FileSlinger™ Backup Reminder 9-30-05: More Tales from the Backup Trenches

I seem to have had my hands on a lot of computers lately. On the plus side, I had a client who’d just purchased an external hard drive despite her reservations and had as her most pressing problem backing up her Outlook Express mail and addresses. Judging by the complexity of the operation, Microsoft really doesn’t want you to back up Outlook Express. (Personally, I really don’t want you to use Outlook Express, but I do have some clients who are wedded to it, and this wasn’t the time to recommend Eudora or Mozilla Thunderbird.)

There are several utilities designed to make it easier to back up Outlook Express, so I downloaded a few and brought them with me. Outlook Express Backup Wizard has an interesting offer: if you provide a permanent link to their site (using their HTML code), you can get the $39.95 full version for free. It’s a very simple program, a mere 858 K download, and you get two options when you start up: back up Outlook Express, or restore an Outlook Express backup. I installed it for my client and checked the appropriate boxes to back up her Outlook Express identities, mail, and address books.

The first time it ran, it seemed to hang up, but I discovered on the second try that this appearance was deceptive. After running through the first part of its process quickly, it takes some time to complete. Nevertheless installing it, running it, demonstrating it to my client, and then configuring Karen’s Replicator to back up her My Documents folder (in which the OE backups are now stored) to her external hard drive took less than an hour.

Setting up the external drive itself was a no-brainer. It was a modest-priced Maxtor drive which needed only to be plugged in and hooked up. (This is actually true of most ready-made external drives; the problems I discussed in the previous week were not with the Seagate drive, but with the client’s FireWire port.) While external hard drives are almost as vulnerable to failure as internal drives (I say “almost” because an external drive is usually not at risk from a problem with a different component in the machine), they are by far the fastest and easiest method of backing up and restoring your data. You can always copy the most important data from the external drive onto CD or DVD to send off-site.

On a less positive note, I spent nearly four hours on the 20th making space on my own external drive to back up a client’s machine before reinstalling it. This client owns an XHD—I’ve seen it. But it was nowhere to be found, and the client is out of the country. It’s possible their regular tech person has taken it off site, or that it’s in the safe deposit box—both good practices, but not convenient in the circumstances.

I was tempted to cannibalize the 40 GB iPod, but the nature of iPods is that they don’t automatically show up as a drive: you need special software to use them for anything but music, and I had serious doubts about getting it recognized in PC-DOS. Besides, it was full, or nearly so. (I admit to being short on iPod expertise, as I use a different brand of MP3 player, one with far too little memory to consider using to back up a drive image.)

So I found myself creating CD after CD in order to free up the 25 GB I would need to back up her 40 GB drive. Oh, I could have made the Ghost backup directly onto CD, but my last experience with that was not a good one, as a CD got scratched and ruined the backup. Besides, it would have taken at least as long to do it that way, and then a painfully long time to restore anything from that backup.

In addition to the several-times-daily backups of my own current files and the roughly-weekly Ghost backups of my drive, I use the XHD to store things which I need with some frequency, but not enough to keep them on my main drive. It’s a handy place to keep software installers, for instance, which is why I had it along with me in the first place. I made several CDs with audio files and pictures and a few with programs, and finally had enough room to back up my client’s machine.

Once that was done, the actual backup via FireWire took only about an hour. Then at last I was able to reformat the drive and install a fresh copy of Windows. Today I’ll finish restoring the data from the backup and reinstalling the last of the software (as well as setting up the new CardScan device). But moving the backup off of my drive and onto the client’s will have to wait until she’s back in town and we find her external drive.

She won’t need to keep that backup forever, just long enough to make sure she has everything she needs. Ideally I would create a new backup of the just-reinstalled system, but I don’t have anyplace to put it.

Perhaps it’s time for me to get a spare drive to put client documents on when doing this kind of work. What I’d most like to do, of course, is get one of the hard drive manufacturers to send me one to review. So far, however, it’s only software companies soliciting me for endorsements—on which subject more in the future.

