As I promised last time, here is a description of how I deal with backups at home.

I am a very safe person when working with computers. Well not just for that… I am a safe person in general. Anyway, when it comes to safeguard the data stored in the home computers, I become even more cautious, up to the point of storing several backup copies of the same data, in case a copy is lost. All in all, I keep up to 4 copies of my data all around the house and one more up in the Internet cloud.

Here is how it works:

• each computer in the network makes its own backup on a storage repository on the Linux server, which is used for that, to handle a local family WEB site, and to handle Internet access via a proxy server; this is what I call the first level of backup.
• each month, I manually transfer the backup copies on the Linux server to a pool of removable drives; this is what I call the second level of backup.
• each month, the previous content of the pool of removable drives is stored on a separate partition of the other server I have in the network, which acts as a storage and printer server; and this is, as you may guess, my third level of backup.
• each month, the previous content of the storage server is moved on to DVD, my forth level of backup.
• periodically, every time I deem it necessary, I finally store a copy of the most important data on the cloud, for safe keeping if something should go badly wrong in the house (I hope that  never happens).  This is usually data coming from the first level of backup. This data, are never removed form the cloud. Instead, every time I add something, I put the date in the name itself of the backup file, so that an historical archive is safely stored off site.

You can see how each level of backup stores a older version of data than the previous one. This way, files that are deleted from a computer can always be retrieved from an old backup, even though the most recent backups don’t have them anymore. You may call this one too an historical repository, if you are there for the big words.

And finally, here is a picture that delineates, hopefully better than words, what I just described.

To the next…

Many people just assume that whatever they save in their computer is going to stay there forever, unless they delete it. Never a thought mas more wrong than that!

Computers are mostly made of solid state devices, which are supposed to last for a very long time without breaking. However, sometimes something goes wrong, for example a power surge, and a component on the motherboard goes away, or the whole motherboard fries up, or…

Did you ever think of the hard drive? Yes, that device that actually holds all your data. That is the most fragile piece inside a computer. Why? Because it is a mechanical device with moving parts! Moving parts are subject to friction, and they expand and contract when temperature changes. They get old, then they break. And usually they break way before other parts of the computer reach the end of their lifetime.

Then… what happens to the important things that you stored on the hard drive? All those pictures, and songs, and important documents, and…

Don’t wait ’till the worst happens. Take action immediately. Avoid blaming yourself once the disk dies and you haven’t make a copy of your data.

Take a USB drive, or a recordable DVD or a CD-ROM, and make a copy of all your data on it. Use several of them, if one is not enough. Even use an external removable disk. Then, once you have the copy of your data, store them in a safe place, ready for that day when your disk will break, and you’ll have to recreate your data on a new device.

Pretty easy, isn’t it? Just a little time spent once to make you sleep with no worries. Well, be careful! Every now and then you are surely going to change something in your data. Maybe you are going to add new stuff, like new songs, or new documents, or that video you were looking for since a long time.

Do another backup, save all those things that have changed, or you will end up with an old copy of your original data without the most recent updates.

Yes, I know, it is a never ending chore, but believe me: it is worth it.

Finally, if you want to play really safe, establish a routine:

1. Do periodic backups
2. Store a copy of your backup off site (what about if a fire or a flood strikes right where you keep both the computer and your only copy of backup?)
3. Think about the possibility of storing your data over the Internet, in the so named cloud. There are several on-line services that make available a certain amount of space to store your files in their servers. And if that space is not enough, for a small fee they can give you plenty of extra space and, one day, you’ll be happy you’ve done that.

Next time I will talk again about this topic. I will describe the routine I’ve established for my own computers, so to give you an example of how you could deal with your own stuff. Remember, nothing is perfect. What works for somebody may not be OK for another. In the end you have to decide how you want to protect your data, if at all. But a good example is a place to start, something you can think about to decide how you want to handle your stuff.

Sleep well.