You might think I’m being facetious, but I’m dead serious. Let’s select one day per year to remind people to regularly back up their computer data. I am utterly completely and bewilderedly tired of hearing people tell me “I lost all my data, songs and photos because my computer hard drive died.”
No, fool. You didn’t lose your data because your hard drive broke. You lost it because you had no data backup. You didn’t have a backup because you (YOU) didn’t back up your data. If you want to know who to blame for your broken hard drive, it might be the hard drive manufacturer. If you want to know who to blame for your loss of data, just go look into a mirror.
Yesterday, I heard my most recent loss-of-data story. A friend claimed he “lost all my photos.” I asked whether he had a backup. He said yes, the data was on the backup hard drive. I then asked him why he didn’t just access the photos from his main hard drive, but then the sanity left our conversation: He admitted that he transferred all of his photos over from his laptop to his “backup hard drive.” He deleted the original data after creating his “backup.” I was flabbergasted. I told him, “That’s not a ‘backup.”
Another friend of mine is a network consultant. Especially following storms he gets a service call and goes out to find out that a business’s hard drive is fried. He asked the business owner for the most up to date backup and he’s often handed one from two weeks (or two months) earlier. Invariably he’s then asked whether they “can get all of the data back.” When my friend (the consultant) originally sets up a system he always gives the business a lecture to back up their data every day. It’s just incredible how often they don’t listen, especially given the large sums of money a business loses when it loses data.
The reason I’m especially frustrated with these stories is that people simply refuse to understand. The advice is not hard to understand, but it goes in one ear and out the other. Sometimes I tell friends that I’ll give them computer advice but they first need to put one of their fingers in one of their ears “so it doesn’t go out the other side.” Then I tell them the secret of not losing data:
Keep relatively fresh copies of your data in at least two places. At least one of those copies should not be kept on the same premises as the computers that contain the original copies.
This constant stream of “loss of data” stories really aggravates me because I make a habit of asking friends about their back up procedure and I almost never get a satisfactory answer. Instead, I get a glazed-over look and a reassurance that they don’t need to back up their data because their computer is working fine. I don’t know why I still give the advice given that the advice is so rarely taken.
People! Listen up! Your hard drive is guaranteed to break within ten years, maybe a lot sooner. When will it break? We don’t KNOW. That’s why you need to practice good backup hygiene. It’s a lot easier than it ever was, now that portable external USB hard drives are so incredibly cheap.
Just get yourself a portable USB hard drive. It will cost you about $100 for 250 GB. That’s probably enough to hold your valuable data several times over. If that size drive is not big enough for you, buy a Terabyte drive for $300. If your data isn’t worth that kind of money, then you’ve just been screwing around with your computer and not doing anything worthwhile. For example, in the past year I’ve likely put ten thousand hours of work into the digital versions of the writings, music and videos I’ve created. $100 divided by 10,000 hours = ONE CENT per hour worked to insure my work. It’s one of the best deals on the planet.
USB hard drives usually come with their own backup program for free (or just drag your important files over using Windows, use the Windows XP backup utility). You don’t have to back up your entire hard drive–focus on your data (You can always reload your applications). Wikipedia has a more technical article pertaining to backups here.
You don’t have to stand there and wait for the data backup—it doesn’t go any faster just because you’re watching it. Just start the process and leave—go watch a movie or go to bed. It will all be done by the time you wake up in the morning. Truly, there are no excuses for failing to back up your hard drive. Nope, I’m not listening. NO excuses.
Hence, my plea to establish one day each year as a Day everyone backs up the data on their hard drive. Is one backup per year enough? Hell, no. But it’s a lot better than most people seem to be doing.
There. I’m done with my rant, except to say this: Good friends will continue to remind their friends to back up their computer data. And if they’ve warned their friends, but their friends still lose data, they nonetheless try to be sympathetic.
You should not only make backups on portable hard drives, but on various mediums, like CD-ROMS or DVDs, as well if you plan to archive your data for a longer time to come.
I use <pre>xcopy (folder-name) /d/c/s/y</pre> in a batch file to backup to my USB drive. It takes about 5 minutes to make sure everything on the external drive is current, as opposed to hours copying everything every time.
I turn the external drive on to do this, and then off again. It saves power, and adds security.
When I travel, I drop the backup drive into a steel file cabinet for extra security (fire, theft).
Annually, I burn a set of DVD's, and put them in our safe deposit box.
Eric, I lost my data…it must be God's will!
There is something else to add.
Verify those backups!!!
And use more than 1 backup program.
The hard drive on my work PC died back in January. The tech guys replaced it with an "imaged" drive. I had everthing backed up on DVD wit the XP backup utility, so I wasn't too concerned… until I started to restore the backup. The restore process would not read the backup, made a week before the drive failure. In fact, it would not read any of the backup created from the old hard drive files.
Fortunately, I also make a regular "archive" dvd set in a standard file tree format, but I only do the archive ets quarterly. since the hd failed just before time for a nre archive set, I lost about 3 months work.