FileSlinger™ Backup Reminder 9-23-05: Tales from the Backup Trenches

This week I thought I’d share some real-life backup stories. If you want to go for drama, visit LiveVault CEO Bob Cramer’s blog and read about how his wiring was struck by lightning—twice.

Backing up is definitely not as easy as it should be. One faithful reader wrote in to say that even though he backs up faithfully, he had to get a consultant in to set up e-mail backups on his Macintosh, and still only has the consultant’s word for it that the e-mail is being backed up.

So a tip to everyone regarding your e-mail: go into the advanced options section and check “leave mail on server for 3 days.” (The exact phrasing of this will differ from program to program and platform to platform, but both Outlook and Eudora will allow you to do it.) That will protect your most recent messages from accidental destruction. (If you get mail in any volume, leaving it on the server for more than 3 days will result in a full mailbox and new messages won’t get through.)

Speaking of mail, a reader wrote in after last week’s reminder to say that he uses his Gmail account to back up his files. If you want one of his 100 remaining Gmail invites, e-mail him at senzar@stic.net. Others have used Yahoo! Groups for the same purpose.

A few months ago, the person who first suggested the Backup Reminder Newsletter to me called to ask for help setting up a new FireWire hard drive. He was tired of the slow speed of backup to his USB 1.1 drive, and none of the USB 2 cards he’d bought for his laptop had worked.

I set up the drive (a matter of taking it out of the box, plugging it in, and connecting it to the laptop’s FireWire port) and started DriveImage. Not long into the backup process, an error message popped up. The drive had completely disappeared as far as Windows was concerned.

I took the drive home to test on a different machine to try to figure out where the real problem lay. I hooked it up to a desktop computer’s FireWire port and tried reformatting it. This worked flawlessly. Later I attached the drive via USB to my own computer (this one doesn’t have FireWire, more’s the pity) and left it running for hours on end. The drive, or more probably the fan, made a slightly odd noise every so often, but it worked just fine otherwise.

So I took it back to my client to try to figure out what was wrong. Once again, we connected the drive. Once again, it disappeared after a short while. This time I remembered to look at the Event Log, which was showing me SBP2 Port errors. I was familiar with those from occasional problems with the FireWire port (or rather the controller for it) on my old laptop, but I’d never had a problem there that wasn’t solved by removing and replacing the connection.

I had asked my client whether he’d had any problems with his FireWire CD-RW/DVD drive, and he’d said no. I’d forgotten to ask when he’d last used it, though, and when we went to connect the CD drive to the laptop, it never showed up at all. Windows simply couldn’t tell it was there.

Conclusion: a perfectly good external hard drive and a dead FireWire port. As the USB port on that side of the computer is also unreliable, there may be wider damage. Cords plugged into laptops do tend to get tripped over and yanked on much more often than those connected to desktop machines, and even though this was a solid 6-pin FireWire port, something probably got jiggled loose.

This story has a mostly-happy ending, however. The main reason the client wanted the FireWire drive was that he didn’t want to lose the 2-3 hours required to make a backup with DriveImage. I helped him set up my favorite free backup tool for the PC, Karen’s Replicator, to back up his My Documents folder, his Quicken data, and his Outlook PST file automatically. The total time required for that was under 20 minutes. So now he can keep his files safe without losing a lot of time and only needs to make a new drive image when he installs new software or upgrades the operating system.

Next week I’ll tell you about why I have a 24 GB Ghost backup of a client’s PC on my external hard drive and what I had to go through to get it there.

Keep sending in the feedback and suggestions, and please—post comments and questions to the blog. It’s easy to do and you get free publicity that way. ;-)

The Hard Drive is the New Bling

Really, I'm not making this up.

Hitachi does the hard drive rap in this Flash animation promoting its Microdrive 3K8 and Travelstar C4K60 Slim as fashion accessories. Enter to win a $500 charm to dangle from your drive, or download the MP3 of the Hitachi bling song.

