Linda's 5-Stage Backup Plan …

What is the best way to backup the important data on your computer? There is no right or wrong answer to this question, only what works best for you. To help you get started on making your own personal backup plan, today’s column is an overview of how my husband and I go about backing up our computer data.

Last week I listed five steps for backing up data, and I mentioned that you can backup to flash drives, external hard drives, or to a cloud (internet) storage service. In the recent past many people also created backups on CD and DVD discs, but these discs are much too small and slow for serious data backup, and I do not recommend using them. What follows is an expanded version of my 5-Step Backup Plan. 

Point 1 – Create a complete backup of your computer's hard drive. 

For my MacBook Pro I use TimeMachine, a native backup utility installed on all Apple computers running Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard). If you have a desktop Mac, you can leave an external USB drive plugged in all the time and TimeMachine will make incremental backups every hour. With my laptop, I plug the USB drive in every few days and activate TimeMachine. Eddie's Dell laptop is backed up to a second USB drive using the backup utility built into Windows 7. If you prefer not to use the builtin options, a bit of research will uncover numerous other third party backup solutions. 

Point 2 – Backup your most important files to a flash drive every time you make changes.

Eddie uses Quicken to keep track of our financial records. To insure that he never loses any of this very important data, he keeps an 8 GB flash drive next to his computer, and at least once a day, he creates a file backup on the drive. For my part, my most important files are my photographic images. When I import photos from a camera to my hard drive, I also put copies of the photos on a flash drive as a safety measure. 

Thumb-sized flash drives are very inexpensive, with 8 GB drives selling for under $10, and you should have several in your desk drawer. 

Point 3 – If one backup is good, two is better.

One backup copy of your hard drive is never enough. If the backup data saved in one location is lost, having a second copy can be a life saver. The second copy can be saved on a second external hard drive, or in the "Cloud." Cloud storage services are remote facilities that you connect via the Internet using password protection. A major advantage of Cloud storage is that your data is accessible from any computer, anywhere that has a secure Internet access. 

In addition to our local backups, Eddie and I both store copies of our data in the Cloud. After some extensive research, we purchased a two-year subscription to ZipCloud. Most of the Cloud-based services offer a 30-day free trial, and we tried several plans before settling on ZipCloud. One of the clear advantages of ZipCloud over competing plans was the availability of unlimited storage at a very reasonable price. 

ZipCloud backups are incremental – the initial backup can take a long time, but subsequent backups are much faster. Cloud-based backups need fast, broadband internet connections. At home in New York we have high speed Verizon FIOS and it performs excellently. At TR we have a Centurylink DSL connection which performs reasonably well, although at a significantly slower speed.

Point 4 – Keep one backup of important information in a remote location. 

In the past, good advise was to keep a copy of important files in a safe deposit box. With the advent of cloud storage, it has become much easier to store files remotely. In addition to periodic backups of his complete drive, Eddie creates a daily ZipCloud backup of his financial files. ZipCloud also allows for the backup of external hard drives, and as soon as I put my photo library files in order, I plan to back up all my external USB drives.

Point 5 – Make periodic backups of smart phones and tablet computers.

You might be surprised how much information is stored on your smart phones and tablet computers; information that needs backing up in case something happens to the devices. Apple iPhone and iPad are backed up every time they are connected to the iTunes application on both Macs and PCs. 

Apple iPhone and iPad users, whether you are PC or Mac computers users, should have iTunes application installed on your computer. iTunes was originally developed to download and manage music on the computer, and when the first iPod music player was released iTunes was as a conduit to transfer music from the computer. It has since evolved into the management software for all of the Apple iDevices (iPhone, iPad, or iPod). Apps (small programs that run of the iPhone and IPad), as well as music, can be download into iTunes and then transferred to an iDevice when it is plugged the computer via a USB cord. Additionally, until recently, every time one of these devices are recognized by iTunes all of the information on the device is backed up on the computer. The backups still occur, but you now have a choice as to wether you want to backup to the computer or to Apple’s iCloud service. Everyone who creates an Apple account, which is necessary to utilize the iTunes App Store to download free and purchased apps, is automatically allocated 5 GB of iCloud storage. If you have a lot of information on your iDevice, you would need to purchase additional iCloud space. I choose to backup my devices to my computer.

There is no native method of backing up Android devices, but you can find directions at this online CNet article.