What is the Sound of One Drive Failing?

Sometimes when your computer crashes and won't reboot, it's essentially a software issue, and all you need to do is reformat your drive. But sometimes your drive has literally crashed, meaning one or more parts has come loose and is chewing its way through the rest.

How do you know which is which? If it's a hardware problem, the drive will almost always make strange noises. If you've never had the misfortune to hear them coming out of your own computer, you can listen to the recordings on DataRecoveryNet. If you do hear any of these sounds coming from your own computer, turn it off immediately to minimize the damage to the drive. And you'd better hope the drive is still under warranty, because you're going to need a new one, on top of paying the fees for data recovery if you don't have a recent enough backup.

It's Backup Awareness Month

Drive manufacturer Maxtor has declared June "Backup Awareness Month"—but given that Google News didn't pick it up until today, I'm not sure how much awareness they've generated. According to the special Backup Awareness site, they spent June 1-13 hanging out in downtown San Francisco taking photos of passers-by. By now they're in Chicago, so I guess I missed my chance. (Anyone who actually saw the Maxtor representatives or got your picture taken, post a comment to the blog!)

You still have until June 30 to enter the "Drive a Day" drawing to win a Maxtor one-touch backup drive.

The site also includes various articles and tips, most of them (not surprisingly) focused around Maxtor's own products. But their Backup Best Practices are worth following whether or not you have a Maxtor drive.

1) Develop a backup schedule.
Back up your data daily or at minimum weekly.

2) Back up everything.
Today you can easily back up all of your hard drive data. No need to spend time sorting through every file or folder. Invest in a storage solution that's twice the size of your internal hard drive, to give your system room to grow.

3) Do it automatically.
Set it and forget it. Use a solution that's easy to set up and provides automatic backups.

4) Rotate backups.
Give yourself added protection incase of an earthquake, fire, flood, or theft. Use two drives and rotate one offsite.

5) Don't procrastinate.
Unfortunately, the need to back up data is often a lesson learned from a bitter experience. Don't let it happen to you. Protect yourself!

If you value your data and your time, every month is backup awareness month.

Great New Backup Resources from Storage Magazine

Searchstorage.com, sister website to Storage Magazine, has put together a Learning Guide on backup and recovery. Visit the site and go to Backup School, taught by Corian Douglas, author of the impressively readable (and impressively long) Backup Book. The classes are a combination of 15-minute webcasts and downloadable worksheets, with HTML course outlines. Once you finish the introductory course, you can go to Advanced Backup School.

The courses are aimed primarily at people who are entrusted with establishing a backup system for a business but don't have any background in this kind of technology. Douglas uses simple language and only occasionally slips in jargon, as in this statement from Lesson One: "Backup is always file or volume-based. It's a common misconception to say that you're backing up your hard drive. You back up the volume, you don't back up the drive."

The what? Okay, I've heard about volumes, and I know that you can partition a single drive into more than one volume or combine several drives into one volume, but how often do ordinary people, or even tech people, talk about their "C volume," or "D volume"? The only time I usually come across the word is when I'm reformatting a drive so I can reinstall the operating system.

I have to say, though, I'm learning a lot just from listening to Lesson 1.

Backup School isn't all that's on the site, though. There's a long list of links, including one to an a comparison of different backup strategies. Most of the articles are geared toward larger-scale setups than most independent professionals have, but it's a site well worth bookmarking and returning to.

I'll leave you with the Five Golden Rules of Backup posted by W. Curtis Preston in 2002:

1. That which has not been backed up cannot be recovered.
2. That which has not been backed up off-site will not survive a fire.
3. Any backup that has not been tested with a recovery is not a backup.
4. Ignored backup systems become poorly performing backup systems.
5. Back it up or give it up.

FileSlinger™ Backup Reminder 6-24-05: Don't Make Outlook Backup Harder Than It Has to Be!

Due to a peculiar quirk that appeared in Firefox yesterday, I managed to delete all of my backup bookmarks, a fact I only discovered when I sat down to start this article last night. It’s a good thing I had them backed up! After writing all these newsletters, I’ve accumulated a lot of links to backup-related websites, and, I’d just finished sorting them into subfolders a few days ago.

Sometimes we make working with technology harder than it has to be. I remember how mortified I was when the Ur-Guru asked me why I wasn’t using any shortcut keys on the PC in my then-office at the University of Warwick. The answer was simple: I’d been using Macs until that year, and I didn’t know that Windows machines had keyboard shortcuts. There was no Command (Apple) key to hold down, after all. Once I learned that CTRL-S in Windows was the same thing as Command-S on a Mac, I started using keyboard shortcuts.