Personally, I'd rather have the drive than the diamonds and white gold. And I seriously wish I'd had one of the Slims with me yesterday when I needed to clear out 25 GB of space on my external hard drive to back up a client's computer. (Where was the client's external drive? Ah, now, that's the $64,000 question.)

LiveVault CEO Now Blogging

Okay, the truth is, Bob Cramer of LiveVault been blogging since June, but I only found out about it yesterday. It's a good blog, too--which you might expect from a company creative enough to enlist John Cleese in producing a viral video on backups.

Cramer's blog is proof that not all the creativity lies with the marketing companies which produced the video, and, in addition to putting a personable, human face on the corporation, it provides worthwhile information on the subject of backups, in particular the forms of continuous data protection provided, or promised, by LiveVault's competitors. Of course Bob has a bias in favor of his own product, but he's also one of the few people knowledgeable enough about the industry to make intelligent comparisons.

Apparently there's some controversy at Global PR Blog Week on the subject of whether CEOs should blog at all. My feeling is that if the CEO is Bob Cramer, the answer is "yes."

And if you find any other backup-related blogs, let me know. Though it's not an easy thing to do with Blogger, I would like to create a backup blogroll.

Are you Backing Up Your Business Intelligence?

If you're a consultant, an employee, or a home user, you probably don't have specialized Business Intelligence software, but BI is as much of a "must have" in the corporate world as the iPod Nano is among gadget geeks. Computerworld has just published a special report called "Smarter BI: Taking Your Business Intelligence Efforts to the Next Level." If you want to get into the wonderful world of data mining, you can read the whole report, but what caught my eye was the headline "BI Backup Breach."

In this article, Jennifer Jones explains that while Business Intelligence software usually includes a backup utility, very few corporations actually use it, and provides guidelines and considerations for Business Intelligence backup. Favorite quote: "The trouble with the backup of BI data is that you are forced to think about it, whereas with transaction data, you aren't."

The main difference between backing up BI data and backing up other data (apart from a lack of automation) is the need for consistent naming conventions and data descriptors, without which you'll only have backed-up chaos.

I did rather like the best practice suggestion of deciding whose head will roll if the backup isn't done. Of course, we solo entrepreneurs already know the answer to that one: ours.

FileSlinger™ Backup Reminder 9-16-05: Getting Your Data Offsite

Last week I got a phone call from Ilana Debare of the San Francisco Chronicle asking how to protect your data from earthquakes, floods, fires, and hurricanes for her September 10^th article about disaster planning for small businesses.

The answer, of course, is to store a copy of your most critical data far, far away from your office and computer. I touched on this topic two weeks ago when discussing “Backups in the Air, On the Air, and Underwater,” but it deserves further consideration. It also gives me the opportunity to include a testimonial for the inexpensive online service EZBackup, for which my colleague Terry Leake of TTopper Consulting is a local reseller and of which my client Kathryn Kemp of Aspire Marketing is a fan. Here’s what Kathryn says about EZBackup:

EZ Backup gives me real peace of mind. I live and die by the information on my laptop, and knowing there is a copy of my data that is in a safe place and is easily retrievable crosses a big worry off my list. Laptop computers are especially vulnerable to being damaged and to being stolen, and the benefit of knowing my data is safe far outweighs the cost of the service.

Terry’s description of how the service works is as follows:

The backup program works by copying the specified directories over the Internet to their secured servers. The connection is secured at both ends, and is pretty hack proof. The first backup takes the longest time, because it's copying all the files, but subsequent backups take less time because it's checking to see what files have been changed.

EZBackup’s prices start at $9.95/month for 250 MB of data—comparable to similar consumer-oriented online backup services.

One advantage of EZBackup (and most of its competitors, to be fair) is that it lives up to its name: once it’s set up, you no longer have to think about it. My informal surveys on the subject of what people want in a backup system rate “set it and forget it” pretty high, so any program or service that can be scheduled to run automatically has advantages over those which require direct human intervention and therefore memory.

The disadvantage which all these services have is that they slow down your computer and hog your internet connection while they’re running. Of course, the part about slowing down, or even preventing use of, the computer is also true for local backup programs, particularly drive mirroring software like Ghost and TrueImage. Backing up any open file is chancy at best; you certainly don’t want to bet your business on the results.

