Posted by tmcguire47 on September 1, 2009 – 11:00 am
Melissa Perenson, with PC World, urges computor users to try “Set it and forget it” backups. It is mainly an intro to other articles and pointing at some new devices that make backups easy. I am all about promoting backups, and in fact I am all about making them easy. However, I would strongly caution against setting it and forgetting it. When it comes to backups, the easy button is a bit dangerous. It is a false sense of security blanket. If your data is important, then backups are actually something you (or someone) needs to pay attention to regularly. Here are some problems with making backups too easy:
1. Vendors focus on making the backup easy, but how easy is the restore? Do you even know? Many reviewers never even test the restore process. Chances are good you might not find out until you are actually trying the restore, and by then it might be too late.
2. An easy setup might grab far too much data, or it might miss some. For example, if it grabs your whole drive, you could be backing up unimportant system files, wasting valuable space on your backup media, or worse, paying to store that with an online vendor. Or, it might miss some, perhaps if you have a folder that isn’t in a standard location, for example.
Those are just a few of the issues. Real backups take work, and attention, both in the planning stage and in an ongoing maintenance stage. It can still be easy, but if you want to really feel secure about your data, the setup of the backup should be conscious, not haphazard.
Most companies know they should have backups. Most people need them as well. Yet lots of people neglect to ever set it up. Everyone updates iTunes and Acrobat. Who is to blame? You, mostly. You know better, you know you need to get it done. But, you know, the OS people blow it all the time as well. Microsoft has made the built-in backup app for vista and windows 2008 server less functional. Apple has finally brought backup into the spot light with Time Machine. But, typical of Apple, they act as if they have invented backups as a concept, when they have basically come to the table pretty late in the game. And one gets the feeling that Time Machine is maybe really a tool built as a way to sell some Time Capsules, an overpriced piece of hardware that fits right into the Apple lineup. On the PC side, the PC makers try to get into it sometimes. After you set up your Dell, HP, Acer, or other PC, if it has a burner, you might be prompted to burn a backup image. Once. at the beginning. Before you have lots of personal files on the machine. Dell has gotten into the game a bit with their remote backup service, but this is overpriced as well. HP abandoned the online backup service started last year. You know who does a good job with pushing the idea of backups? Intuit. Quickbooks and the like make monthly suggestions that you back up your data. They also float the idea that you might want to use their service to do it remotely. So, good work Intuit.
Still, even if everyone else isn’t putting it right in front of our faces, we all know better. There are free tools. There are built-in tools. There are cheap tools. There are free, easy, remote services. There are better cheap, easy, remote services. So, backup already. Jeesh.
Still, again, we get news of companies that blew it: Carbonite, a respected online backup provider, loses data, blames storage vendors
And, we should all back up well. The National Archives and Records Administration apparently uses external USB drives to move data around for backup purposes. Oh, and they don’t necessarily encrypt the data. Last week the NARA offered $50,000 for the safe return of the drive, which has the social security numbers of 100,000 people, including one of Al Gore’s daughters. I know for a fact that I could offer them backup services through The Backup Plan that would completely protect the 2 TB on that drive for less that 25% of their reward as a yearly cost. Probably less than that, assuming they have more to back up. Oh, and it would be fully encrypted and automated. No drives to lose. No embarrassing press releases or rewards to offer. Or they could choose from 20 online backup service providers a simple google search would return.
