Introduction
Backup onto a memory stick
Burn a disk
Backup onto another hard drive
Backup onto an external drive
Backup onto an online service
Introduction
In a world in which your PC becomes a hub for all your media which is available at your finger tips, one thing quickly becomes apparent which is that if your PC crashes and you don't have your media or other data backed up, you could be out of action for days if not weeks. What happens if you only stored all your pictures of your kids while they were growing up on one PC and that machine's hard drive crashed? What could you do to prevent this? Here are some of the options.
Backup onto a memory stick
You might be inclined to smile at this one but think again. You can buy Memory Sticks up to 16...32...++ GB quite inexpensively and you can use a free backup piece of software. Prices of memory sticks are dropping all the time. Windows XP ships with backup software called 'Windows XP Backup'. So if you have a smallish amount of data, all you need to do it plug in your backup memory stick and run the program.
Burn a disk
The most obvious way to backup your data is just to simply burn a disk. The new DVD burner technology is Bluray and you can also burn images onto your disk or even print on them. The problem with this approach is that you'll want to make incremental changes to your data, so this is a good way to snapshot your data but not to do daily backups. Best software packages out there imo is Nero or Roxio and come with data backup options.
Backup onto another hard drive
SATA drives are reasonably inexpensive now. You can get a 500GB drive for a few hundred but you run the risk that the disk will packup or the machine will packup. Of course, if the data is a mirror you make a gamble that only one copy fails leaving you to retrieve the other. This is a risky way to backup your data and one I would not recommend but the choice is yours.
Backup onto an external drive
This is another obvious option and a reasonably good one but you might be inclined to think of an external drive as a good place to store your data, your only copy! Don't do this. My brother recently lost all his data on an external drive which just packed up on him. Use it for copies. Also, this apprach won't cover acts of God like water, fire etc; It's best to try and keep your data copy in another physical location.
Backup onto an online service
Backing up your data is going to cost you money one way or the other. If you don't want to sign up for a remote data backup service, you're going to have to buy some hardware which you'll probably keep in the same room or you'll have loads of burned disks which are snapshots and it'll cost money and time to burn the disks. There are online services that will backup a certain amount of your data for free, as a lure to get you to use the full service, mostly for a monthly fee. Here are a couple of them, My recommendation is currently Mozy but this may change if a new contender emerges which is better.