It’s not necessary to pay a monthly service fee in order to get remote storage for your backups. I’ve just been evaluating SmartSync Pro ($35 for a single-user license; free trial download) for Kickstartnews.com, and one of its features is backup to/synchronization with a remote computer. I’m going to steal shamelessly from my review for Kickstartnews (due out sometime today or tomorrow) to discuss the DIY options for offsite backup.

SmartSync Pro provides two ways to back your data up to a remote computer: via e-mail and via FTP. The FTP option also allows you to create a mirror to duplicate the files on two different FTP servers.

Most web hosting providers also provide both public and private FTP directories, and most small and home office users have much more storage space on those servers than they’ll ever use, providing a built-in remote server for backup files. (If you’re not sure how to connect to your FTP server, check the account setup information you got from your hosting company when you set up your website.)

Instead of copying your files directly to the remote server, SmartSync Pro creates a compressed “package” containing all the files, then uploads it to the remote server. (You can password-protect this file, which is important for any data which you’re storing off-site.) Once the package is ready to go, you can open the files or run the programs which use them without worrying about interfering with the backup. A good thing, too: even over a cable connection, it takes a long time to transfer that package onto a remote server.

My 1 GB of critical data (Outlook PST file, business documents, and Quicken data), compressed down to about 700 MB, was 4 hours in transition—and timed out before copying was complete. I had to divide my data over multiple smaller profiles in order to get the files onto the server before the connection timed out. It made for a great exercise in deciding which of my files really are critical.

The problem isn’t with SmartSync Pro: it’s the nature of consumer broadband, which often puts a cap on upload speeds. Even with a USB 1.1 connection to my DVD-writer, I can burn a DVD with 4.7 GB of data faster than I can upload 1 GB to my FTP server. As for storing an entire Ghost backup of my machine online (assuming I had that much storage space on my web server, which I don’t), I could drive the DVDs to Oregon and come home again in the time it would take to upload them. And if I had a middling-quality DSL connection instead of cable, I could probably drive the DVDs all the way to my family in Cleveland. This is why companies pay for T1 lines.

So if you have large quantities of data that you want to store offsite and a T1 line isn’t an option for you, encrypt your data and put it onto CDs or DVDs, pop them into jewel cases, and mail them in padded bags to friends, family, or associates at least 50 miles away. If you feel reasonably confident that your bank’s vaults will survive that flood, fire, earthquake, or tornado, you can store your media, or even a spare external hard drive, in your safe-deposit box. (One advantage to 2.5” and smaller hard drives is that they’ll fit more easily into small protected storage areas, but I wouldn’t recommend sending them through the mail.)

Do you have a recommendation for an offsite backup option I haven’t mentioned? I’m always looking for stories of personal experience from real SOHO users.

Finally, remember that while offsite backup is good insurance, it’s not a replacement for onsite backup. When your computer goes down, you want your backups right there with you so you can get back up and running again, and if your machine won’t boot, it’s pretty hard to connect it to your online backup service.

Free Backup Teleseminar on September 28th

Pat Wiklund of 1PersonBusiness.com and Jeannie Shea of Bay to Bay Technical Solutions are presenting a teleseminar entitled "Security and Backup Strategies to Keep You in Business...NO MATTER WHAT" on September 28th at 7 PM PST.

The teleseminar will cover both Mac and PC solutions. I'm planning to check it out, myself. And if you can't make it on the day, there'll be a recording posted.

Guest Article from KRS Edstrom: Computers as Monasteries

KRS Edstrom wrote to me recently with her experience of a computer crash which has made her a backup convert.

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Computers: Our New Monastery?

My computer recently crashed resulting in 35+ hours of tech support and "new found friendships" in India. Not even in the crazy beginning stages of teenage puppy love have I talked so long on the phone. During those hours I believe I also found new levels of frustration, as in: "My life is passing - and I'm on the phone to India!"