And when I first had to start using Outlook, I backed up the hard way, by using the File|Import and Export feature and going through multiple steps to create a secondary .pst file. It’s not entirely my fault I was doing it that way: I was just following Microsoft’s instructions for backing up Outlook 2000.

Once again it was the Ur-Guru who came to my rescue, telling me that I could just drag the original .pst file onto my external hard drive. Of course, I did have to find it first, and Windows doesn’t make that easy. Now I set Replicator to copying the file automatically every time I start my computer. My mail, contacts, and calendar change more frequently than the rest of my data combined, and this seems to be true for most people I know.

It turns out I’m not the only one to have approached Outlook backup the hard way. One of the readers of the FileSlinger Backup Blog mentioned that she was backing up her Outlook .pst files, a task she undertakes every three months. “The contacts, calendar and tasks are a snap,” she said. “What is time consuming is the email backup, especially if you like folders and subfolders. Ugh.”

She was actually exporting each separate mail folder to a different .pst file, and this took hours. When I told her that all she had to do was copy the original .pst file, she was stunned.

“Wow, if you're saying what I think you're saying, then you can highlight the "Outlook Today" icon (all email subfolders plus tasks, calendar and contacts reside there), then go to File>Import and Export...This is the process I've been using for each subfolder, then subfolder of the subfolders. Is this right? If so, you saved me hours of time and eliminated procrastination.”

In fact, backing up Outlook is even easier than that. Just in case anyone else was spending hours on backing up Outlook when they didn’t have to, I thought I’d better say something about it.

As I said above, before you can copy your outlook.pst folder, you have to find it. In Windows XP, this folder normally lives in C:\Documents and Settings\your_username\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook. In order to find it, you have to have Windows set to show system files. (You do this in Windows Explorer under Tools|Folder Options|View. Make sure that “Hide protected operating system files” is not checked. )

If it’s not there, just do a search for files with .pst extensions. I know one client whose outlook.pst ended up installed to her Windows directory for some reason, but the backup process works just the same: drag and drop.

I gave these directions to my reader, and she said “That's great. I just found the path to outlook.pst (and I am, indeed, on XP). Unfortunately, the size is 356 MB, so it's time to pare it down. Of course, emptying the Deleted folder and much of the Sent folder usually helps…Is there a way to test it, or to view what you have saved? My guess is that you won't really know until you import it into a new computer, or into a newly-installed Outlook.”

This is where another of the Ur-Guru’s lessons comes in: you don’t need to import .pst files. You can just open them, and you can have more than one .pst file open in Outlook at a time. Just go to File|Open|Outlook Data File. As long as the file you’re opening hasn’t been password-protected (or you know the password if it has), you can access everything in it.

Microsoft does have a free Personal Folders Backup tool for Outlook, which automatically creates a backup of your .pst file every few days. You can download it from the Office Updates site. You need to use Internet Explorer to use the Microsoft website.

And finally, for any of you Mac users out there who have Entourage, the Mac equivalent of Outlook, you can find backup instructions at http://www.entourage.mvps.org/backup.html.

Now you have no excuse not to back up your Outlook data.

FileSlinger™ Backup Reminder 6-17-05: Faster Backup or Faster Restore?

One reason people put off making backups is that they take time—time during which you can’t use the computer. With the USB 1.1 connection between my current laptop and my external hard drive, a complete Ghost backup of my half-full 20 GB hard drive takes about 90 minutes. Even with the FireWire connection from my late computer it took 45 minutes. It should hardly surprise anyone if, rather than doing it right before or right after I send out these reminders, I save my weekly Ghost backups for my lunch break or my trips out to do errands rather than doing them during my regular working hours.

The more data you have, the longer it takes to back up. The longer it takes to back up, the more likely it is that the backups will run over into the time when you need to use the computer. If backups interfere with your work time, you’re less likely to make backups. But if you don’t make backups, you risk going out of business if your computer crashes and you lose all your data.

How do you keep your computer up and running during business hours, but still back up your data frequently? This is why differential and incremental backups were invented. Instead of copying everything, these kinds of backups only copy the files that have changed—or possibly only the actual bytes within the files that have changed. Unless you change every file every day, a differential or incremental backup will be much faster to create than a full backup, and give you more time with your computer.

The problem is that differential and incremental backups are slower to restore from than full backups, because you first have to restore the most recent full backup and then to restore the increments. That means keeping track of more tapes, CDs, or files on external drives, and comparing dates on copies of files. And the more things you have to keep track of, the more room there is for mistakes.

It’s much easier to put your computer back the way it was if you have a full backup, and better yet a complete image of the hard drive. Restoring from my 90-minute Ghost backup takes less than 30 minutes, and it puts everything back: the operating system, the software, and the data (audio recordings, pictures, word-processing files, web pages, and so forth).

