Chuck Swanberg . com

If you are like me, your life has become increasingly digital. My family has thousands of digital photos, home movies, our entire CD collection, financial records, and work related files all stored digitally on the computer. This digitization of our memories is becoming common place now. However, as priceless as this data really is, most people don’t backup it up or plan for disasters. I know too many family and friends that have lost their entire collection of digital photos because the computer crashed. Are you at risk? Have you thought about this before and worried because you didn’t know what to do? Stop worrying and feel confident that your most important assets are protected.

You should consider these questions to evaluate your situation. If my computer crashed and I lost all my computer files, would I miss them or have to pay to replace music or movie files? If my house burned down could I easily buy a new computer and restore all of my lost files? If you answered Yes then No, keep reading; it is really pretty easy to answer Yes to question two.

First of all, you probably want to ignore other backup advice you have read. Unless your system is 100% automatic, don’t even bother. When I setup our backup system, the number one criteria was that it was automatic and it always worked. Second, your backup can’t be in your house or even your geographic area in case of fire or natural disaster. So forget CD, DVD, external hard drives, and memory sticks. You need an online backup solution.

Online Backup

Online backup is relatively new and growing area. It works by uploading files from your computer to a website or Internet service. There are different types of services and in a lot of cases the different services have a different idea of what it means to backup files online. Remember, we just want to protect our most precious files from disaster. This means that in our case it is more important that backup is automatic and recovery is easy. Lots of services don’t get this though. Instead they focus on creating online libraries of your data. Nice idea, but first guarantee me that the newest pictures that I downloaded from my digital camera are safe.

I evaluated most online backup websites. Unfortunately, I was pretty disappointed by all of them. I half heartedly used one service that didn’t work too well. About six months after I started using this service, I learned of a new service that I hadn’t seen originally. This new service called Carbonite amazed me. It did everything right. Unlike other services, there is no concept of synchronization and scheduling, it all just happens for you. It monitors folders for file changes and starts backing up new files right away. This means that the new pictures you take get automatically backed up. If you delete a file locally it deletes it on the server too (a month later though in case it was a mistake you can get it back). You can rearrange folders locally and Carbonite updates the servers correctly. In other words, you can almost pretend it isn’t there and still feel confident that you are safe. Encryption is built in so your data is safe. It works smartly so that it won’t slow down your computer or Internet speed. Finally, storage is unlimited and it costs $4.16/month when paid yearly. Even less if you pay for two years.

I know this sounds like a big ad for Carbonite. Consider it more a customer testimonial. I am a very satisfied customer and I seriously tell anyone that will listen about it. However, the point isn’t Carbonite for Carbonite sake. I’m really trying to explain the thought process behind a successful backup strategy. If a better tool comes along, I will recommend it.

Multiple Computers

If you have more than one computer then you need to think through your backup strategy a little more. Carbonite backs up one computer. If you want to backup more computers, you buy a copy for each computer. It will depend on how you use your computers. If you don’t share files between your computers, then it is easiest to put Carbonite on each computer. However, if you use a network to share files between computers you might consider dedicating one computer as a Home Server on which you install Carbonite and backup files from that PC. This is what we do. Other computers in the house connect to the files on the server. If you do this, you must make sure that you save files on your other computers onto the server. For most files this is easy. However, I like to keep certain folders synchronized to the other computers so that you can save locally and the changes get moved to the server then backed up by Carbonite. This is handy for the laptop so that the folder is on the laptop when the computer isn’t on the network. To do this, I use FolderShare. You install it on each computer and it will keep folders in sync. I also use this for the Media Center computer. This way when we import digital pictures to the Media Center, FolderShare instantly synchronizes them to a special folder on the server for “new” pictures. This way new pictures are instantly backed up even before we have the time to organize them into folders with the rest of the pictures.