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News archive: Got B4RN? Get Backed Up!

March 27th, 2013
Author: Chris Conder
Posted In: Archive News

March 31st is World Backup Day. Details here.

If you are one of the lucky people who are now connected to a live B4RN service then you have a host of new services open to you that were not possible to use pre-B4RN. One of them is off-site backup.

One of the most common things seen (or actually not seen) when people have problems with their computers is a lack of any kind of backup. This is fine if the computer in question has no important data on it but this is rarely the case. Increasingly people are now storing important documents, home videos and hundreds of photos on their computer; not something that would be a good thing to loose. Which is what would happen if the computer experienced a fatal hard disk failure and there was no backup.

Ask yourself the question, “Would it be OK if I lost all my important data?”. If the answer is “No”, then you need to look into a data backup plan if you don’t have one.

The good news is that it is very easy to set up a backup plan and the World Backup Day site has many tips. A backup plan can be as simple or complex as you like, ranging from a straight copy to USB stick or drive to a full off-site cloud backup plan. Some options are as follows:-

• Copy data to CD/DVD.
• Buy a USB drive and copy important data to that.
• Copy data to free services such as DropBox, SkyDrive or Google Drive.
• Use a dedicated backup service that gives the option of different backup methods.

By far the best method is to back up regularly and ensure that its kept away from the source, in other words not in your house. Again, the good news is that this is easy with services from Mozy, SquirrelSave, Carbonite, CrashPlan and many more. All of these have an easy to use local application which allows selection of important data which once selected, off it goes and backs it up safely. Most offer an initial free on-line amount with paid for additions.

One service with a feature that is quite unique, (at least I haven’t seen it in other tools), is CrashPlan. Whilst it offers backup to the cloud, (on-line in other words), it also offers free unlimited backup friend’s computers. Normally the downside to on-line/off-site backup is the slow upload speed that most broadband services have; sometimes taking days or weeks to get the initial upload to the destination. This is not an issue for B4RN as the service is symmetrical meaning upload speeds are unrestricted as they are with the more popular asymmetrical service.

What this means is that B4RN users could have a free, fast, off-site backup giving you piece of mind for very little effort. A comprehensive set-up would look something like the diagram below, which might look complex but it’s easy to set up and once configured it runs automatically. Give it a go before it’s too late. On top of that, there are some great deals on backup hardware at Ebuyer currently.

Oh yes, I almost forgot. Once you have a working plan that is operational and you are happy with it. Make you you check it now and again by restoring a test file just to make sure it’s working as planned.