Surviving a hard drive crash
Sep 14th, 2007 by Vinny
It has happened to everyone, your hard drive crashes, a cd-rom breaks, or in the past a floppy has zapped. In the current day there is still a valid reason to back up your data regularly. I will talk about a couple different options so you can see what works best in your situation.
The first step into surviving a crash is to get two hard drives! Most of the PC vendors have an option to get a second hard drive when you build a new system. People who build their own PC’s must look for a computer motherboard that supports RAID 0/1. When you are creating a new PC yourself, or from a company like Dell, look for RAID 1. This option enables hard drive mirroring, which automatically copies one hard drive to the other. If one dies, the other one is already there with your data. The operating system should notify you that a drive has died so you can call support, or purchase another drive that is exactly the same to replace it.
The second step is to backup your data to an outside source. This can be a USB/Firewire attached hard drive such as one of the Western Digital My Book Essential 320GB 3.5″ External Hard Drives. They are in-expensive and work very well. They come with backup software so with the hit of a button, or on a schedule it will backup your stuff.
The one issue that comes to mind is what if you have a fire? Your USB drive will burn with the house, and you are no better off. If you are good and keep it in your car or office, you will be OK. If you have small backups, a great software package is called EMC DANTZ Retrospect 7.5 Pro. This software will backup to a DVD if you have a DVD writer, CD-R if you only need 700MB, USB Keys that you can take with you, or to remote network drives. The idea is to copy important files and move then off-site so they can survive a horrible incident.
A much easier option for off-site backups are the newer online backup companies. I have been using iDrive.com for a few weeks without a problem. The software is very transparent and has a continuous backup option for those who do not like to schedule backups. Continuous backup detects file changes and automatically syncs it to the website. iDrive.com will also keep file histories or versions, so you can restore a file from a previous date.
The company gives you 2GB free, which should be enough for most important files. If you want to backup the entire hard drive, you can get “unlimited” or 150GB for about $4.95/month. This isn’t a bad deal considering the amount of time and money invested for your personal documents and photos.
Online backup does take a little while to copy your data (if you have dial-up don’t bother) but it is worth the time.
One last trick along the same lines of an online backup method, is to mount an sftp server as a windows drive. There is software called “sftpdrive” which will create a secured ftp drive for you, google that to get more info. Sftp encrypts your data, regular ftp the data is send in clear text, as well as the login username/password which is a security risk. Use Restrospect to backup to this drive letter and you have a cheap off-site backup method.
One thing to note for all backup options, try to pick through the list of files they present and only backup what you really need. Programs can be re-installed, its your documents that matter. Photos of that special moment cannot be re-placed, so be smart and backup!
The last type of backup option is a complete hard drive copy. Software such as Symantec Norton Ghost 12.0. This software will make a complete hard drive image of your windows (only) PC while its running. You can also use this software with other operating systems, but you have to boot off of a Ghost cd-rom and do the copy. What this means is if your hard drive were to fail, you can boot from the cd-rom and do a complete restore on a new hard drive. Nothing else is necessary, everything will be exactly how you left it at the last backup.
Hopefully one of these methods will suit you, just do something!
