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 The Part of
Backup Nobody Mentions by Vinny La
Bash, Member of the Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc., Florida
vlabash(at)comcast.net
http://www.spcug.org
There are
dozens
if not hundreds of ways to backup your data, but we're not going to
talk about
that. We're going to discuss the most important part of doing a backup,
the
part that is hardly ever mentioned. Do you believe that your backup is
a sound
copy of your data? Would you be at ease if all your files suddenly
disappeared
from your computer, and all you had was your backup to restore them?
If your
confidence fizzled to zero, what's the problem?
You may have
developed the most sophisticated and comprehensive backup scheme the
computer
world has ever seen, but you won't ever know if it's any good unless
you test
it. Without a valid method of testing, you can have no confidence in
your
backups. There are many things that can go wrong with a backup, some
beyond
your control, some not.
Perhaps one day
you were in too much of a hurry, and you made a backup of one folder
instead of
your entire system as you planned. Hmm, no wonder that backup completed
so
fast.
Your backup disk
got exposed to a magnetic field and scrambled all your data.
The CD
containing your data was left in the car, and excessive heat warped the
media,
making it unreadable.
You encrypted
your backup and lost the password to restore it.
You upgraded
your backup software, and now it can't read your old backups.http://www.ntpcug.org/
Your new
upgraded backup software program becomes corrupted, and you can't make
a new
backup or restore an old one.
Your
new backup
program has a great innovative file compression scheme. However, it
turns out
that it compresses better than anyone expected.
You upgrade your
Windows Operating System and your backup software no longer works.
(Rare, but
it happens).
Let's stop here
before you get too depressed to make another backup. What's important
is to
understand that a great many things can go wrong even with the best
backup
methods.
The only true
test of your backup is to do a restore and see if it works. Does this
mean you
have to erase all your files, and then run a restore from your backup
media?
No. Fortunately, there are less chancy ways of verifying your backup
data.
One thing you
can do is install a second hard drive and restore your data files to
the second
disk. If your original disk has enough capacity, you can partition it
into at
least two sections, and restore into one of the new partitions. Hard
drives
have become almost dirt cheap, so this is not particularly expensive.
Another thing
you can do is make at least three backups and store them in three
different
locations for safety. Keep one copy at home, but in a different room
than your
computer. Store a second copy at your office or a friend's house, and
do the
same for him or her. The third copy could be in a safe deposit box or
similar
secure location.
If you feel
that
such measures are not necessary, ask yourself if you are ready to
perform the
ultimate test. Would you feel totally at ease erasing your hard disk
today and
restoring it from your backups? If not, then think again.
There
is no
restriction against any non-profit group using this article as long as
it is
kept in context with proper credit given the author.
The Editorial Committee of the Association of
Personal Computer User Groups (APCUG), an international organization of
which
this group is a member, brings this article to you.
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ANOTHER SERVICE
PROVIDED BY YOUR BG COMPUTER CLUB by Pat Ingram