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They're seldom done as well as they should be!

© 1994-2004 A. Toews and Laurie Ashton

So when was the last time you did a backup on your computer? Last week? Last month?

If so, at least you've done a backup.

There are a lot of horror stories about people losing their disk drives to failure, having their computers stolen, viruses wiping out information - you've probably heard at least some of them and perhaps even shrugged them off. Guess what? They're all true.

Everyone has preached about doing backups and everybody means well, but, for a lot of people, it just doesn't quite get done.

A good backup scheme consists of:

1. Organizing your data files

2. Setting up a convenient backup scheme

3. Backing up your data

4. Ensuring that some of your backups are kept offsite

5. Testing the backup

1. Organizing your data files

You want to organize your files in some kind of logical manner that makes it easy for you to find your files quickly, but also means that all your files are in the same location. There's nothing worse than doing a data backup, only to realize that you missed backing up some data because it was in a directory you forgot about - unless you consider not even realizing that you missed data until later.

Some applications will, by default, put the data files related to that application within the My Documents folder. Others will put it in a data directory within the application directory. For example, c://program files/misc application/data. In most cases, you can change the data directory to whichever location you chose.

If the application permits it, place all files in a directory called 1work inside the root directory. Or, you could similarly call it @data, 1mydata, or something else that makes sense to you.

By calling the directory 1work (one work), it appears at the top of the directory tree list when inside Windows. Ie., c:/1work.

Then make sub directories as appropriate to match the type of files you have. There are a lot of different ways you can organize your data, and again, you want to use something that makes sense to you. Remember, though, that if you start out organizing it one way, but it doesn't work for you, you can change your mind and reorganize it again later. However, depending on how many files and folders you have, it could take a fair amount of work, so try to organize it logically as early in the process as possible.

Some examples of ways you can further organize your data include creating sub-directories for:

1. each application, ie Word, Excel, Quickbooks, ACDSee.
2. each client
3. type of activity, ie Business, Personal, Finances, Pictures, Cookbook, Church

Or any combination of the above as suits, or anything else that makes sense to you. Make sure that whatever organization method you use is logical to you and it’s easy for you to find your data.

At that point, you would then go into each application and change the preferences/options to point to this \1work directory.

While you're in this area ensure that the auto-save option has been set to ten or twenty minutes. The next time you have a power failure or your child hits the power bar off switch, you will only lose a few minutes work.

Laurie says: If you have a really low pain threshold like me, you'll want to set autosave to 1 or 2 minutes. I get frustrated and impatient when I lose any writing that I've done.

Simply Accounting and some other applications remembers the file directory and name you last saved. Many other applications, such as industry specific apps, unfortunately don't give you the option of changing the data directory, so you will have to backup their directory structure.

Tony says: If it's a file server I get tapes large enough to backup the entire server and make life simpler. After all, if the client is big enough to require a file server, it will take the consultant days to reload all the software and reconfigure all the settings and little quirks and tweaks which accumulate over time.

2. Setting up a convenient backup scheme

Diskettes, tapes, CDs, or DVDs are CHEAP compared to the data on them. That is, compared to the time spent re-keying information and the inevitable errors which will happen during the process of re-keying, not to mention the possibility of some things being missed entirely during the re-entry process, as well as the delay in getting your invoices out the door again.

However, diskettes and tapes are also relatively fragile compared to hard drives.

Tony says: Back when diskettes were used for backups, I used decent diskettes, brand name, and I still threw out some every month.

Laurie says: And as they get old, they become corrupt increasingly more often.

CDs and DVDs are better – if they’re good, they’re always good - unless they're damaged. You must still make sure you don’t scratch or smudge them, or leave them in very hot, very cold, or even very humid areas – they can melt, shatter, or grow fungus (it appears as though the cyan CDs are more prone to fungal growth than the others).

Tony says: I always make two or three backups of databases whenever I drive out of town (I'm in rural Alberta and service a large geographical area). A number of times I've discovered one set was bad when I got to the client’s office. So you should have more than just two sets of backups. I'd be sweating pretty hard once the first set is discovered to be bad and I only had one set left.

Lesson learned: you should have more than just two sets of backups.

If someone is doing regular daily data entry, it is recommended that you have one set of backups for every day of the week labeled Monday, Tuesday, etc. The last two or three days worth go offsite while the oldest two days are being rotated back on site. This way, the backup can still happen for a day or two if someone is ill or otherwise unavailable. Taking the backup offsite to someone's house is perfectly fine, or, if you’re backing up a computer that’s in your house, consider sending the backup to a friend’s or relative’s house, or put it in your safe deposit box at the bank. Just make sure it's off-site. And, if possible, periodically send a backup to another city - just for extra insurance.

If there are regular month end processes, it's also recommended that you do several, ie five, month ends worth, again rotating offsite. This is in addition to the weekly backup.

Laurie says: If you want to get really anal about it, and this is recommended if you're running a business, make sure you keep year end backups going back at least as many years as your government taxation agency will perform audits. This is usually means a minimum of six years plus the current, but will depend on your own country. Make sure you find out what your government requires before destroying any old year end backups.

If no regular month end processes, then do five weeks worth of Friday backups. Or Monday as it suits.

If doing intermittent entry, such as a clients set in an accountants' office or someone at home doing books once or twice a month, then a minimum of five sets is recommended. And again, the newest copies must go offsite.