Interestingly, as the hours and days passed, I seemed to actually settle into this Siberian monastery training, and in doing so, two mini miracles took place.

First, during one of the particularly non-productive sessions, I slipped into about 45 minutes of blissful peace. I remember feeling complete surrender in the moment and thinking something like "This is all there needs to be. This is exactly as good a place to be as any." I actually scribbled on a torn scrap of paper, perhaps in an attempt to secure the moment, "I'm so happy about just being me." Corny as it sounds in words, that scrap of paper is plastered on my wall as a reminder of my sweet merge with Now.

[Having said that, let me assure you that while I think "suffering offers exquisite lessons" is a certain punch line to this life, be it known that I am currently on a computer backup rampage that may border on radical. I seek to avoid the same lesson twice.]

Second, although still struggling with language barriers, I finally connected with one of the head techs (at about the 30 hour mark). While waiting for something to load, we started talking about his world - what he ate for lunch, his nostalgia for the "back then" of his country that he never knew, his walks by the sea to "download" and his closely knit tech team. He told me that just a few days previous many of his top techs were injured or killed in an auto accident on their way to a much-anticipated vacation together. He was in the car behind the one hit and could only watch helplessly.

His department was now struggling with the "empty seats" next to them while trying to pick up the slack for being short staffed.

My little computer world and goal list were suddenly yanked into perspective as my heart sprang open to envelop his cubicle. This 22 year old and I talked about the tragedy for the next 15 minutes. I felt such grace from him soaking into me as I tried to offer what solace I could. Had my computer not crashed I wouldn't have arrived in this impactful chance encounter.

[Note to self: Trust the forks in the road and soften into where they lead.]

KRS Edstrom is an author, syndicated advice columnist and lecturer who has appeared on CNN and ABC TV. Her products offer solutions for healthful, conscious living. For her free "Mindful Living Update" ezine, sign up on her website: www.AskKRS.com or e-mail KRS@AskKRS.com.

FileSlinger™ Backup Reminder 9-9-05: Backups and Insurance

Backups are frequently compared to insurance policies, primarily because you hope not to have to use them. Prior to hearing the subject mentioned on the Kickstartnews Revue podcast a few days before I wrote last week’s reminder, however, I’d never thought about the possibility of insuring against data loss.

The last time I had a separate insurance policy, it covered hardware and software, but not data. It had certainly never occurred to me that someone might need liability insurance against the possiblity of erasing someone else’s data when it was stored on your computer. What really blew me away was the idea that an insurance company could require a business or individual to meet particular standards when it came to backup hardware, software, and schedules.

So I asked Charles Wilson of RiskSmart Solutions what he knew about it. Charles is a risk management consultant, which means he advises businesses about likely threats to their assets and how to protect against them.

Charles explained that data is a very tricky thing to insure, because it’s intangible property and can’t normally be assigned a dollar value. (I suppose if one had paid for a particular mailing list or database, it might be possible to insure it for that amount, as if it were software, but I’m only theorizing.) One might, on the other hand, be able to get coverage for the costs of recovering data or lost business time. That would most likely fall into the category of Errors and Omissions insurance, and wouldn’t be covered in an ordinary liability policy, which deals with tangible property and personal injury.

As for insurance companies requiring the insured party to make backups, he’d never heard of such a thing being done, but considered it parallel to the requirement to have working smoke alarms. The insurance agent comes out to make sure that the alarm is in working order before signing the policy, but once the inspection is over, you can take the batteries out of the smoke alarm if you really want to.

Any company which deals primarily with data (such as an internet service provider) would need a special media insurance policy. I went looking for these and found a few. AIG’s netAdvantage Complete, for instance, covers both “information assets” (that’s your data) and “physical theft of data on hardware,” along with web content liability, cyber extortion, and a number of other things. Insuretrust covers both loss of data and loss of income, as well as HIPAA compliance.

