[This is part 10 of a 10 part series titled: “So You’re An IT Noob“]
Hard drives fail. That is a simple fact.
It is never a matter of if, it is merely a matter of when. Granted, newer SSD’s (solid state drives) are much less prone to failure than your typical platter based drive simply because there are no moving parts. But, SSD’s are still expensive in large sizes. For instance, an Iomega 256GB SSD drive is currently running for $550 on Amazon.
Meanwhile, conventional 2TB external hard drives can be found for under $100.
That’s good news. Storage is cheap. There is no reason for anybody to lose their work these days and since we have become such a digital country, it is critical to have backups of your data.
As a photographer and as somebody moving into the realm of film making, I am somewhat paranoid with my data. I have it backed up twice. I keep all of my data on an external drive instead of my MB Pro hard drive. I then back that data up to a separate external drive. I guess the only thing I am leaving out is a place to store the data off site which I am exploring.
For our purposes here, I am going to cover personal computers and NAS backup solutions. Server solutions get more tricky and certainly don’t fall within the confines of a noob. Besides, as a noob, you probably won’t be installing or configuring servers any time soon.
Mac Solutions
If there is one area where the Mac platform has been light years ahead of Windows, it is with their built-in backup solution, Time Machine. Not only does it do backups, it does incremental backups and it is so easy to use. Simply browse to where to where you want your back up to place and go. That’s really all there is to it. You can tweak settings as you wish.
The best feature of Time Machine is that it acts pretty much like a mirror. So if your internal drive goes out or you acquire a new machine, you can (with the install disk) restore everything as it was
Windows Solutions
Thankfully, with Windows 7 (which is an excellent OS), Microsoft has implemented a built in backup solution (I know it was actually introduced in Vista, but pretend Vista never existed). It’s called Backup and Restore and allows users to back up specify files or folders or make a complete image for a full restore. This solution also features incremental backups similar to Time Machine.
External Backups
The choices for an external drive are far and wide. I will make one recommendation which will afford you an extra layer of protection.
The G-Safe solutions from G-Technology are a great investment and won’t break the bank. In addition to providing you with a backup drive for your PC or Mac, it also comes with RAID 1. Without getting into all of the details, RAID 1 will mirror one drive to another.
So, your Time Machine backup for instance is copied to one of the drives on the G-Safe device, and mirrored to the other. The best part is, the drives are “hot swappable.” What that means is, at the end of the day, you can take one of the drives with you, bring it back the next day. Assuming you made changes to your computer, your incremental backup will kick in and the mirroring will automatically take place.
On the network side, your best best is to obtain a NAS drive that has RAID 1 solution built in. Again, there are plenty of options but some are more difficult to configure than others. One that I have heard good things about is a Western Digital NAS that can be configured as a RAID 1 solution. It’s easy to set up and inexpensive. Less than $200 for 2TB (2 x 1TB).
As always, we look forward to your feedback.
Chase Livingston says
Have you had any experience or know anyone that has used a DroboFS as a backup drive for multiple networked computers? Thoughts?
Andy says
I have a friend who does IT consulting for small businesses and churches. He’s installed a lot of Drobos for use as backup systems. Lots of storage space, and the benefit of drive redundancy that comes with a RAID.
Personally, I just use a portable USB drive for Time Machine and keep my most critical files backed up again with Mozy. Although, I will probably switch to Carbonite now that Mozy no longer offers an unlimited storage plan.
Matt James says
Another great option for Windows users is Microsoft’s ‘Sync Toy’. Use it at the office for a huge number of excel files with many people having access to the same files – it keeps everyone in sync with the changes.
James Cooper says
Time Machine was a life saver over the new year when the logic board went in my MBP. I got a mac mini and was up and running again with all my apps, setting and files (down to the wallpaper!) in a couple of hours.