The computer has long become our faithful companion and assistant in all areas of human activity. It is even more offensive to find that all data from the hard drive was destroyed due to malware tricks, software or hardware failure, or simply a power surge, which is found in our area even in large cities.
Unfortunately, a person rarely thinks about the future, and therefore almost all such cases end sadly. Only after this comes the understanding that only backup can prevent the loss of important documents or family archives with photos and video files.
We think that it is not necessary to talk about the decoding of this term, since it is already obvious. However, we’ll say a few words. So, backup is the process of saving the most important data (or the entire contents of the hard drive) to another physical medium. The latter is very important: if you think that when you copy a file from drive C to drive D, which is located on the same physical volume, you protect your data, then you are forced to disappoint.
But if you copied the information you need to an external hard drive, which you then disconnected and put it in the drawer of the table, then this is really a backup, which in fact can prevent the loss of nerves, time and money. The same can be said about using a flash drive, an optical disk, or even a RAID array.
To make this event really effective and help in the event of a hard disk crash or malware, we recommend that you use some important principles, which will be described below.
Frequency, regularity of execution
When planning a staffing schedule for copying, imagine that you are taking vital pills, and skipping admissions can end sadly. So in the case of backup - of course, an archive of a year ago may be of historical value, but it will not be easier for you, if you lose an important course project that you worked on for a couple of months. What can we say about large companies in which the loss of the results of a couple of working days can lead to severe financial and reputational losses.
How to determine the reasonable frequency of this important operation? It's simple - decide for yourself how often you change your important data. For example, the old archive of grandfather's front-line photographs can be digitized and stored once, periodically monitoring the safety of the physical medium, but with a regularly updated database of wedding photographs (if you are a photographer, for example) such static will not pass in any case.
Most often, experienced users prefer to save the results of their work once or twice a week. It can be used as a special program for data backup (NortonGhost, Acronis), as well as the usual copy / paste command.
Do not put all your eggs in one basket
In principle, we already spoke about this at the very beginning of the article, but we will reveal this question in more detail. We strongly recommend that you save information only to an external hard drive so that it is stored separately from the main data array. This is especially important if the main hard drive of your computer is no longer young and can go to the "country of eternal hunting" at any time. In this case, only the correct backup setup with an adequate distribution of the stored data can help.
It is worth making a small digression. In no case do not confuse a normal hard drive with a flash drive. The drive of the latter type is just a modern version of a floppy disk. In ancient times, when this type of floppy disk was still used, no normal user in their right mind would store an important report or something like that there. Think a flash drive is more reliable? Alas, this is not so.
Why do flash drives fail?
Specialists who work in the field of computer repair can lead hundreds of cases when a brand new flash drive burned out when inserted into a faulty USB port. And anyone can become one, since no one is safe from problems with the power supply, breaking tracks on the motherboard and other troubles. In addition, flash drives (especially large capacities) are prone to degradation. Their cells are gradually depleted, cease to hold a charge, as a result of which the carrier deteriorates.
Alas, to predict this event is almost unrealistic. And therefore, never, in any case, store any important data on such media. To bring films from a friend - please, but to save there (in a single copy - generally the "clinic") painstakingly created diploma will not be a normal person. In addition, flash drives due to their size are often lost, which is also worth considering.
Ideally, each important copy should be duplicated at least twice. Suppose the main backup will be stored on an external hard drive, the second copy will be stored in the cloud, and the third one can be written to the very same flash drive, even to a DVD disc if your computer still has a drive for it.
Important! If you are a passionate movie lover, photographer or designer working with large media files, then professional backup systems made on the basis of home NAS servers will be the best solution for you. As a rule, they implement the principle of RAID-1, constantly making backups. The volume of such storage is limited only by your financial capabilities.
Check and double-check !!!
As soon as you make a copy, immediately (best of all - generally on another computer) check its operability! And do not be content only with the fact that the files in the archive are simply visible: this still does not mean anything. Unpack a few of them to choose from, run, open ... In a word, make sure that they are completely safe. We strongly recommend conducting such checks at least once a month: this way you will reliably insure yourself against unpleasant surprises.
Not every file is valuable.
Be sure to distinguish the stored data by the criterion of "importance". To determine this, you can use both the necessary frequency of storage (the more often - the more important), and your personal value. This is done very conveniently, because backups are usually performed using special programs. They store information in one image, so making several categories for you is not difficult.
What are all these difficulties for? Everything is simple - different information requires different treatment. For example, the results of scientific work will probably be stored much more carefully than a collection of films (of course, not counting some rare newsreels). If you separate this data by the frequency of copying, you can save both the resource of the hard disk used for backup and reduce the time required for this.
Divide and rule
Some data types are strongly discouraged from being “pushed” into the same archive. For example, on a computer of average statistical users there are a lot of films, music, unimportant text documents and photographs. Do not forget about bookmarks and plug-ins in the browser, email correspondence, etc.
However, about browsers ... Today, it makes little sense to worry about them. The fact is that all normal programs of this class have the ability to synchronize with the servers of the manufacturer. At the same time, a history, a list of installed extensions, and more are saved. You only need to create an account by entering your email address and coming up with a strong password.
