You're certain that your computer's hard drive will never go bad. You're never going to do something so idiotic as accidentally erasing a batch of your most critical data files. You fear no virus.
Until it happens to you.
Weeks, months or even years of data lost in an instant. And you never bothered to back up your work because you thought it was too much trouble, or you'd rather spend your computing dollars on something that's more "fun."
Welcome to the club. Many computer users -- particularly those who bought their first machines in the past couple of years -- have given little thought to making backups. But if there's anything on your hard drive that you'd be distressed to lose, you should be backing up regularly.
How regularly depends on how often you create or modify critical files -- business correspondence, reports, presentations and financial records. Some people should back up their work every day; some once a week. For the average user, once a month is probably sufficient.
Fortunately, plenty of backup options exist. Which one you choose depends upon the size of your files, how frequently you need to back up your data, and, of course, your budget.
Some people like to have an exact duplicate of their entire hard drive on hand in case the disk goes south. Others might be content just to back up their data files, since the operating system and programs can be reinstalled from the original CD-ROMs (although it takes a long time). In the early days of PCs, users just copied their data onto floppy disks. But given the ever-increasing capacity of hard drives (the average hard drive today holds 200 times as much as the the average drive of 10 years ago), plus the proliferation of ever-larger files such as digital photos, backing up material on 1.4-megabyte floppies has grown impractical for most of us.
The oldest high-capacity backup solution -- which some PC owners still prefer -- is a magnetic tape drive, the PC equivalent of a cassette recorder. Tape drives are slower than removable disks -- it can take several hours for a complete backup of a hard drive. But tape is still the cheapest large-scale backup medium and the only one capable of storing the contents of today's large hard drives on one cartridge.
Tape drives can fit inside your PC if you have an open drive bay, but many users prefer external units that hook up to a computer's printer port. Internal tape drives that can hold up to 8 gigabytes of data -- such as Seagate's Tapestore 8000 -- are available for less than $200. External units, such as Onstream's massive, 30-gigabyte DP30, run about $400.
In 1995, Iomega's Zip drive made its debut. In those days, a handful of Iomega's 100 megabyte Zip cartridges ($12 to $15 apiece) could satisfy most backup needs.
The Zip became an unofficial industry standard, and its near-ubiquitous presence is the strongest argument for buying one. Besides providing backups, it can double as a medium for exchanging large files with others, and it's available for PCs and Apple Macintosh computers. With a Zip drive, Mac users can read PC-formatted Zip disks, although it doesn't work the other way around.
Earlier this year, Iomega unveiled a 250 MB version ($200) of the Zip, but given hard drives that are now averaging 8 to 12 gigabytes, the Zip is still better for archiving critical files than performing a full hard drive backup. Iomega's 2-gigabyte Jaz drive is a more practical disk-based backup solution for today's hard drives, but its cartridges cost $125 each. Like the Zip, Jaz drives are available in Windows and Mac configurations.
Owners of Apple's iMac (which lacks a built-in removable storage device) should seriously consider Imation's 120-megabyte SuperDisk. This $150 external drive plugs into the Universal Serial Bus (USB) port of a Mac or PC, uses affordable $12 high-capacity disks, and works with old-fashioned, 1.44 megabyte floppies as well. There are internal versions that use a PC's hard disk controller or a separate SCSI controller card.
A 3-year-old company called Castlewood Systems has attracted attention with its new $250 Orb drive, which stores 2.2 gigabytes of data on disks that cost $30 each. It's available in a variety of internal and external models for PCs and Macs. Though it's a young and unproven product, the Orb is worth a look because it beats all other removable media in terms of price and performance.
Other alternatives include rewritable CDs and DVD-RAM drives. These use disks that look like CD-ROMs, but they're rewritable, like a videotape. CD-RW drives start at less than $250 and use 650-megabyte CDRW disks that cost about $12 each.
The similar DVD-RAM stores 5.2 gigabytes of data on a $50 compact disc, but the drives are expensive -- $750 and up -- and there's no industry standard format for recording yet.
When you've settled on the backup hardware, you'll need to select backup software. This might be as simple as using the Windows or Mac operating system. If you're backing up only a few files on a Zip or similar drive, just click your mouse on the files or folders you want to copy and drag them over to the backup.
But if your critical files are scattered -- or you want to back up the entire contents of your hard drive -- you'll need special purpose software. Windows users can save a little money by using Windows' built-in program, Microsoft Backup, while Iomega and Castlewood bundle backup software with their PC and Mac drives.
If you want more bells and whistles for Windows backups, consider NovaStor's NovaBackup ($60), Veritas Software's Backup Exec ($99) or Software Architects' DataSaver ($55). These programs include useful features such as scheduling backup time when you're not usually using the PC.
The Mac OS has no built-in backup utility, but users of Connectix's Speed Doubler can perform a drag-and-drop backup quickly because the utility adds a "smart copy" feature to the Mac OS that ignores unchanged files. For more sophisticated backups, consider the Mac version of DataSaver, along with Highware's Personal Backup ($49), and Dantz's highly regarded Retrospect ($45).
For those who don't want to be bothered with drives, there's an option that employs your modem: online backup.
For a monthly fee, you can back up your Windows-based data over the Internet to remote servers supplied by companies Atrieva Service, @Backup and SafeGuard Interactive.
BackJack online provides a similar Mac-oriented service. Each company provides its own backup software and encrypts your data to protect it from the Internet snoops. The obvious drawback to online backup is that it can take hours -- or days -- to upload all your data over a typical modem connection.
In the end, it doesn't matter which option you choose as long as you pick one and back up regularly. When the inevitable happens, you'll thank yourself.
Send e-mail to david.zeiler @baltsun.com.
WANT TO LEARN MORE?
Here are the Web addresses for the hardware and software companies mentioned in this article:
Hardware Castlewood: www.castlewood.com Imation: www.superdisk.com Iomega: www.iomega.com Onstream: www.onstream.com Seagate: www.seagate.com
Software Connectix: www.connectix.com
Dantz: www.dantz.com
Highware: www.highware.com
NovaStor: www.novastor.com
Veritas: www.veritas.com
Online Backup Atrieva: www.atrieva.com
@backup: www.atbackup.com
BackJack: www.backjack.com
SafeGuard Interactive: www.sgii.com