The Poor Man's Backup Plan

How to Backup Your Valuable Data Easily. A Free Automated Backup Plan for Everyone!

As the old saying goes, it's not IF you'll lose data, but WHEN you'll lose data. For that reason, you must operate under the assumption that you WILL lose data at some point. In years past, ensuring you had a good backup of your data was a labor intensive and often expensive process.  However, in recent years, with the rapid decreases in prices of storage, it has been easy an inexpensive to have an automated backup system for all of your data. In this article I'm going to cover several methods of implementing this. Whether you are a home user attempting to backup your own personal data, or a professional responsible for backing up your organization's data, there is a quick, easy, and inexpensive way of doing it.

First, let's discuss how you organize your data on your drive. Your goal is to make sure everything you want to back up is in one folder.

On Windows XP, I always recommend putting all of the data you want to back up in your My Documents folder. Then, simply back up that folder and you know you'll get everything.  There is a reason Microsoft put "My Pictures", "My Music", etc. inside that folder! Most software vendors follow suit and install their data files in your My Documents folder automatically. However, for every important program you use, be sure to identify where the data files are being stored and move them to a subfolder in your My Documents folder. You may have to consult the documentation that came with the software, or check out their support website to find out how to accomplish this. For all programs that give you the choice of where to save (word processing, spreadsheets, etc.), be sure to choose your My Documents folder. It is a good idea to organize documents by subfolders to keep the number of files down in the root of My Documents - whatever works for you. Finally, don't forget Quicken and Quickbooks data! Newer versions utilize "My Quicken" and "My Quickbooks" subfolders of My Documents, but older versions may store the data in the Quicken/Quickbooks program directory. Look for c:\program files\Intuit or c:\program files\Quicken or c:\program files\Quickbooks to locate your data, and move it to My Documents.

One oddity in this area is the placement of Microsoft Outlook data. I really don't know why Microsoft made the default folder for Outlook PST files to be buried in a hidden folder, but if you use Outlook for email, you need to find it and move it so you ensure your email is backed up. To locate it, quit Outlook and look in the following folder: c:\documents and settings\<your profile name>\local settings\application data\Microsoft\Outlook. If your "local settings" folder does not appear, from an Explorer window choose Tools->Folder Options->View Tab->Check "Show hidden files and folders"->OK and it should appear. Once you've located the Outlook folder, just drag it to your My Documents folder. (If you get an error about the file being locked, restart your machine and try it again without launching Outlook first. Sometimes Outlook doesn't do a good job of closing a data file completely.) Now launch Outlook, and when it complains about not being able to find your data file, just navigate to the Outlook folder in your My Documents folder and open it there. Outlook will remember the new location.

One of the few things Windows Vista got right is consolidating all the user data into one folder - your user profile folder. Your profile name is whatever you log in as - in my case it is C:\Users\Rich. I know if I back up everything in that folder, I will get all my files, favorites, downloads, and application data. (Unless I have some old application that is not following the rules and storing user data where it is supposed to.)

Now that you've consolidated all your data in one location, your My Documents folder, you need to figure out where you're going to back your data up to. You will need a location that has enough storage space to duplicate your entire My Documents folder at a minimum. Even better, you want enough space to store multiple copies of your My Documents folder. (This will protect you against the scenario where you know a file was there, but it got deleted at some point inadvertently. With multiple historical versions of your data, you can go back in time until you find a copy of it.) Perhaps you have another machine in your house and can set up a shared folder. You can back up your data across your local area network to the shared folder, and that computer could do the same to a shared folder on your computer. This scenario is certainly better than no backup at all, but I strongly suggest you back your data up to either a CD, DVD, or portable hard disk so you can take a copy of it offsite.  I myself keep backups from home at the office and vica versa, and an occasional backup goes in my safe deposit box.  Natural disasters DO happen, and I bet there are alot of folks from New Orleans who wish they'd read this article before Katrina hit.

There are two good options for getting your data offsite. You can either use a CD or DVD burner to back up your data, or buy an external USB hard disk to put it on. Both of these options have become surprisingly affordable. If you already have a CD or DVD burner in your system, you can use the software that came with it to burn a backup occasionally. While this method will work fine, there are some disadvantages.

• You have to remember to manually do the backup. An automated solution would be better.
• You might run out of space and require multiple CD/DVDs.

If you do decide to burn a CD or DVD for your backup solution, check out Backup4All, which is a $29 program that will automate the burning process for you. Just remember to swap disks every night or once a week, and Backup4All will automatically do your backup at the preset time.

A better option is to puchase an external USB hard disk for your backups. You can even purchase two identical units and rotate them offsite. I have two Western Digital Passport units - one does nightly backups of all my home computers, the other lives in my safe deposit box. I swap them every month, so I even a natural disaster would only leave me out one month of my data.

Many of these devices come with backup software preinstalled, or you can use a free tool from Microsoft called SyncToy to do automatic backups.  For help installing a external hard drive, check out How to Add a Hard Drive to Your Computer.

By using the simple methods laid out in this article, anyone should be able to set up a simple, automated backup procedure.