So, do not confuse this information with the concept of "system backup." Simply put, a full copy of the operating system needs to be done separately. This is due to the fact that for the majority of users, a clean OS snapshot made right after installing drivers, codecs and the necessary software package is ideal. There is no need to do this operation daily. But the same photographs and documents, if you work with them every day, it is best to archive daily.
Full disk backup at home is generally foolish to do, unless it is a local partition with the system.
Carriers
We have already discussed this question a little, but we need to talk about it in more detail. So...
External hard drive
There are really external ones, initially hidden in a casing and connected via USB. There are many models of adapters on the market in which a standard hard drive is inserted, and it is connected to a computer through the same ubiquitous USB. In this case, for a relatively small amount of money, you can get an impressive amount, which will fit almost any backup.
So, if an external drive costs about four or more thousand rubles for a 750 GB model or one terabyte, then for two or three thousand you can quite find a hard drive with a capacity of two terabytes. But there is a minus. An external USB drive is much more reliable in terms of protection from shock and mechanical damage. However, if you use it exclusively at home, then there is no real reason to overpay for extra functionality.
Anyway, but any hard drive has a lot of advantages:
- Relatively reliable and durable.
- Relatively inexpensive, so regular backups and restores will not put a heavy burden on your budget.
- If funds allow, you can constantly increase the volume of backup storage by simply purchasing more capacious models.
However, there are also enough negative sides. Here are their main disadvantages:
- Firstly, they need to be connected every time, which is not always convenient with a large amount of diverse data, when a separate medium is needed for each category.
- If this is a regular hard drive, connecting it is doubly inconvenient, since you have to disassemble the system unit case for this. Laptops are even worse.
Flash drives
Well, everything has already been said about this medium, and now we simply summarize the data presented then. Let's start with the positive features:
- Convenient to connect.
- Very mobile: you can put it in your pocket, even a dozen flash drives will not take up much space.
- In recent years, they are extremely reliable.
They also have important unpleasant properties, such as: they are extremely unstable and have a physically limited cycle of records, which can end at any time (subject to intensive use). It’s definitely not worth storing important data on them.
The clouds
In recent years, this topic has been heard by all users, two or three, even among those who have no special experience. This refers to virtual "hard drives" located on the servers of many companies. Google Drive, Yandex-drive, Mail.ru-drive, Dropbox, MEGA and others are known. They are very convenient in that they offer (for a fee, of course) an almost unlimited amount of disk space. In addition, you do not have to worry about the technical component: this is the work of data service engineers.
Let's look at those pluses that are especially appealing to users around the world:
- You can access your backups from any place where there is Internet access.
- Your data is protected from various emergency situations, as these companies use a multi-level data sharing system, backups of which can generally be stored on different continents.
- There is no need to connect any additional equipment, since copying is done on the fly, without your participation.
As usual, there are some negative aspects. Here is a list of them:
- Firstly, it is highly desirable to encrypt truly confidential data, since any attacker can gain access to them when your password is stolen.
- This method is not suitable for owners of expensive and limited Internet access, as a large amount of traffic is spent.
- Free usually give no more than 15-20 GB of disk space (Dropbox generally provides only two gigabytes). Rates usually go in dollars, so with the current exchange rate, backing up files can be too expensive.
Incremental or differential?
Very often, novice users cannot understand what an incremental, full, and differential backup is. There is nothing complicated about it. So, a full copy implies a copy of the entire hard disk (or directory), and the backup operation is performed every time you run the backup program. So, for example, a full backup of Windows is done.
Incremental backup is used in cloud service clients. Whenever a file changes, an old copy of it is deleted and replaced with a fresh version. Thus, you always have up to date information at hand. Differential copying involves recording several recent versions of a file at once, which are placed in a separate folder.
In general, the main points figured out. By the way, how do I backup? For this purpose, a small and free program is perfectly suitable (there is also a more functional paid version with advanced features), the work with which we will discuss below.
Exiland backup
This utility allows you to quickly and easily configure automatic backups that will be performed without your participation. This program for data backup can not only archive the information you need, but also synchronize copies between several of your computers (in the paid version).
At the first start, the program will ask you about when, how and what to copy. It works in the background, so that later on you can not remember to configure it. We remind you once again that it is most reasonable to plan an automatic backup at night, when work with all files has already been completed, in order to get the latest and most current copy of the data at the output.
How to use it? Before making a backup, carefully look at the main working window of the utility: in the upper left corner there is a “Create” button. Click her. The window for creating a new task will appear. In general, everything is as simple as possible: specify a disk, folder or a specific file, select the time and type of copying; it is possible to set the option to copy only a certain type of file by mask (* exe, for example). After that, click the "OK" button.
In the lower field for displaying data, information about the task you created appears. If you right-click on it and select “Options” in the pop-up context menu , you can easily change the execution conditions, set new file types, change the start time, etc.
Here's how to backup using this utility. If there is such a desire, you can purchase a fully functional version, which costs about three thousand rubles. Its functionality includes data synchronization between computers, an unlimited number of tasks and other “goodies”.
We hope you learned how to back up. Take care of yourself and your valuable data!