In a different article, I covered why it's crucial that
you back up regularly. Now let's talk about how to back up.

First let's list a few options and explain their pros and
cons:

• Floppy disks – 3.5" floppy disks are 20-some-year old technology. They're slow, and only hold 1.4mb of files, making them pretty much useless for modern files (just one picture or song file these days is usually too big to fit on a floppy). Floppies are also very prone to the mold that thrives in humid environments, which means they can go bad quickly, potentially losing all files in the backup. Rating: useless

• Tape backup – never a very common option for home users, although a lot more common for business users. Tapes don't have the size limit of floppies – tape can store more than enough to backup your entire hard drive. It requires special software to back up, and the only way you can "restore" your backup from the tape if something goes wrong, is to reinstall your operating system (like Windows XP), reinstall the backup software, then start restoring your files. All of this adds time and expense to getting you up and running again. Tapes are made of similar material to floppies, so they have the same potential mold problems that floppies do. Rating: fair

• Zip disks – these store up to 750mb (about the same as a CD-ROM, or over 500 floppy disks) which may be big enough to back up all of your documents, but if you have a lot of music, photos, or video, you will need a lot of disks. Using them is easy, just drag and drop the files you want to back up. But Zip disks are made of the same material as floppies, and tape, so if you live in a place with a lot of humidity, they're also pretty likely to go bad, which again means lost files. Rating: fair

• USB "Flash" drives – USB drives are common these days, coming in sizes up to 2 gigabytes or more, and many cost under $100. Get one large enough to hold all of your documents and you can pretty much plug it in, drag your documents into the drive, unplug and you're done. You can also use these drives to conveniently transfer files from one computer to another. Their small physical size is handy for carrying and storing, but it's not that hard to lose, either. Modern PCs and Macs can plug them in and they usually just work without installing special software. Older computers usually have to install software for them to work. Rating: pretty good

• CDs and DVDs (optical disks) – blank CDs hold between 650 and 700mb, while most writeable DVDs hold 4,700 mb (or even more than that if you have one of the newer "dual layer" DVD burners). A lot of people can fit all of their important documents on a single blank CD, and the disks typically cost a few cents each when bought in bulk.

Blank DVDs, which usually cost under a dollar each, will store even large photo or music collection (which take up much more room than say a Word or Excel document) on one or more disks. If treated carefully, optical disks such as CDs and DVDs should hold their files for years without problems, although this is a safer bet with a higher quality disk rather than a cheapo off-brand. Optical disks, although not immune to mold, can be more reliable than floppies or Zip disks.
Windows and Mac OS X have built-in disk burning ability with the right drive (most newer computers have at least CD burners, and burners sell separately starting under $100). If you add a burner to an older machine it will either come with burning software, or you can purchase a program such as Nero or EZ CD Creator for PC, or Toast Titanium for Mac. Rating: very good

• External USB or Firewire hard drive – this is one of my favorite options, for a few reasons. As I mentioned earlier, hard drives are pretty prone to failure, which causes the need to back up in the first place. But, if you get an external drive, hooked to your computer with USB 2 or Firewire, you can keep it turned off except when you do your backup, and this makes the chance of failure very low.

None of the other options I just mentioned allows you to make a complete, bootable backup of your hard drive; if you don't have a full backup of your drive, you'll add hours of your time (or hundreds paid to a computer tech) spent on reinstalling the operating system (either Windows or Mac), reinstalling all of your programs, setting up your internet access and email, downloading security updates which are no longer installed, etc. etc.

And, a lot of important files, like your address book and your email, are hidden on your computer where most people can't find them. If you don't know where a file is, how are you going to back it up? It's only going to happen if you back up your whole hard drive. Rating: excellent

This list covers typical options for backing up your files. No backup method is perfect, and even the best one can fail sometimes, so it helps to have extra backups, and to be really secure, keep at least one copy in a completely different location in case of fire or other disaster.

So What's the Best Way?

My personal recommendation for the best backup method which will protect you the most is a combination of two types. First, optical disks (CD or DVD) for your documents and other smaller files which are changed or added to often. This should be done on a frequent basis, once a week for the average computer, once a day in an office environment where you have files critical to running your business. This can take as little as five minutes to do. Well worth it!

Secondly, use an external hard drive which you only turn on for the time it takes to back up. Backing up not by just dragging files and folders to the drive, but by completely duplicating the main hard drive. This can save you a lot of time and money, if something goes wrong with your main drive, by letting you get up and running in as little as a few minutes, instead of hours or days.

You can do this by using a program like Maxblast by Maxtor for Windows machines, or Carbon Copy Cloner for Mac. Both programs are free (although Maxblast requires at least one hard drive to be manufactured by Maxtor).

The time it takes to complete the backup varies depending on how much you have on your hard drive, and what type of connector (USB, Firewire) you use for the external drive – probably somewhere from half an hour to a couple of hours in extreme cases. But you can start it and walk away, so it's not as bad as it sounds. This should be done at least once a month, maybe more frequently if you plan to make a lot of changes to the computer, like installing new software, or updating your system with a major update to Windows or the Mac OS.

Bottom line for how often you should backup: ask yourself, how important are your files to you or your business, and what's the largest amount of time, effort, and money you're able or willing to spend just to get back up and running again? If you have to manually re-enter information (email addresses, customer databases, etc.) it could take hours, days, or even months to get back to where you were when you lost your files unless you have backup copies.

So don't make the mistake of failing to back up. If you haven't lost files before, consider yourself lucky. Make sure you take the steps you need to keep it from happening, and you'll be glad you did.