Backing up your computers data is one of the most important yet most neglected practices of owning a computer system. This is especially true if you are making a living using your computer, which the majority of our customers do. The downtime involved with an operating system crash, virus, hard drive failure, etc can cost you an important client, your reputation, and even your job.
No matter how stable you think your system might be, it is only a matter of time before you have some type of data meltdown. The most common of these, such as viruses and hard drive failures, are easily avoided by quick and easy data backup strategies. In this day and age data backup is very easy and affordable, so there is really no excuse in not having a plan for data backup on your system.
Backup and Recovery Applications -
System Restore Built into Windows XP and Vista
This is a very simple backup method that is built into Windows. It is not designed to be a complete backup solution. It only backs up your registry and few system files. It is helpful at times for recovering from some types of failed software and some types of driver install issues. It does not save your from virus, spy ware, etc.
HOW TO: Use Windows XP System Restore
HOW TO: Use Windows Vista System Restore
Driver Rollback - Built into Windows XP and Vista
This is technically part of System Restore. Driver Rollback uses System Restore as a reference to store the previous drivers used for the device. This can be helpful for simple driver installs that go wrong.
HOW TO: Driver Rollback in XP
HOW TO: Driver Rollback in Vista
Windows Vista Backup And Restore Center Built into Windows Vista
Depending on which version of Vista you have this can be a very useful backup utility. It will do basic automated file backups and with Vista Business and Ultimate it can do complete backups similar to some 3rd party backup programs. It is not a full featured or reliable as programs such as Paragon Drive Backup or Hard Disk Manager but will work fine for anyone that does not have these application.
Sync Toy - Free Windows File sync program for XP and Vista
This is a an excellent, easy to use, and very flexible tool from Microsoft for syncing files and folders. This is highly recommended for syncing your your audio and video projects to backup locations including different computers. It does not use a proprietary method for dealing with the files like most 3rd party backup and file sync programs do. Vista also has a program called Sync Center which is geared more towards syncing phones, media players, etc which is also useful but not designed for most audio and video customers backup needs.
3rd Party Disk Imaging Programs -
Commercial disk imaging programs are available with more advanced backup capabilities than the built in Windows tools. There a few different drive backup programs on the market. We include Paragon Drive Backup or Paragon Hard Disk Manager on all of the PC systems we sell. Over time we found this to be the most reliable, if not always the most simple, backup software on the market. These programs include very advanced partition and file level backup, restore, and recovery abilities and have been proven to be life savers to our customers. This will be the best method for recovering from major hard drive and system failures. The programs have extensive task scheduling functions so you can easily set up an automated backup time for your system on a daily, weekly, monthly,etc. schedule.
CD/DVD-
CD and DVD discs are useful but may not be the best long term archiving medium. The quality of the CD and DVD media, as well as where you store the discs, can greatly impact the life span of the disk. Higher quality brand name discs from manufacturers such as Verbatim and Taiyo Yuden are recommended for archiving important data. The discs should be stored in cool, dry, low light location in order to increase their life span. DVDs and CDs also have the problem of storage capacity. For large data backups they tend to not be feasible. They do tend to work well for general personal data backups such as email, documents, pictures, etc.
USB Flash drives -
These drives are very handy in general and are great for file backup and folder syncing. They tend to be too small for most full OS drive or audio and video project backups. The small size makes them easy to misplace so it is best not to keep important data on them for permanent archiving.
Internal Hard Drives-
Hard drives will generally be the fastest and largest back up solutions. Using a drive that is installed inside your computer case is a quick and convenient way to having a permanent backup location. The main draw backs of using internal drives are safety and future expansion. Malfunctioning power supplies and motherboards can potentially damage a hard drive. This will mean the potential of losing both the main data drive and your backup data drive all at once. In general backing up to internal drives is a quick and affordable solution for most basic backup solutions, though not the ideal method for long term archival of mission critical data.
External drives and multiple drive bay systems -
USB, Fire wire, ESATA and network are the most common configurations for external storage. With prices of hard drives so low nowadays we recommend this method for anyone needing to backup and archive larger amounts of data such as audio and video projects. There are single and multi-drive external systems available. In most cases it will be a multi-drive system for audio and video storage.
Most of these will be in some form of redundant RAID configuration. For most of our customers we recommend DROBO system for large data storage and redundancy needs. These are not the cheapest or fastest system but are by far the easiest to use and expand. They are one of the only ones that make their enclosures quiet enough to be used in most studios