DIY Computer backup
As a DIYer, the chances are you have accumulated a vast collection of files over the years, from plans and designs, drawings, photos and loads of other stuff along with the normal pile of documents, videos, scans and recordings. Now it is said you can basically divide computer users into two groups; those who have lost important information or documents on their computer, and those that are going to!
With that in mind, this article will cover some of the ways to make that unwanted loss easier to recover from by having a good working backup solution to safeguard your information and make sure you don't lose it.
In theory...
In theory this is not a difficult problem - just keep another copy of the data somewhere, so that if your computer dies, gets stolen, or goes up in smoke, you can get all your stuff back from your copy. However the reality is a bit more complex. What happens if you have not actually lost your data, but realise that some time ago some of it was corrupted. The file is still there, but when you try to open it, it won't; you just get an error message?
Computer backup is a "deep" subject, with lots of options, and one size most definitely not fit all.
Requirements
One of the hardest bits to get right is actually working out what your requirements are. Your requirements will need to factor how much information you need to store, what you are prepared to pay to do it, how long you are prepared to wait to store and recover it, and what kind of incidents you need to protect against.
So first some terminology
| Type | What is it | Pros | Cons |
|---|---|---|---|
| Disaster Recovery / Bare metal backup | This is a backup that makes a complete copy of everything on your computer. All the data and files, all the applications, the operating system and all the configuration. The idea being that if something goes wrong, like you hard drives just fails without warning, you replace the drive, boot from your backup recovery CD/USB thumb drive, and restore the last backup. Once that is done you can carry on exactly where you left off. | Typically very fast, and can fix many types of failure. Saves lots of time if you need to do a full recovery and don't want to have to reinstall your operating system and all your applications. | Often it is not very granular - if you just accidentally deleted a single file, having to restore the entire computer back to where it was the last time you did a backup, might be overkill and might actually lose more data that has not backed up recently. Also you have the problem that a bare metal backup may only be easy to restore to exactly the same or very similar hardware.
|
| Full backup | The process of making a full copy of all of the files that you want to backup | The backup is complete and does not depend on any other backup | It might take a long time, and might require lots of storage space. |
| Incremental backup | A backup that is a follow on activity from another backup, that captures only the changes since the last backup | Quick to do, and often requires little storage space. | Restoration is more complex, and may require restoring a number of backups in sequence to get back to the most recent state. |
| Generational backup | A backup that keeps not just the current version of each file, but also a number of (possibly all) the previous versions as well. | This lets you not only recover from total loss of you file, but also to step back through time to find the desired version of a file - even if it is not the latest. | Takes more storage space and is often more difficult to administer. May make recovery more complicated. |
| Online backup | Simply a backup that is always stored somewhere that is always accessible to the computer.
This could be the USB thumb drive, or external hard drive plugged into your computer, or perhaps saved to another computer or network attached storage device on your computer network. |
Easy and rapid access, no manual intervention required | The backup itself is vulnerable - it might be possible it could be overwritten or destroyed by the computer it is attached to. |
| Offline backup | One stored somewhere that is not immediately accessible. Say | ||
| Offsite backup | An offline backup that is stored in physically different place to the the original data. This might be cloud hosted storage, this might be a hard drive that you have stored at a friends house, at the office, or even if your bank safe deposit box! | Offsite backups are essential to mitigate against some kinds of disaster. They are safe from fire or theft of the original equipment. Since they are not accessible (i.e. online) to the computer they protect, they can't be easily overwritten, corrupted, deleted even by a bit of malicious software running on your computer or the actions of a malicious individual. | Take more time and effort to maintain and administer. |
| Immutable backup | One that can't be changed, cant be overwritten, corrupted, or deleted. | The ultimate in rock solid protection. | Can be massively expensive to maintain since it can swallow an almost infinite amount of storage capacity. Can be very slow to access. |
| Cloud / Internet backup | Storing backup data on someone else's server | ||
| Fault tolerant backup |
Backup types
There are many ways you can take a backup, different methods will suit different goals.
Backup Strategies
Costs