Once you’re computer is up and running, you will begin to collect files at an alarming rate.  Everywhere you surf on the ‘net, you can find free downloads.  It sure is tempting to gather up as much of this free stuff as possible.

What you don’t know is each time you download another file, you’re using more of your valuable hard-disc space.  Music and videos take up more space than eBooks and reports.   And if you’re working on the Internet building a business or offering your services, you’re saving even more information.

What would happen if your computer crashed and you did not have a backup of all your files?

I learned the hard way how long a new computer can last.  My first was a Dell just over 2 years old.  It died on a Christmas Day after going through a series of deadly “blue screen” errors on system start-up.  I had never performed a system backup!  I had pay-per-click ads running, no backup computer and I was down over a week.

Fortunately, I was able to find a really good local computer tech to get everything off the hard drive to build a new box.  But it came at a very high cost – over $1,000 to the computer tech and and another huge chunk of cash to PPC ads that I had just started running for the post holiday stampede.  You see – when placing new PPC ads, you need to bid high just to get your ads showing.  Once they’re showing, you can improve your quality score to bring the cost down.  Well – I wasn’t at that point yet as I had just placed the ads.  What a mess!

Computer Backups

Your computer operating system comes with the option to setup scheduled system backups.  These are scheduled by you on a regular basis to run at a convenient time when your computer is on, but not in use.

This is a convenient service, but it will only backup existing files to another location on your hard-drive, chewing up even more space.  The most ideal option is to backup your files to an offline device or use a service like Amazon AWS Solutions to backup and save your files.

Computer Backup Strategies

When selecting an offline device to store your backup files, you need to select one that is at least 5 times the size of your hard-drive.  Once you have your drive and your backup software installed, you’ll need to perform a full system backup to create a “mirror image” of your system on the offline device.

You’ll need backup software that will allow you to set a schedule for regular backups and that will also let you do a backup on-demand.  I always do an on-demand backup after I complete extensive work that I want to make sure I don’t lose.  I prefer Norton Ghost which is included in
NORTON 360 PREMIER ED 3.0-CD 1U 3PC MM.

Once your full system backup is completed, you’ll need to setup your backup software to run every day or week at the same time.  If you’re using your computer for business, I suggest running daily backups otherwise, a weekly backup will suffice.

Your ongoing backups should create a new recovery point every month with incremental recovery points within the month.  An incremental recovery point saves space as only actual changes to your data is written to the backup drive.  You can restore individual files by day or week and you can do a full system restore.

Computer Backup Devices

If you plan on cleaning off your hard-drive and storing files on your backup for later recovery, you’ll want at least 3 backup drives.  All you have to do is identify which drive will save your files to be recovered on-demand.  Then send all your system backups to one of the other drives.

Once one backup drive is full of system backups, install the third drive and direct all your system backups to the third drive.  Once the third drive is full, go back to the second drive and start using it for system backups after you have deleted all the files.

Using 2 or 3 drives gives you maximum backup capability for the maximum period of time.  There’s nothing worse than getting an offline drive that is too small and finding out you don’t have enough space to store even 6 months of data!

I prefer researching devices using online websites.  You can see which are the top sellers and then read the reviews.  For instance, I found one device that had very good user ratings, but then I read the reviews and found one fault with the device that was a deal breaker for me.

I recently purchased an external hard drive with 1TB of capacity.  A terrabyte is a thousand gigabytes of storage.  This was unheard of just a few years ago for in-home computing.  I highly recommend the
Western Digital 1TB My Book Essential USB 2.0 External Hard Drive.  This drive will hold:

• 440 hours DVD
• 250,000 MP3s
• 285,000 JPGs

It’s 30% more energy efficient, 6 1/2″ high by 5″ wide and 2″ deep which makes it the ideal size to fit almost anywhere.  One of the best features is the automatic setup – the software installs itself once it’s plugged in.  This means no disc to insert and no instructions to wade through.  You’ll also appreciate how quiet the drive is – I never hear it, unlike many others I’ve had.

Don’t wait until your hard-drive dies without warning.  Get a system backup plan installed and make sure it’s working.  This means going in at least every week to access the recovery files to make sure they’re valid.

Once you have an automatic solution, all you’ll have to do is monitor disc space!