I was still curious, though, so I wrote to the editor of Kickstartnews.com, Howard Carson. It turns out that Howard isn’t just an expert on SOHO technology, but a researcher who has done a few insurance investigations. He started by saying that in California (where both Charles Wilson and I work) and in New York, underwriters simply won’t cover data loss, because they’ve had to pay out (or at least process) too many claims. In the rest of the US, in Canada (where Kickstartnews.com is based) and in Europe, however, “most underwriters are prepared to sit down and negotiate data loss insurance.”

Howard went on to provide a very detailed response. I’ll quote the most immediately relevant parts here; you can read the rest on the Kickstartnews.com blog, where he published it on September 3rd.

“Coverages break down into several components, some pre-existing, others representing additions to existing policies. For example, data loss coverage is sometimes negotiated for U.S. and Canadian businesses to cover the cost of data recovery from backups. Data recovery from DLT tape backup systems is often an arduous process which spans many days. A small extra premium paid to increase coverage for general business losses, specifically negotiated to compensate for the 48-72 hours it takes to resurrect a soaked, burned or stolen file server, will benefit a business in many important ways. Note that a business without an effective backup and security system will never be able to negotiate such a premium with its insurer.

“Values of data (and hence the cost of that portion of the insurance premium) are determined in negotiations based on an estimate of the business losses which take place over a predetermined data restoration period. Also considered is the cost of replacement equipment needed to restore data. In many cases, replacement equipment costs have already been folded into general coverage for losses and theft. For small businesses with limited resources, making use of web backup systems (which essentially store data in typically hardened data centers) will be attractive to underwriters.

“Insurers know that the best defense they have against payouts for business interruption is to negotiate business loss coverage which fully integrates the requirement for exacting and consistently reliable data backup and recovery systems. In many cases, loss claims against such policies are settled at amounts much lower than businesses expect. On the other hand, because the original coverage involved assiduously monitored and managed backup systems, actual loss recovery and restart by the business is much faster than anticipated. Some businesses will be able to get what amounts to data loss coverage, others will not. But as you've said or implied repeatedly in your blog, real insurance has to take several forms, the most important of which includes a rational and unerring daily and weekly data backups.”

What that means in a nutshell is that it’s possible to get insured against the cost of losing your data, but you’re only going to be insured in the amount it would cost you to restore your data if you had up-to-date backups. If your business is out of operation for weeks or your client data is permanently lost because you have no backups, you’re out of luck.

Many thanks to both Charles Wilson and Howard Carson for their input on this subject.

Guest Article from the E-zine Queen: WHOOPS — There Goes My List!

Have you backed up your mailing list lately? This article, published in the 9/7/05 edition of Alexandria Brown's "Straight Shooter" e-zine (and reprinted here with permission), is a good reminder about the importance of keeping any mailing lists you manage backed up. In fact, as soon as I finish posting this, I'm going to back up the list of subscribers to the Backup Reminder Newsletter.

Note that I haven't tried iBackup myself (that I remember), but that any online backup solution requires a high-speed connection, and even then it can take a surprisingly long time to back up the mere gigabyte or so of truly critical data on your computer.

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WHOOPS — There Goes My List!
(Are You Backing Up Your BIGGEST Asset?)
By Alexandria K. Brown, "The E-zine Queen"

Have you ever accidentally lost an important file on your computer? Perhaps your computer crashed (again) or your cat sauntered over a dooming sequence of keys. Remember that little pang in your stomach you felt when you realized that file was gone for good?

OK, now imagine losing your entire e-zine subscriber list or customer list. Did that pang just get a bit more intense? (Ouch!)

When several Internet marketing gurus were asked the question, "If your office was burning down and you could save one thing, what would it be?"

The unanimous answer among all of them was, "my list"!

Your list is your goldmine. It's your pool of warm prospects and clients with whom you've taken months to build a level of credibility and trust. They're your ticket to a steady stream of income.

It can take years to build a large collection of opt-in subscribers and customers. But they can disappear in a flash if they're not protected.

So, are YOU backing up your list on a regular basis? (Be honest!) If not, let's get you started today.

If Your List Resides on Your Computer...