I’m not normally willing to take the 90 minutes to make that backup more than once a week, so if I relied on that alone, I could lose a week’s worth of work—which would be a lot, given how much I use my computer.

So I have another program that copies my most important files to my external drive every time I start Windows. It compares what’s on the laptop with what’s on the external drive and copies all new and changed files. This takes about 10 minutes. It would be less than that if it weren’t for the Outlook PST file, but that’s the file that changes most often and one which contains some of the most important information. Having those copies has saved me from the consequences of accidental deletions more than once, so it’s worth that 10 minutes two or three times a day.

Backing up only your most important files—which is what most online backup services do for you—does insure that you won’t lose anything irreplaceable. The downside is that if your drive fails or your computer is physically destroyed, you still have to spend anywhere from several hours to several days reformatting and reinstalling your drive. That’s more down time than most of today’s internet-dependent businesses can afford to lose. And that’s why it’s worth taking that 90 minutes once a week to create a drive image, especially if you only have one computer.

Which is more important for your business when choosing a backup system: the time it takes to back up, or the time it takes to restore? If you’ve never thought about it, now is a good time to start.

Memory Stick Earrings—Sillier than Sushi Drives?

I think this is what you call backup in drag.

"Girl's Guide to Gadgets" blog Shiny Shiny is definitely underwhelmed with the aesthetic appeal of the latest offering from Taiwanese manufacturer Pretec, known for the iDisk Tiny, which the company started billing as "the world's smallest USB flash drive" in 2003. The earrings are a manifestation of the new dime-sized 1 GB CU-Flash.

As far as I can tell, the earrings aren't actually on the market yet, though Pretec's reps will be wearing them to all the gadget shows. Even if I had pierced ears, I wouldn't buy them for looks alone. The iDisk Tiny Luxury and iDisk Aqua are much cuter—and a lot less likely to be scratched or lost.

And speaking of archiving programs...

Yesterday I mentioned the fact that archives (and backups too, actually) are often compressed so that they take up less storage space. Nathan Cser has a website dedicated to compressing and extracting files. Set out in table format, the Compression Guide and Extraction Guide show you which types of compressed files you can create/open with what program. Below the tables are links where you can download the programs, many of which are freeware or shareware. His favorite seems to be the freeware program ZipGenius, by the Italian software company of the same name. (It comes with both Italian and English interfaces.)

The Filewizard website is pretty bare-bones, and so far it appears to deal with software for PCs (though some of the file types discussed are from the Mac world), but if you need to create or open a compressed file of a particular type, it's worth checking here.

Backup, Archive, or Storage?

It’s time for another terminology lesson. If you know all this, you can skip reading the article and go straight to backing up your computer(s). On the other hand, you might prefer to keep reading just to see if I make any mistakes.

A backup is something you have in case something goes wrong. That means you have to have it where you can get to it quickly, because a backup is no good if you can’t restore things to the way they were. The longer you have to wait to get your computer up and running again, the more money your business loses.

Of course, a backup is also no good if it gets destroyed along with the computer, which is why it’s good to have both on-site and off-site backups, or a way to get your off-site backups very quickly.

The word "archive" conjures images of dusty bookshelves in library basements. The archives of a publication are the back issues, the old stuff. Businesses keep archives for tax purposes or to comply with other government regulations. The purpose of an archive is to get things out of the way. When Outlook asks if you want to archive your old items, what it means is “Do you want to put this stuff into another file so you have more room?”

So a backup is made for safety purposes and an archive is made for data retention purposes. Backups need to have current data, but archives might be months, years, or decades old. Archives are almost always kept off-site, because you hardly ever need them.

Storage is the general term for anything you can put data onto. Hard drives, CDs, DVDs, ZIP disks, floppy diskettes, USB flash drives, SmartMedia, magnetic tape, paper-punch tape, and so forth. New storage formats seem to be invented every day, and storage capacities are increasing by leaps and bounds—if never quite fast enough for those “power users” who always need more than they can get.

To make a quick analogy with paper, your archive might be a box full of file folders; your storage is the basement you put it in. (Or more likely the garage, here in California where so few people seem to have basements and no one uses the garage for the car.) As for your backup—that’s the printout of the directions to your speaking gig in case you forget how to get there.

Just to keep us confused, though, not everyone uses these terms precisely. According to the Computer Desktop Encyclopedia, the verb “archive” means "(1) To copy or move data onto a secondary disk or tape for backup or data retention purposes; (2) To save data onto the disk." Moreover, “Archived files are normally compressed to maximize storage media, and such programs may be called ‘archiver programs’ or ‘archiving programs.’”

Bonus definition: If you hear IT people talking about migration, it doesn’t mean they’re flying south for the winter. “Migrating” data means moving it from one storage medium to another, or from backup to archive, or from one computer to another.

