11 ways to create backups and prevent data loss

March 1, 12:15 PMGenealogy and Technology ExaminerThomas MacEntee

Previous Next

Comment Print Email RSS Subscribe

Subscribe

Get alerts when there is a new article from the Genealogy and Technology Examiner. Read Examiner.com's terms of use.

Email Address   Include other special offers from Examiner.com Terms of Use

The first of each month is what I call Data Backup Day – a day when I commit to making sure all my data is safely backed-up in case something goes wrong.  What could go wrong? Well how about:

• hard drive failure?
• fire or water damage to home office and computer?
• theft?
• website or blog failure?

I’ve been beset by each of these predicaments in the past and the only thing that saved me and my years of genealogy research data was a series of carefully planned backups of data.  In recent months, I’ve ramped up the process to not only backup data locally to an external hard drive, but also to an online site – sort of a “backup to the backup.”  And I’ve also expanded the types of data I backup to include bookmarks, blog posts, blog templates, emails, etc.  These are all important components of my research and I’d have a difficult time recreating such data and some of it would just be lost forever if there were no backups.

Here’s how you can get started on a sound backup plan with the following resources:

1.    Data Backup - Flash Drive: flash drives now come in a variety of sizes up to 32GB and now with USB 3.0 becoming the new standard they are faster than ever.  Check out the reviews over at CNET and go to Amazon for some of the best prices.

2.    Data Backup - External Hard Drive: I am still amazed at the fact that you can now get a 1 TB (terabyte as in 1,000 GB!) external hard drive for as low as $139.  Check out the wide variety available at Costco and you don’t have to be a member to order online.

3.    Data Backup - Online: there are a myriad of websites that allow you to backup your data, some even have free allotments (as much as 100GB for free!).  Check out the great comparison chart over at lifehacker.  Personally I am a big fan of Syncplicity which allows up to 2GB in free backups that synch automatically from your computer to their website.

4.    Photos: there are many ways to backup photos online.  One method uses sharing sites such as drop.io (100MB free storage) or hordit.  And then there are photo repository sites such as ImageBam which has no limits besides a 3MB file size limit per photo and lets you select multiple photos.  If you have a Picasa account did you know you can send photos there via email?  And Download is great for Flickr users who want to backup their photos.

5.    Internet Explorer: seems like there’s a handy – and free – web application for everything right?  Yes, even for your Internet Explorer!  Check out Internet Explorer Backup to preserve your settings including favorites, proxy connections, security zones, cookies, user preferences, history, dialup accounts and more!

6.    Blogger: for a time many Blogger users were frustrated with the inability to backup their posts as well as their templates – to the point that many created private WordPress blogs and imported their Blogger data.  That has all changed and you can now use Blog Tools to back up your Blogger posts.  And don’t forget to backup your Blogger template especially before you make any customizations.

7.    WordPress: using the BackUpWordPress plugin you can backup not only your posts but most other settings for your WordPress blog.  This neat accessory also lets you schedule your Wordpress backups.

8.    Google:  backup not only your Google Reader settings but almost all your Google applications including Gmail, Google Docs and Google Calendar with the great list of resources over at lifehacker.

9.    Twitter: did you know that last July Twitter went through a system malfunction where users lost followers?  Tweetake is a one step resource that creates a backup of your followers, people you are following and your tweets.

10. Outlook:  it isn’t difficult to backup your Outlook content to a .pst file once you get the hang of it.  Check out the great Outlook Backup Tutorial for information on every version of Outlook.

11. E-mail:  besides checking out the great list of 5 Ways to Keep Your Emails Backed Up over at MakeUseOf.com, Thunderbird is a free application that lets you backup almost any e-mail system.

If you enjoyed this article and want to be notified of similar genealogy and technology related articles in the future, use the Subscribe feature below!