Erich, Erich, Erich….
There is a very simple reason why people do this. It is the same reason they do not get regular oil changes in their vehicles. The same reason they never get their lawn mower tuned (yes, they need to be maintained, like any other motorized something). The same reason they put off going to the dentist, or keeping a general physical, or having their furnace and ducts cleaned, or their checkbooks balanced regularly….
It's not on the Interesting To Do list.
It's boring, necessary, drudgery. Better to inject drama into life by letting things go till they bust and then rage against the universe about it than be prepared, backed-up, maintained. People who do that are nerdy, lack social skills, have mediocre sex lives (not true, but there's the impression they're like that).
It's also very American. We want things to just work when we pick them up. The car should always start, the clothes should always be cleaned, the equipment always oiled and ready to go—all by themselves—because we have grown up seeing how cool people live on tv and in movies and THEY NEVER DO THIS SHIT!
I used to wonder why there seemed to be no slot in my brain for maintainence, why it simply was never in the itinerary. There's no time for it. Certainly, because I never MADE time for it, but why not?
All our models are media models. Oh, sure, parents and teachers are in there, too, but at some vital point in many peoples' lives, parents and teachers get slotted into the dull and boring space. The cool people…well, you just never see them balacing a check book, getting a tune up, or BACKING UP THEIR DATA. Their cars always run right, they never run out of money, and their computers never crash—unless it's a plot point.
This may sound facetious, and to a degree, it is. But think about it. All the stuff people don't do that would make their lives so much easier, how often do we see George Clooney or Cate Blanchett do them?
Which is probably one reason why we'll spend money on a new road to a casino rather than spend it on doing some repair work on levees. Which is more exciting?
I speak of these things because I, though I know better, do not back up my data. Yes, I've lost data. But it's just not in the itinerary.
Jason: I'm on my way over to your house right now to help you back up your hard drive! I'll be driving a car with a flashing light on top and a siren.
I imagine we have all lost data, but let's remember that data backup has not always been as convenient as it is today. Sure, now you can buy a 500GB external USB hard drive for under $150, which is probably big enough to backup any laptop or desktop, but years ago it was tape drives or Zip disks or whatever, and none of those devices was a good long-term solution, because the devices themselves went obsolete or the media wouldn't last. For example, in the days before we could burn our own CDs, I once lost a bunch of archived data on Zip diks, even though I was diligent about backing up, because the Zip disks themselves only lasted a few years before the media itself degraded. Moreover, even if the media is still good, can anyone get software drivers for old tape or Zip drives? And even if you can get the data, will your computer run the old software? Micro$oft has been very bad about making their new operating systems incompatible with old software. Be that as it may, USB drives at least are likely to be both robust and compatible with future computers, making these backup devices a sensible choice.
Something else to remember is that not all hard drive crashes are equal. If your computer merely fails to boot, it might be that only the boot sector is corrupted while the rest of the data is still OK. In this case, remove the old HDD, replace it with a new one, reload software applications, then put the old HDD into an external USB enclosure and immediately try to copy the old data to your new drive. Often, a large amount of the data can be recovered. Of course, if your old HDD has a major crash (e.g., if you hear it making loud grinding noises), then the heads are probably destroyed and the data unrecoverable…at least by normal methods. There are forensic data services that will disassemble HDDs and scan the disks with special machines to recover data, but these services charge big bucks for their work, so the data would need to be very valuable to make it worthwhile.
But much of this can of course be avoided simply by following Erich's advice and backing up your data. Schedule it and do it regularly and you should be OK.
Guys, what happens 1,000 years from now when there are no more CD/DVD ports and USB drives? Personally I back up all my data by carving it on marble slabs which I store in an earthquake-proof vault. You could also knit it into fabric with some corrosion resistant wire, using purl stitches for 0's and knit stitches for 1's.
Vicki: or we could just try harder to remember the stuff we put on our computer–then you don't need to do that binary stitching.
Your comment caused me to image Middle Ages monks stitching backup data into vestments.
The problem with any pile of data is that it requires a cultural matrix to convert it to information. An 8" floppy requires a compatible drive, BIOS, drivers, and software to convert its pattern of magnetized regions into anything useful. The same goes for the more recent 5¼" floppies, the 3½" floppies, CD's & DVD's (pits, textured, or colored dots), Flash memory (quantum-locked semiconductor regions), and hard disks (magnetic zones again, but only accessible through internal electronics for IDE, EIDE, SATA, etc formats).
No form of data is independent of time and cultural matrix. See the Rosetta Stone. If no one transfers information from an old system to the new, it gets lost.
Making new copies is not always perfect. Read about the way the meaning of the various books of the Bible have drifted through transcription errors in books like Misquoting Jesus and its sources. (Erich's Post on that book)
Digital data has the advantage that it can be automatically ported to new media without loss of meaning or fidelity as each new medium is rolled out. It does require a certain amount of diligence to keep old data alive. I recently discarded some archive disks of code that I wrote for machines that are no longer available. I can still find a drive for the disks, but have nothing to do with the information thereon. I kept a printout of the code, just in case.
