Hertzler Outpost

When I started writing about the need to back up critical data, I was about halfway into the post when I realized that I neither had a simple backup solution myself, nor did I know of one! I partly wished I hadn’t brought the subject up to begin with, but since I started it I kept on going.

Here is what I would recommend. Buy a USB disk and use MS Briefcase to backup files.

The only problem with this solution is that it won’t backup a large number of files very well. To backup a large number of files you will either need to use several briefcases or use MS Backup and a large secondary hard drive.

Here’s how to get started:

A. Locate and organize your files. Deciding what you should backup is a highly personal decision. Here are some suggestions:

Finding where your computer applications store these files is the difficult part.
Hint: Within each application that uses a data file, see if you can save a copy of the data using the “Save As” feature. If the nature of the program allows you to do this, it will indicate where it goes to save its main data files by default. Your data files will most likely be in the same place.

1. Buy a USB drive. You can get a 512Mb USB drive for $50. This is a link to a 1Gb USB disk from Newegg.com for $136. I can’t say enough good things about Newegg.com.

2. Plug in the USB disk to the USB port on your computer and create a briefcase on it. Open My Computer then open the drive associated the the USB disk (“Removable Disk”). In the white space of that window, right click, select “New” and then “Briefcase.” When you open that briefcase for the first time a tutorial screen will pop up explaining how to use it.

3. Drag the files you want to backup into the briefcase. If you are unfamiliar with how to do this, here is a link to a tutorial for Windows Explorer from Duke University.

4. Synchronize the briefcase whenever you want to do a backup. When you open the briefcase there will be a button you can click that synchronizes all the files in the briefcase.

Once you get more than about 50 – 100 files in a briefcase, synchronizing takes a long time and can sometimes be incomplete. You can make several different briefcases to get around this problem.

If your backup needs exceed a solution like this, you’ll need to use a more advanced backup solution. If you have a CD burner, you can make backup copies of things that don’t often change (like digital photos), but keep in mind that CD’s have a limited life-span. “CD rot” will set in eventually.

One final idea: Web hosting can be as inexpensive as $4/month from companies like Parcom.net. For that price you get 500 Mb of storage on their servers. Even if you don’t create a web site to reside there, you can use their servers for backing up your data! But why not put up a website, register your own personal domain (like hertzlers.com), and start using email services at your own domain while you’re at it?