Back up my files?! Are you kidding? Is that a real thing you have to do? I always thought that that was just like... you know, a figure of speech.
--"Strong Bad" of Homestar Runner
Yes, you should be doing some type of backup. Of course, in today's world, you have a lot of options, but the main thing is, find a system that you can depend on and is reliable, and hopefully your files will be there for you when need them. In this article I will talk about some different options available today and hopefully convince you that you should be doing backups. I will also point out the advantages and disadvantages of the different options so that you can make an educated decision when it comes to deciding how to protect your data. Are you ready? Then click here to continue.
Wikipedia has a good summary of backup terminology and options. In fact, a lot of the data here in this article comes from that page, so if you want more detail, I suggest going there. The first thing you need to decide though is what you are going to back up. In general, if you have the installation CDs for your applications, then you really don't need to backup the actual applications themelves. However, of course you want to back up that data created using those applications. In other words, you wouldn't need to backup your Windows directory and all of its system directories, unless say you were a fontographer (a person who creates custom fonts) and they were stored in the fonts direrectory under windows. In a case like that, you would most certainly want to back up that folder. The same would go for the Program Files directory--in general you wouldn't need to backup that directory because you can re-install your applications using the CDs. But unfortunately, in some cases, there are some strange programs out there that actually save data in the Program Files directory. Furthermore, you may have accidentally (or on purpose) saved data there at some point. So, what I am trying to say is, you need to know what your computer habits are, and be sure that you are backing up what you need to back up. So, why can't you just back up everything? You can, and that is a good idea in a lot of cases. You can even "mirror", or "ghost" your hard drives, in which case if you have a problem with your primary hard drive, you could actually be up and running again, with all software updates that you have installed, as well as any custom software configuarations that you may have made. Yes, they would all be saved. Sounds great, right? But it comes at the expense of additional space and time needed to complete the backup. While you are at it, think about the"other" data on your computer that
Automation. To me, this is the most important aspect of a good backup system. Humans will forget. If you think you are going to backup your system onto a few DVDs every week, and do it without fail, then I really think you are kidding yourself. Quite honsetly, I think if you want to do the backups yourself, then you should buy another hard drive. As of 8/10/2008, newegg has 750GB hard drives for under $100 (that's two tanks of gas--or maybe less). Get one and use it just for backing up your data. If you go the hard drive route, then you can use any of the excellent backup utilities out there, and you will never have to worry about swapping CDs or DVDs (or tapes, but no one uses tapes any more). One program that I have used in the past, and is free, and does not contain any adware or spyware, is a program called Cobian Backup. It is an excellent program that has won a lot of awards, and it just works.
Physical location. There is one thing that you have to consider if you choose to go with the hard drive route--a lot of people lose data in disasters such as fires and floods, or lighting strikes (do you turn your computer off every time you aren't using it? Me neither.) In which case, you might want to look at one of the online backup services. There are a couple, but two very popular ones are Mozy and Carbonite. Mozy will let you backup 2GB for free, or an unlimited amount of data for $4.95 per month. Carbonite lets you upload an unlimited amount of data for $49.95 per year. Of course, these services come with software to make the backups completely automatic. And the beauty of them is that your data is safe and secure outside of your house (yes, they encrypt the data so only you can decrypt them). I encourage you to look for other backup services to see if any suit your needs--many are free.
I hope that helps you decide what type of backup you need to do, and more importantly, that you do start doing them. I suppose most of us know someone that "lost everything" because they didn't have a good backup strategy. Now is the time to develop yours!