Modern archeology is uncovering early civilizations that had no hard media. They had no fired ceramics or stone carving. But impressions were left in the dirt of their long-departed basket and textile crafts. The knot-work is obviously some kind of language. We just haven't yet found a way to read it (beyond the simple accounting ropes and such).
As Vicki discovered the hard way (and I did too, once), a backup is only as good as your ability to read it later. To keep it good, you need to make sure you always have a live copy, as well.
Dan,
could you explain in more details how to do it? I've been doing my backups the dummy way – burning them on DVD and it sucks.
Here is a website which allows you to keep 5 MB on their server, for free!
http://www.xdrive.com/
I just hope THEY keep backups of the backups…
Y'all are defying God's will and are gonna Burn!
Let my data go!
Best idea ever! Rising awareness about this is exactly what needs to be done. People just don't think about these things. Most importantly people don't realize that hard drives are expected to fail within certain time – just like any other device with moving parts. This is one of the points I want to get across when I teach this semester.
Your hard drive will fail. When? I don't know. Maybe in 5 years. Maybe in 10 years. Maybe tomorrow. You just never know.
Let's pick a day in the calendar, and start treating it as an unofficial backup day. This is an excellent idea, and if we get enough bloggers behind it, I'm confident that sooner or later we will reach a critical mass at which point average people will start mentioning it on non-technical sites.
Anyway, I'm 100% behind this idea. September 13 is probably a bad day (to close to the 9/11). But if we set a day, I will definitely blog about it. 🙂
I meant to say Giga not Mega. They provide 5 GB of storage for free.
Make it the same day(s) that everybody replaces the batteries in their smoke detectors. Everybody DOES replace the batteries in their smoke detectors, don't they? Oh.
Actually, maybe there's an idea in this. At least once a year, everybody's hard drive needs to beep in the middle of the night.
Projekt: XCOPY is an extension of the old command-line "copy" command. If you have an external hard drive, you can back up to it much faster with xcopy than with drag-n-drop (an interface on top of the old copy command). Xcopy does things like lets you only copy files that are newer than matching names at the destination.
Here is the complete XCOPY documentation of the command from Microsoft, who originally bought it from a third-party developer.
In a command window, you could also type XCOPY /? to get this.
One way to get to the old-style (powerful) command window is Start/Run/cmd/OK
Here's a quick intro to batch files. Basically, they contain a series of command-line commands, like multiple xcopy's
People shouldn't just back up once a year! They should backup and format their hard drives, wiping things clean, reinstalling necessary drivers and software once a year, at least. After a year of use, a computer can easily become bogged down with needless data and viruses, especially for those that like to download media using shady P2P programs. Backing up and formatting my computer has solved probably dozens of mystery problems on my computer, from simply running slowly to an ethernet port that ceased to function out of the blue. But most people just let their computer deteriorate when problems pop up, or they plague tech support lines with inane issues.
And how many people defrag regularly? Do it weekly, at least, people!
Ben: I gave up after trying 20 different combinations of their suggested usernames and various passwords to register for xdrive. Each time it fails I get the (un)helpful message: "Oops, Try Again".
They offer no hint about what was wrong with my submission.
Sorry it didn't work Dank, I actually have not tried it myself… I am curious now though…
Defragging? Is that like when Jesus rose from the grave?
1. Malthusian Demographics 101
2. Farming Almanac 2007
3. Modern medical treatments (abridged)
4. Game Hunting (for Dummies)
5. Shipbuilding
6. Science (simple chemistry, physics)
Ok, Dan. I'll try to figure it out. Don't leave, in case I have more questions. 🙂
Part of the issue with making backups is that it can seem overwhelming to back everything up, especially stuff that you don't need a copy of. I keep two back-ups of my important documents and then just update the file(s) I've changed during my sessions on the computer. When it becomes a habit, it's easier. I'm not quite there with photos yet because it takes so long to transfer them to CD. My goal is to purchase an external hard-drive for photos and music within the next half-year. If the process is too hard, we just won't do it, even if it's good for us and saves us pain and agony. As for my blog, I back it up the old-fashioned way. Because it is a Blogger blog and lives on Google's servers, I make a print-out of it every month. If I change the print size to 60 percent, I end up with about 11 pages, rather than 23, so I save paper and ink. I put the copies into sheet protectors in a three-ring binder. Then, no matter what the technology, I'll be able to go back and read it in years to come.
Erich, I have had to re-think the knit/purl encoding idea since I worked out that I would need to knit a piece of fabric larger than a football field to back up a single photo from our digital camera. That is a bit impractical, even for me.
Here's a back-up bargain:
$50 for 120GB external USB drive. If you get there too late, look around this site for similar bargains.