Pulborough Computer Club
Backing up Data
Backup Media
CD-Rs are recommended because.
- CD-Rs are cheap at under 30p each holding 700MB.
- CD-RWs are more expensive, slower and in my experience, less reliable.
- Floppy discs are much too small and not very reliable.
- Zip discs are smaller and the media is expensive (approx £10 for 250MB).
- Tapes are either slow or expensive or both.
MS Backup
Windows has a perfectly adequate program, Backup, which can save a selection of files to one compressed image. Advantages of using MS Backup are:-
- It not only copies the data, but also verifies that the data has been copied correctly.
- It can restore individual files leaving others undisturbed.
It's not installed by default, but use Control panel - Add/remove programs - Windows Setup to install it. It's in the System Tools section.
The first time you run Backup, create a backup set by ticking all the folders or individual files that need to be routinely saved. Thereafter, the same backup set can be reused. This task is eased if all routinely backed up data is in one place.
For routine data backup, say once a week, the data in the backup set is first backed up and verified to a file. It's good to devise a file naming scheme eg Data030210.qic which signifies that the file refers to 10th February 2003.
From there, it is then burned to a multi-session CD using Nero or some similar burning software with the verification option enabled. If your CD burning software doesn't have a verification option, download Nero. Use two CDs , each on alternate weeks. The reason for this is that if a CD fails, you can go back to the previous week on the other CD. When the CDs are full, switch to a new pair.
For some programs, such as Quicken (or MS Money), I back up after every session to floppy disc. Yes I know it's not totally reliable, but if it fails, I've got a proper 'week old at the most backup' on a CD and I do keep paper records and transaction slips for a month, so the current state can be recreated without too much effort if need be.
They key to success is to be sure that the backup has been compared with and found identical to the original. An unverified backup is worthless.
Recovering Data
MS Backup can also be used to recover an individual lost or damaged file, a folder or even the complete backup set. When set to recovery and pointed at the appropriate .qic file, just tick the ones you want, decide whether to put them back where they came from or somewhere else and away you go.