If you send out your e-zine or e-mail promotions from your own computer, you MUST make backing-up your list a daily habit. And by "backing-up," I mean saving your list to a disk or location other than your hard drive. For example, you can save your list to:

1) a CD (you'll need a CD burner)
2) an external hard drive (these are less expensive now than they used to be)
3) a secure, Web-based file storage service.

I currently use option 3 for my computer files. The service I use is called I-Backup, and there are many others out there, starting at as little as $3 per month. I prefer this option because I have so many large files on my computer that I'd have to backup my files to several separate disks or CDs. And because this method is so EASY, I'm more likely to follow through and back-up my files on a regular basis!

I also like I-Backup for traveling, as I can upload files that I'll need to access on the road. This way I don't have to bring a disk with me.

If You Use an Online List Service...

Even if you host your list online with a listserve (such as Constant Contact) or an autoresponder service (such as QueenCart.com), you should still make your own backup copy on a regular basis! Just download or "export" a copy of your list each week for safekeeping. It should be pretty easy to do. This procedure varies depending on what program you use, so see its help files or contact their support center for assistance.

Consider Purchasing a Battery Backup System

Southern California is known for its frequent power outages, and they were wreaking havoc on my computer. So I purchased a battery backup unit. (I chose APC's 650 model.) It's about the size of a breadbox and keeps my computer going for another hour or so in the event of a power outage. This gives me ample time to back up any files I'm working on and shut down my computer properly. It also functions as a surge-protector to keep my computer safe from electric surges. You can buy units like these at any large office supply store, and they range in price from $100 to $500.

Don't Put It Off Any Longer!

I know that backing-up your files seems like another irritating addition to your busy schedule. But remember that you've worked hard to build your list ... and your business. So take just a few minutes each week to protect that investment.

I now keep three separate copies of my list backups among me and my two assistants as well, so they are spread across the country and on different computers! (This may seem anal, but when you consider the hundreds of thousands of dollars a year they are worth to me, it makes sense.)

TIP: Pick a certain day each week to back up your list. For example, my electronic calendar automatically reminds me to do this every Friday.

© 2003-2005 Alexandria K. Brown

WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR E-ZINE OR WEB SITE? You can, as long as you include this blurb with it: Online entrepreneur Alexandria K. Brown, "The E-zine Queen," is creator of the award-winning 'Boost Business With Your Own E-zine' system. To learn more about this step-by-step program, and to sign up for her FREE how-to marketing articles and FREE audio class, visit www.EzineQueen.com

WANT TO SEE MORE ARTICLES LIKE THIS ONE?
See Alexandria's Small Business Marketing Blog.

Better Backups Coming to .Mac

In the September 2nd MacCast, Adam The Mac Geek says that Apple's recall of unsold copies of .Mac means the new release will be hitting the shelves soon. He's looking forward to Backup 3, a substantial improvement over .Mac's existing backup capabilities in that it allows both incremental backups and scheduled backups to any destination. iTune in to his show to find out more.

Take your data to safety in Lifeboat

Sunday's Kickstartnews Revue podcast (still playing in my headphones as I start to type) features an interview with the team that created Lifeboat: Judy Tyabji Wilson, Jonathan Lyster, and James Mogan of Canada's Tugboat Enterprises. Lifeboat is a single-minded program: all it does is give you a way to take data off your computer when your Windows operating system fails. (Lifeboat can also help in some cases of physical drive failure, and in many cases where another component is malfunctioning.)

Lifeboat sets up a one-way network connection to a working computer. Once you boot the malfunctioning machine to the Lifeboat CD or floppy and follow the simple instructions, you can use another machine on the network to drag files off the drive. To protect you from accidentally destroying your data, Lifeboat prevents you from changing or deleting any of the files on the source drive.

If you don't have a network, Lifeboat will help you set one up, so all you need is a working computer and a cable. (Tugboat Enterprises is considering shipping the Lifeboat CD with the appropriate cables.)

At $99, Lifeboat is a lot cheaper than a drive recovery service. Many file recovery utilities can actually make data recovery harder for professionals, but Lifeboat doesn't let you change anything on your drive, so even if it doesn't work, you won't make things worse by using it. (And boy, do I wish I'd had a copy of it last November.)

