Back Up Files Before It's Too Late
To paraphrase a popular Neil Sedaka song, they say that backing up is hard to do. Well, it doesn't have to be.
It certainly is hard to back up a hard disk to 1.44-megabyte floppy disks, and it's not even that easy to back up to those once-popular 100-megabyte Zip disks. But there are a number of other strategies that make it easy and relatively inexpensive to always have a backup copy of your important data.
One solution may be as close as that CD-RW drive in your PC.
If you bought a PC in the last two or three years, there is a good chance that you have a CD drive that's also capable of writing to recordable CDs. You can get recordable disks (CD-R) that store as much as 700 megabytes of data for as little as 50 cents each. Chances are your PC has software for writing to these disks. If not, you can purchase a copy of Roxio's Easy CD Creator 5 ($79.95 after $20 mail-in rebate that enables you to copy files to disks and make backup copies of computer and audio CDs.
There are two types of recordable CDs. CD-R can be written to only once while the more expensive CD-RW (re-writable) disks can be erased and updated. Frankly, for backup purposes, CD-R disks are fine because they're so cheap that it makes sense just to make new ones and keep a couple of backups around. It's also a good idea to keep at least one copy of your backup away from the premises where your computer is located. That way, your data is protected even in the case of a major disaster such as a fire, flood or earthquake.
While those 100 megabyte Zip disks are no longer a popular way of backing up, Iomega (www.iomega.com/na/landing.jsp), the company that developed the Zip drive, now has a newer, faster and much higher capacity series of drives that store 750 megabytes. As its name implies, the $179 Zip 750MB USB stores 750 megabytes and plugs into the USB port on your PC or Mac. If your PC has a USB 2.0 connector, the newest type of USB port, you'll be able to back up your data at speeds up to 7.3 MB per second, so backing up also won't take long to do. Machines with older-style USB 1.1 drives will back up at a sluggish .9 MB per second. Blank 750 MB Zip disks cost $39.99 for a package of three.
The Zip drive comes with Iomega Automatic Backup, a very handy and easy-to-use program that automatically backs up your data to the Zip drive or any other drive on your system.
While 750 megabytes might not be sufficient to store all your data, you can span your backup to two or more Zip disks. Also, like CD-R disks, Zip disks can be removed from your premises for a bit of extra security.
Iomega also makes a FireWire version of the drive that works with just about all Apple Macs and PCs that have a FireWire card.
Another strategy is to get an external hard drive that connects to the USB port or FireWire port. I recently tested the $199.99 Maxtor Personal Storage 5000LE that connects to a USB 2.0 (or a USB 1.1 port with slower performance). This particular drive stores 80 gigabytes of data, but Maxtor also makes a 120 GB ($299.95) and a 250 GB ($399.95) drive that connect to either the USB port or a FireWire port.
These drives come with Dantz Retrospect Backup software, but you don't even have to fiddle with the program to perform a backup. A button on the front of the drive triggers the software whenever you want to back up a file. You can also set the software to back up automatically.
While Retrospect is a very powerful and versatile program, I have to admit that it took me a lot longer to learn than the program that comes with the Iomega Zip drive.
Now you don't have any excuses not to back up. Without a copy, you might be serenading your missing data with yet another line from that popular Neil Sedaka song: "I beg of you don't say good-bye; can't we give it another try?"
By Larry Magid