The big thing to keep in mind is the pain threshold – how painful would it be to re-key two hours of work? Eight hours? Forty hours? One hundred hours? Six months? A year? How long can you afford to be without the data while it's being re-entered? How frustrated will you be if you have to re-key the data, or have someone re-key it for you? What's your pain threshold? Be realistic.

The lower your pain threshold, the more frequently you want to back up your data, and considering that the cost of media is so cheap compared to the cost of labour to re-key data, there’s no reason to not do frequent backups.

Laurie says: One of my clients backed up his data to his hard drive - the same hard drive the original data was on - against my express and repeated recommendation. He figured nothing would go wrong and at least he was backing up. One day, however, it did – the hard drive crashed. He shipped it to a data retrieval service, and he was quoted $5000 to recover whatever data was still in there. He opted to have the data re-keyed. It ended up costing him around the same amount, even with short cuts, and the quality of the data was significantly less than the original. Then consider that this was a business computer with all of his company financial data on it, throw in government taxation audits into the mix, and you can imagine a pretty ugly scene. It would have cost him a fraction of the $5000 to do backups properly, and he would have had a lot less headaches.

Tony says: Several times now in the past 17 years I've had to go back three or five sets to retrieve valid files. Not very often, but the alternative is far, far worse. In the one case I spent a week rebuilding various files. (It was cold up in Yellowknife that time of the year.)

3. Backing up

There are many backup programs available. If you have one, use it. Assuming that all your data is in one directory, this can be very easy – simply back up everything in the data directory. As well, if your backup data takes up more than one CD, for example, the backup program will automatically span it onto however many CDs are required.

Having said that, there are many backup programs available. Find one you like and makes sense to you. Otherwise, as one alternative, if you have a CD program that allows you to drag and drop your files onto the CD drive, then drag and drop the entire data directory and then burn the CD. If your data takes up more than one CD's worth of space, then back up several subdirectories at a time on to each CD, writing which subdirectories you've backed up onto the CD, and keep going until everything has been backed up.

4. Ensure that some of your backups are kept offsite

Backups MUST go offsite to avoid natural (or vandalism, arson or other unnatural) disaster.

Tony says: The Edmonton, Alberta, Canada tornado of 1989 proved this one as some businesses were very fortunate. In one business their mini-computer lived despite it being on the second floor and the building collapsed around it. Their off-site backup was in an adjacent, although separate enough for fire purposes, building but those file cabinets never got swept away to parts unknown. Another business had their safe, about the size of a desk but twice as high, moved several hundred yards and twisted. They had to get hydraulic rams in to straighten it out before they could drill it open - took about a week or so. (That business’s mini-computer vendor took two weeks to get a new system in. Their corporation has since switched vendors.)

In addition, there are fire safes you can get, but they are only 1 (or 2 or whatever) hour fire rated. But this is only for paper which chars at 451 Fahrenheit, as made famous by Ray Bradbury's book. Diskettes, tapes, CDs, and DVDs melt long before this. You can get mini-safes which fit inside a regular safe or media safes which are designed for diskettes and tapes. These will work ALMOST all of the time. That is, they maintain a much lower temperature, therefore preventing the media from melting, but they have a limited timeline, usually around a half hour or so, and they’re rated for fires up to certain temperatures. That means that if your fire is hotter, then you have less time before the fire safe stops functioning as designed.

But what if there’s a bad propane train derailment and the firemen are just going to let it burn itself out and your business is right next door. Those exploding propane cars make for spectacular footage on CNN and CBC. For that matter, what about earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, vandalism, theft, tornado.

With theft, you can't assume that only the computer and not the DVDs, CDs, diskettes will be stolen. Thieves are usually in a hurry and grab things that look like they may be valuable without looking carefully or, for that matter, caring.

Laurie says: I've had two computers stolen, and both times, the CDs and floppies beside the computer were also stolen. There go my backups. BUT in the first case, I went to the bank to retrieve my most recent offsite backup from my safe deposit box. In the second instance, I retrieve my most recent backup from my purse - it was a duplicate of my offsite backup in the bank safe deposit box. I've also had at least two hard drives melt down. In all of this, I've never lost more than a few hours of data.

To repeat, backups MUST go offsite.

Fires, floods, earthquakes, and other disasters can ravage entire towns or sections of cities. Send the backup to a branch office, or to a friend or relative in another city.

5. Test the backup

Finally, TEST the backup. Rename the directories and reload your backup. Or load it onto another computer or into another directory. Can you still get into your files? Test it every so often. Maybe someone's gone mucking about in the settings and files are no longer being backed up., or the backup program has glitches, or the media’s bad. Always choose the compare option to verify that the media isn't having some problems which might not otherwise be found.

These days disk space is real cheap so it should be easy to test this on another system. If it's a large server then your hardware vendor should be able to loan you a system so you can test your reload. This should include a test work station as well. Or you can go to their office and test things. (Do test on a small stand alone network so that there is no chance of someone siphoning your files and perusing data after you're gone. Also reformat the hard drives of the server before you leave or use Norton Utilities or equivalent program to security wipe the space the files took.)

SUMMARY:

You can call it paranoia if you like, but whether you call it that, or careful planning, or being prepared, or being smart, it all amounts to the same thing. With a proper backup system in place, in the event of disaster/catastrophe/failure/theft, you will lose, at most, a minimal amount of data. What you will gain, however, is peace of mind, sanity, and the ability to get up and running and back to work in a minimal amount of time.

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