Backing Up your Files - Part 1: How to make better backups that really protect your files

By Daniel Dern

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While it is easy to save your entire life on your computer, it is even easier to lose some -- or all! -- of the essential files such as financial records, contacts, and other data. A power surge, a natural disaster, or even a burglary can erase this information in an instant.

The good news is that backing up the data on your computer – or making a copy of it to someplace NOT on your computer -- keeps getting easier and less expensive. In this article, we'll talk about the general issues involved in using online backups. In Part 2, we go through the steps to actually do it, and how to choose the right provider that will meet your needs, which we list in Part 3. We also have put together a short video tutorial showing you how one of the services actually works.

You can probably fit all your Word documents, spreadsheets, Quicken and Turbotax files, and maybe even all your email, onto a keychain-sized "USB flash drive" that costs between $20 and $100. Or you could "burn" them, along with copies of your digital photos, to some CD or DVD disks that cost pennies each. Or copy them all to an external hard drive, which costs anywhere from $80 to $300 -- but also has room for a copy of all the music on your iPod, and some of your family videos as well.

But although most backup software includes "one-click" start-up -- and many external hard drives include a "one-touch backup button" -- backing up this data still takes an effort each time. You have to remember to do it. You have to find your USB drive, CD/DVDs, or external drive, and hook it up, and start the backup, even if it's been set up so you only need to click something once.

Backup software for your computer can be set to do SCHEDULED backups -- backing up your files on a scheduled basis, like "every evening at two in the morning" (if you leave your computer on overnight).

There's one big problem with this, especially if you use your computer a lot, namely, all the data you create or change since your most recent backup is at risk, until you do another backup. A power surge, virus, or hard drive failure, could happen at any time, even when you're in mid-sentence or calculation.

Losing only one day's or week's worth of files isn't as bad as losing a month's worth, or everything -- but if you're working on something important, or you've just finished a chapter of your novel, that's cold comfort at best.

A growing number of backup programs can also do CONTINUOUS backups. Here, any time you create, or change, a file on your hard drive, the program updates the backup copy, within minutes or even seconds.

Some -- but not all -- backup programs will do continuous backups in a way that let you "rewind" changes or versions of a file.

And you have to have a separate, safe place for this backup -- preferably outside of where you live, like a safety deposit box, or a friend's, so that a fire, burglary, or major natural disaster won't also get your backup. (Would your hiding place have survived a Katrina-grade event?) The same power surge that damages your hard drive can easily damage your backup data, if the backup device is connected to your computer, for example, and if your backup CD is inside the computer when it's stolen...

So now you're really talking about at least two external hard drives, or a bunch of rewritable CD disks, to juggle.

"The problem with backup isn't the cost, it's the effort of doing it," says David Friend, President and CEO of online backup service Carbonite.

ONLINE BACKUP SERVICES: SIMPLIFYING THE TASK

With a growing number of homes connected by broadband, we're seeing growth of another way to do backups, letting a program you install on your computer back your files up, directly and automatically, via the Internet, to an Online Backup Service.

For as little as two to ten dollars a month, you can have your backups made and stored safely somewhere else. If you've got a lot of pictures, music, or video, you might spend more -- and if you've only got a moderate amount of data, you might be able to find a free service.

An online backup service, a.k.a. Internet backup, as the names suggest, backs up your computer files, over the Internet, to a storage location somewhere on the Internet.

Online backup services let you back up your files "off-site" -- to a location outside your house, preferably hundreds or more miles away. (This is one of the rare cases where you don't want to "shop local" -- so that a catastrophic event, such as Hurricane Katrina, won't get both your home and where your remote backups are.) ONLINE STORAGE sites act like a "drive in the sky" -- a hard drive you can drag, drop, copy, and click on files and folders, even parking files you don't want to keep on your computer.

Note, it's important to exercise due caution in selecting and using an online backup service, just as you would before picking a bank to handle your money or provide a safety deposit box for your valuables, or handing your jewelry to a hotel desk clerk to hold on to for you.

A reliable online backup Service should provide the software and help to let you get set up as painlessly as possible -- and be take care of running the equivalent of safety deposit boxes for your data -- storage that's safe and secure from computer problems, natural disasters, and criminals looking to steal your data.

There are dozens of online backup services to choose from -- although many won't be a match for your particular needs. If you are ready to start the process, continue with Part 2.