hard drive suited for backups, it will commonly ship with corporate software. If you're looking for free alternatives, take a peek here if you only want to backup certain files or directories, and here if you want to produce an image copy of your entire hard drive(s) or certain partition(s).

If you want to create a complete copy of your hard drive, or maybe only copy a certain partition on it, you need software that lets you access all your hard drive information without running the operative system. Acronis sells a great piece of software for this end that lets you burn a CD-R with which you boot up your computer.

When choosing to create a backup image of a partition or an entire hard drive, the software will copy sector-by-sector data, including your MBR (Master Boot Record). This means that if your system drive breaks or corrupts, you can restore the entire drive to a new hard drive and boot up your computer again as if nothing had ever happened.

When To Backup?

There are three ways of backing up information:

Full backup: A complete copy of all the information, regardless of which files have been changed, added or deleted. This is the starting point for all backup methods. If you're for instance only looking for saving family photos somewhere safe, burning a full backup copy to a DVD-R once a month is a good idea.

Incremental backup: Stores all the modified files since last backup. If you regularly change important information, incremental backup method will enable you to restore your information from any given backup date. Depending on how much information you're saving, this is often a quick way of regularly saving small amounts of data but in turn requires first full backup and all subsequent backups, up till restore date of choice. If one archive fails, the entire backup process will fail.

Differential backup: Stores all the modified files since last full backup. This means you only need the full backup and one subsequent backup archive of choice to restore your data. In turn, depending on the size of the data you modify since full backup, the differential backup archives will eventually grow larger and larger.

You choose method after a) storage space of your backup medium, b) how regularly you wish to backup your data and c) how quickly you need to access it if something goes wrong with your original data. What's important here is that you set up a backup schedule.

An example:

Brett Stevens works a lot with web development and design. Every week he's got ~300 MB of new information he needs to save. In addition to this he's got lots of software with custom settings he'd like to avoid re-configuring in case something would happen to his system drive (160 GB). For this end he's bought himself an external hard drive (250 GB) that he connects to his computer via Hi-Speed USB.

Every evening he boots up his computer with an Acronis boot CD. He chooses to create a full image backup of his entire system drive. Brett uses the incremental backup method, which means every evening he'll produce a new archive containing around 300 MB of information. When Brett's reaching the end of the month, he usually deletes all archives and begins on a new full backup, repeating the process. If he chose the differential method, the size of the archives would grow with 300 MB every day, which would mean that the backup process would take longer for each time and require more and more storage space. If the modified files would only amount up to 30 MB instead, the differential method would make more sense.

Whether you collect photos from around the world, create music, work as an accountant on a company or simply are tired of having to re-install the operative system when the hard drive fails, backing up your data is very important. One or two hours a week can save you data you'd never be able to retrieve again. Don't take the risk, backup and secure your information before the disaster is a fact!