Ideas for Backups

Think about all those precious family photos and documents. Do you have a backup for them?

There are many ways to backup files. You can burn them to a disk, external hard drive, or put them on usb memory stick (These are getting big and cheap. I saw a 16gb one for 39.99!) or store them on the internet.

One internet solution is to sign up for an Amazon S3 account and purchase a piece of software called Jungle Disk. Jungle Disk will automatically backup the files you tell it to Amazon’s S3 service. In general, it’s a good idea to have more than one backup of your files in more than one form and in more than one location. For example if you copy your files to a hard drive and accidently drop it, you may destroy your backup.

Some software solutions for the Mac are either Chronosync or if you have Leopard you have the built in backup program called Time Machine that runs in junction with an external hard drive. Apple now makes a router called Time Capsule with a built in hard drive that will work with Time Machine automatically.

On Windows you can use a program called ezback-it-up. It is a free program that will copy your files exactly the way they are to another location such as an external hard drive or a usb memory stick. When you open the program you will see an upper pane and a lower pane. The lower pane shows your current files. Drag the files you want to back up from the lower pane to the upper pane, click on the save icon, give it a name, and tell it where you are saving your files to.

The most universal and easiest way to back up files on either Mac or Windows is “copy and paste”. You can’t do this with a CD or DVD because those require software to burn the information on the disk. The best way is to organize the files you want to back up into a single folder on your computer and when you have included everything you want in that folder, drag or copy it to the location of your external hard drive or usb memory stick. On Windows XP you can find them under My Computer in the start menu and on Windows Vista you can find them under Computer in the start menu. On the Mac your external hard drive or usb memory stick will show up on the desktop or in the Finder.