Finally (because you don’t want to have to deal with this), data recovery is what you have to do when you don’t have any backups or your backups are so old that they’re useless. This is almost always a very expensive process requiring special hardware and software, and it frequently meets with only mixed success. Data recovery specialists do sometimes work miracles, but their rates start at $200/hr.

Backups are cheaper. Back up today. Do it for yourself. Do it for your business.

More Backup Trauma from John Cleese

LiveVault is continuing its hilarious Institute for Backup Trauma web video advertising campaign (starring John Cleese) by adding new scenes and a room-by-room tour of the Institute. Anyone who's still using tape instead of LiveVault's disk-based backup systems is encouraged to check in, and even those of us who never considered tape can get a kick out of visiting.

FileSlinger™ Backup Reminder 6-3-05: Mirra, Mirra on the Wall

Mirra, as you might have noticed, has launched a major ad campaign for its personal server, and people have started asking me about it. If you haven’t noticed yet, you will: the ads are coming soon to a circular, magazine, or radio station near you. It turns out that the Mirra Personal Server has been around since 2003, but it hasn’t had a very high profile—or not high enough, at least, by Mirra’s standards.

So what is Mirra Personal Server? It’s a form of Network Attached Storage (see the April 8 FileSlinger™ Backup Reminder), a box about the size of a CPU tower which you plug into your router. Mirra bills the Personal Server as “Guaranteed Backup for Multiple PCs,” and not just another NAS appliance. (When I was growing up, an “appliance” was something like a washing machine, but these days the term also refers to computer hardware.)

What’s different about it? Ease of use is one major feature; continuous backup is another. Plus, the Mirra can synchronize documents between different PCs, and you can access your files over the web even if you aren’t connected to the network. As a bonus, Mirra lets you share files over the internet.

In December of 2003, Loyd Case of Extreme Tech wrote: “Wouldn't it be great if there was a way to automatically back up your valuable data, share files, and roll back to older versions? Now there is. It's called ‘Mirra.’” Despite overall enthusiasm and an 8 out of 10 rating, the reviewer pointed out some drawbacks, a major one being that you can accidentally delete someone else’s backup if you have several machines backed up on your Mirra. "Worse, once deleted, the automatic back up of that deleted version stops. You've not only deleted the backup data but essentially removed the auto-backup script for that folder as well."

By early 2004, reviewers were definitely taking notice. ZDNet’s editors gave the original 80 GB Mirra a 6.3 out of 10, with reader reviews averaging 7 out of 10. In January 2004, CNN headlined its review “painless backup” and concluded “I know no better solution for hassle-free backups in the home.” Small Business Pipeline’s reviewer opines that “Synchronizing Outlook on multiple PCs may just be enough justification to install your own Mirra.” USA Today’s Personal Tech section gave it 3 out of 4 stars for “No fuss backup of PC folders, plus remote access and ability to share those files with friends and colleagues,” though not without observing that it could run faster. (If you work with large files, continuous backups will slow your machine down something chronic.)

Tom’s Networking (part of the fantastically useful Tom’s Hardware site)provides the usual thorough, detailed review, including photos of the inside of the Mirra, dated 3/17/04. Tom points out a pretty significant drawback: the Mirra doesn’t act as a file server in the traditional sense. “You might think that "file sharing" means that Mirra can provide networked, shared storage space for network users, but it can't. The only files Mirra will hold are those that already exist on one of its client PCs and that are transferred to Mirra via its client application,” he writes. That means that you can’t use it to store files that you don’t have room for on your PC, which in turn means that you might still need an additional external drive in order to store your archives, photos, and software installation packages. Mirra can duplicate the contents of your hard drive, but it won’t free up any space.

Nevertheless, Tom concludes that it provides “robust backup” without interfering too much with ongoing use of your computer, and readers of the review have chimed in with enthusiastic endorsements.

What do real people say about the Mirra Personal Server? In late November of 2004, Marc Orchant provides an illustrated four-part review of the MPS in his Office Weblog. He loves his Mirra, and says it passes the Mom and Dad test: it’s simple enough that his parents could use it. To the hardcore geeks who object that they could build a similar device for far less money (prices start at $399 for a 160 GB drive), he responds “It takes a significant level of technical know-how to craft a secure solution that provides everything the MPS does and, for many, the plug-and-play ease of setup and use will be worth the investment.”

Recent blog posts include such lines as “How Mirra saved my vacation.” The inescapable conclusion is that most people who use the MPS like it. Almost all the negative comments I’ve seen come from hardware geeks who get off on building their own equipment. For home and home office users and small businesses who want something they can rely on but don’t have to think about, and who have more than one Windows XP computer to back up, Mirra seems like a viable solution. It wouldn’t work for the Ur-Guru, but I’m kind of tempted, myself.