Backup bookmarks for January 29th through January 30th:

• Google GDrive online storage & backup service leaked – SlashGear –
• Effective Ways To Backup Important Data –
• Dropbox – Home – Secure backup, sync and sharing made easy. –
• Bangkok Post : You need backups, not duplicates –
• WD Ships 2-Terabyte Hard Drive – News and Analysis by PC Magazine –

As I said a few months ago when I moved the Backup Blog from Blogger to WordPress, one of the things I like about WordPress is the ease with which you can back up your blog posts. For some years now, I’ve been using a plugin called WP-DB-Backup to back up my WordPress databases into compressed XML files and e-mail them to me. I then download the backup files to my hard drive, where they get backed up to several different places. For this blog, which has 378 posts at the time I write this, the entire database takes up less than 1 MB. I’m pretty sure that if those were all separate HTML pages, they’d be taking up a lot more space.

WP-DB-Backup labels each new backup file with the date, making it easy to keep several copies in the same directory if you have any reason to think you might want to go back to a previous version. (I can’t really think of one, myself, yet I do tend to let those copies pile up for a while before purging them.)

If you’re a blogging maniac, you can get hourly backups made. Weekly is often enough for me, though. I know that I publish something at least once a week, and more often now with the “Postalicious” plugin importing my backup bookmarks every couple of days.

There’s more to a WordPress site than just the database, however. Other elements include themes (the design), plugins (tools for added functionality, like SEO, video, or podcasting), and uploads (files you insert into your posts through WordPress’ upload function). While it’s possible to re-install plugins pretty easily from the WordPress dashboard (as long as you remember which ones they are), it can still be time-consuming. And you’d better remember which of thousands of free themes you’re using if you want to get that back. If you’re using a theme you paid for, you might have it stored on your hard drive already. (This is the case with the theme I created for the FileSlinger site.) But those uploads…Even if you have all the files you’ve uploaded somewhere else, putting them back into your posts would be a real pain.

Enter a second plugin to handle backing up these three folders: WordPress Backup by Blog Traffic Exchange. This plugin backs up your Themes, Plugins, and Uploads folders and e-mails them to you on a schedule of your choosing.

In case you’re wondering, the plugin finds the plugin, theme, and upload directories automatically, and creates one of its own for backups in the “wp-content” folder, so you don’t have to do much configuring. The .zip files that WordPress Backup sends can get pretty large—my “plugins” folder for this site is 5.5 MB—so you might want to download the backups manually rather than having them e-mailed to you. I’m not storing multiple copies of these: I overwrite the previous ones with the new ones.

I used to upload my images manually to an Images directory, but now that I’ve got WordPress Backup running, it’s encouraging me to use WP’s “uploads” function. Besides, being able to upload the images automatically makes creating a post faster and easier.

If you have a WordPress blog or website, there’s no excuse not to back it up. (And if you don’t—what are you waiting for?)

Backup bookmarks for January 26th through January 28th:

• CommVault, Arkeia Unveil Backup Software For Virtual Servers – Storage – IT Channel News by CRN and VARBusiness –
• Barracuda Networks expands backup service with acquisition –
• Instant Backup secures files online, locally | Macworld –
• Scott Hanselman’s Computer Zen – On Losing Data and a Family Backup Strategy –
• Scott Hanselman’s Computer Zen – Painful Reminder: Focus on Core Competencies (and Back Stuff Up) –
• Man finds military secrets in MP3 player > Off the wall > LIVENEWS.com.au –

Backup bookmarks for January 24th through January 26th:

• Backup Vendors Roll Out Upgrades – Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) News Analysis – Byte and Switch –
• The upside and downside of disk-based backup for small business :: SearchStorage.com.au –
• A Backup Offering That’s Good Enough for Cisco –
• Nexto Debuts Portable Backup Device – 1/26/2009 8:49:00 AM – TWICE –
• Howie’s Backup Blog –
• Dueling data backup firms are rare bright spot – The Boston Globe –
• Easy backups | courier-journal | The Courier-Journal –
• Geek Tip: Use Skydeck to Back Up Your Cell Data | cell phone, Geek Tip, Skydeck | geeksugar – Technology & Gadgets –

Earlier this week the Ur-Guru sent me a link to a Tech Republic article entitled “10 Reasons to Purchase New Hardware During a Recession.” He encouraged me to write a post giving 10 reasons to back up during a recession.

I’d actually been trying to persuade him to write a column, because one of his older systems went up in smoke recently. (He suspects an overloaded capacitor. I had to ask what those were; it’s been a long time since I’ve actually opened up a computer and inspected the insides.) He objected that there was no story there. “I had backups. Of course I had backups. And anyway, that system was just holding my third set of backups, so nothing was really lost.” I like  man who’s well-prepared. He’s now planning to rebuild that system as a monster storage unit packed with 2.5” drives, the better to keep more backups.

But back to the recession. As far as I can tell, it’s important to back up no matter what’s going on with the economy, but anything as expensive as data loss is undeniably something to be avoided when credit is tight and cash flow is flowing in the wrong direction.

So here are the original list and my riff on it.

10 reasons to purchase new hardware during a recession (by Erik Eckel)

#1: Equipment still wears out
#2: Productivity becomes paramount
#3: Downtime is expensive
#4: Competition suffers, too
#5: Manufacturers offer discounts
#6: Consultants are more willing to negotiate
#7: Running older hardware longer costs more
#8: Interrupting purchase cycles is expensive
#9: New applications require greater resources
#10: Employee retention remains a consideration

10 Reasons to Back Up During a Recession

1. Hard drives still fail during a recession
2. There are more out-of-work hackers to create viruses
3. Data recovery is expensive
4. Re-creating lost data from scratch is even more expensive
5. Data loss can easily put you out of business (see items 2-4)
6. Storage gets cheaper every day
7. There are free online backup services
8. There’s free software for making offline backups, too
9. Since you probably won’t be buying new hardware (even after reading Eckel’s post), you’re more likely to experience equipment failure
10. Failure to back up won’t do a darn thing to increase your income or reduce your expenses

Eckel wrote a paragraph or two elaborating on each of his points, but I’m not sure that’s really necessary here. You’re all smart people, and you can figure out that making backups—particularly if you already have some kind of backup software and hardware—is cheaper than not making backups. Most of the time, it’s not even that much trouble.

Don’t forget to take the backup poll on the home page if you haven’t done so already.