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Now it's time to explain my reasons for adopting the policy that I also recommend to you.
What to backup
Don't pick and choose; it's a total waste of your time and will come back to bite you in the bum (US: fanny or butt). Don't pick and choose is another way of saying, KISS, (Keep It Simple, Silly), or backup everything that can be backed up.
This will save from a lot of messing around, clicking and selecting, with options and preferences which you simply don't need or want. After you have used my policy for a few weeks you will realize that it really is very simple, foolproof and unbeatable.
The aguments against this are at best years out of date. Remember I told you that you would be buying a second hard drive that will be either the same size (capacity size specifically) or bigger and by bigger probably at least twice as big. So you now know, by inference, that talk about saving space is now nonsense and belongs to years ago when drive space was tight. You can put, copy, EVERYTHING that is on your main drive over to your second drive without the slightest need to think about saving space.
So you don't need to bother about what you are going to back up - backup the lot. I know this is repetition but at the back of my mind is 'the opposition' telling you to scrimp and save on byte space so I feel that I have to drive the point home.
That is a huge weight off your shoulders because it means you click 'backup' and there is no messing around stage where you waste, time, effort, attention and frustration on things that just don't matter in the slightest.
So are we clear? You will not at any time bemoan the fact that you have not got a load of backup options and preferences instead you will celebrate the fact.
That's the first thing to get clear.
The next question is almost redundant before we even start. It's the where do you back up to.
Where or what to back up to
Now, I have already banned the P word. Do I have to regurgitate it for you?
It makes no sense whatsoever to backup to the same hard drive that contains the files that are going to be backed up. It's worse than utter nonsense and absurdity. I don't want to hear it. Don't start your "but p.pp..pppp..pp". It's banned. Full stop. (US: period).
Easier and easier isn't it. No silliness. No absurdity. No nonsense. See I told you, can you see the butterflies yet?
What about CDs or DVDs then? Banished. Feed them to the dragons.
You will never, never and never be burning CDs for backup. I mean, why all that bother?
What about memory sticks? I won't comment at the moment as these present some advantages and I suspect that in a few years these may even take over from hard drives anyway but at the moment they are too small (capacity) so you would be back to messing around with 'what and where' to choose to backup and which memory stick you put it on, no, put them on the back burner for the future, maybe in another five or ten years they will take over from traditional hard drives.
Perhaps I should explain that the reason these silly ideas persist is that hard drives used to be prohibitively expensive but those days disappeared years ago and nowadays buying a second hard drive or even a third and fourth is the only sensible way to create a nice, easy, manageable and fun way to build a backing up system that is impossible to beat.
I have tackled the questions that confuse and befuddle people by giving you not only very easy answers but the very best answers too.
So from now on you can safely ignore all talk and writing about backing up to a p******n, or to a CD or DVD. Similarly for options, settings and preferences, we don't need them, we don't want them.
Choice of backup structure or format.
Again there is only one decent answer and the others you need to ban. You do not want any kind of backup that compresses or saves the backup in ANY other kind of way except as an exact copy of the structure of the files that you are backing up.
Confused? It's simple. You backup so that the backup looks and is exactly the same as the drive that you are backing up. This means that at any time you can go to your backup and not be lost. You will know exactly where to find the particular file or folder or program. All you need do is go to that drive in exactly the same way as you go to the original drive.
Anything else means that you will have obstacles in your way when it comes to using your backup (as opposed to just creating your backup). When you need to use your backup the last thing you need is complication and obstacles put in your way before you can locate and retrieve the part of the backup that you want.
Apparently there are backup programs that use a proprietary format - if you lose the backup program eg in the event that you need the backup! Then how do you extract your backup? Others are not that bad but compress the backup. Why? We are not going to mess around with such petty and pointless "features" because we just don't want them, do we? No.
Summarizing and a few lesser issues to mention
I think I have covered three distinct backing up options here. Easy wasn't it. I have tackled these issues lightly but soundly and I have banished much of the conventional talk (and expert writing) about the subject to the rubbish bin. Just don't go picking over it again unless you want to get dragon poo on your fingers; ti's rubbish, gone, forgotten, don't recycle it.
What this now means is that if you choose the right backup program, one that follows this policy then you will be offered the chance to select the backup drive and the program will then commence backing up. That's exactly what you need and nothing more. If you have to play around with more then it will be because some of the things we have banished are being prompted to you. All I will say is "Beware dragons lurk here".
These are rules I followed when I wrote my own backup program (Bax It!) so it is not a case of, oh, I have this program now let's write an article to plug it and taylor it to the quirks of the program, no, not at all. I wrote the program with these sound ideas as my design features and I use it, often, and write these articles to educate, share and most of all give you the opportunity to save yourself from the repurcussions that a fatal data loss incurs.
These are the main considerations so now I will mention a few minor ones too.
Reports and logs.
Easy to understand basic logging and session reporting is useful and, I have also found, can point to files that may be suspect. As an example, last night I used Bax It! and the log showed an anomaly with a file I hadn't previously heard of that was in the Windows/System32 folder so I went to 'properties' of both and compared them side by side (to see what the differences were) and then I did a google on the file (devil.dll) and realised that it was harmless.
The report meant that I was able to spot it and examine it for safety.
Progress indicator
It's nice to be able to view the state of play at any time if only to see that the backup program is actually doing something.
Will your seach for a backup progam thats meets these requirements produce fruit?
There are loads of backup programs.
All I will say is one word: dragons.
I have produced the program that meets each of these requirements. Bax It!. And it's free. And there are no catches. Butterflies.
Having tackled the issues involved with backing up, the main ones anyway, we can move on to the next topic which is to explain a little about why, no matter what backup program you use, there are limitations and what you should know about these and what can be done to cater for them.
By Paul E. Coughlin
SaneThinking.com
5 June 2008
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