Read the complete Lifeboat review at Kickstartnews.com, or download a demo version of Lifeboat from Tugboat Enterprises.

And keep an eye on Kickstartnews—I'm going to be writing reviews for them myself.

E-mail Archiving Seminar

Storage Central has added e-mail archiving to its Storage School online seminar offerings. This one collects three webcasts which cover everything from federal security regulations to enlisting the whole company in the archiving effort.

FileSlinger™ Backup Reminder 9-2-05: Backups in the Air, on the Air, and Underwater

It seems like everywhere I turn these days I hear about backups. I was reading The Everything Guide to Writing a Book Proposal and there, on page 198, under the heading “Protecting Your Professional Image,” is a warning to back up. “One writer, two days before she was due to turn in several chapters to her editor, found that the diskette she had been using to store her work had been damaged somehow, and all those beautifully written chapters were inaccessible.”

Backups in the Air

Early in August, one of my faithful readers (and have I ever told you faithful readers how much I appreciate the fact that you read what I write every week?) told me about an article in Southwest’s August Spirit Magazine entitled “Backup or Else.” Spirit Magazine doesn’t have an online edition, and I didn’t do any flying in August, so I thought I might end up missing it. However, one of my useful geek connections did fly Southwest in August, and discovered that the article was in fact the same one that appeared in the September 6 edition of PC Magazine. As a computing professional, I get PC Magazine for free, and I’d actually just cut that article out. You can read it online, and I urge you to do so. Among other things, it contains two important points in the “Best Practices” sidebar:

1. “If you encounter file problems, the most recent backup of that file may have the same problems. So don’t be too quick to overwrite the older backups.”
2. “Typical consumer backup products don’t save open files. So if you never close your mail file, or you keep a status-report spreadsheet open all the time, it may never get properly backed up.”

There’s also a review of BounceBack Pro, which I want to compare to Pam’s experience once she’s finished setting up her ABS drive.

Backups on the Air

A few days ago I was listening to the Kickstartnews Revue Podcast, and what should I hear but several reminders about backups. The show’s hosts had suffered from a flooded basement which delayed their podcast production, though they were fortunate enough not to experience serious data loss. (This brought up the topic of insurance coverage and the circumstances under which policies will cover you for data loss, in particular loss of third-party data. I’ll be interviewing a colleague on just that subject for next week’s column.)

Backups Underwater

Flooded basements are common anywhere people have basements (they are rare here in California). Common causes are heavy rainstorms, pipes which freeze and break during winter (something else which is rare here in California), and sewer backups (which can happen anywhere). If you have a basement family room or a home office in the basement, then your far-from-waterproof electronic equipment is at risk. I’d recommend storing your backup media or XHD in a place less likely to get wet, say a middle floor of the house (as the attic or top floor is more vulnerable to roof leaks). That also applies to your choice of a place to put the backup server or network drive. Don’t put it next to the window, either--says Sallie whose computer is usually resting under the window all night. (Maybe I should rearrange my room.)

Flooded basements are minor-league problems compared to what’s happening in Mississippi and Louisiana thanks to Hurricane Katrina. In cases of real disasters, just keeping your backups out of the basement isn’t enough. In fact, your off-site backups better be a very long way off site.

I have to admit my own backups wouldn’t save me from a disaster on that scale, and it’s making me think I’d better create some DVDs to send to my parents for safekeeping, not to mention backing up any critical working files to my website. Hurricanes, tornadoes, and earthquakes, though responsible for only a small percentage of the data lost in any year, are the answer to the question “Why would anyone pay a monthly fee for online backup services when external drives are so cheap?”

Do you know someone whose data was drowned in Hurricane Katrina? DriveSavers data recovery service is offering to waive its $200 attempt fee and cut prices by 1/3 for Katrina’s victims.

Next week: “Do your backups meet the requirements of your company’s liability policy?” featuring Charles Wilson of RiskSmart Solutions.