Why Backup Data?

We all know that it's important to back up our computer files. Archival best practice for digital records is to back them up to an external hard drive or CD. For the best protection, keep an extra set of CDs at a different location such as a relative's house, your office, or a safe deposit box. Images should be saved as program independent, uncompressed files such as TIFF.

But how many of us actually back up everything?

For each new computer, I make two purchases from the start. Partition Magic, so I can isolate applications and system code that doesn't change often from data and scratch areas that under modification on a daily basis. A stand-alone backup utility (since Veritas no longer sells a single-seat/desktop version of Backup Exec, the current program of choice is NTI Backup Now).

These get installed, and a complete /bootable/ image of the new machine is created. THEN I create my desired partitioning and install all my applications. Then a regular FULL back-up is produced. From there I produce INCREMENTAL backups at erratic intervals. About once a year I produce a new FULL back-up set, and dispose of the previous one and the incrementals.

A FULL backup of my machine will consume, depending upon compression achieved, up to 22 DVD-R (NOT CD-R!) (You can understand why I tend to only to incrementals for normal work -- even those consume a DVD-R or two, each time).

I DO NOT rely upon, for example, TMG's "backup" process; I consider that just a utility to save me from problems that may occur during a session of heavy editing of data, but not as a "backup" for security.

The last place I'd go is to an outside agency that requires either slow connections or custom software to interface with, and may get in my way of easy dynamic access and updates.



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And yes, we do backup this site ;)