Shampooing Your Backups: FileSlinger™ Backup Reminder 02-08-08

I don't write a lot about CDs and DVDs these days. For most things, they're kind of a nuisance as a backup medium. They've never had the drag-and-drop simplicity of floppy diskettes, and not all discs are compatible with all drives, either. My laptop can burn dual-layer DVDs, but I've never used one, and the whole Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD battle leaves me cold. I can't really blame Apple for leaving out the optical drive when they built the MacBook Air.

Nevertheless, optical discs are a good ways from obsolete. (Why “optical”? Because the data gets burned onto a disc using a laser. Hard drives, and tape on the other hand, use magnets to record data.) So when PC Magazine announced that they were giving away the full version of Ashampoo Burning Studio 6 (the newest-but-one version of the software) to registered users of their site, I decided to check it out.

At first it seemed that none of the logins I already had for PC Magazine and Ziff-Davis sites worked, but apparently the site just wanted me to use Internet Explorer instead of Firefox. In any case, it's easy enough to register as a user, and it's free. I registered initially because I sometimes download white papers about backup technology (and then have to explain to hapless salespeople that I only wanted them for my column).

I didn't really need Ashampoo, as I already have Nero Burning ROM. (And I blush to admit how long it took me to get that pun in spite of the logo with the Colosseum in flames—an anachronism, by the way, as the Colosseum wasn't built until after Nero died.) I haven't done a detailed comparison of the two programs, though one would expect Nero to have a few extra features to go with its much heftier price tag.

I don't use nearly all of Nero's features, and unless you're a dedicated disc creator, you probably wouldn't, either. In any case, while Nero has a backup utility, it doesn't jump out at you when you start the program. I'm not sure I even installed it when I put Nero back on my computer after the latest reinstall.

Ashampoo, on the other hand, touts the following among the hot new features of Burning Studio 6:

• Multi-disc file backup and restore on CDs, DVDs and Blu-ray discs
• Create compressed backup archives with powerful password protection
• Restore archive contents to their original locations

(Curiously, the hot features for Burning Studio 7 are all to do with video DVDs and bootable discs; they don't appear to have upgraded the backup capabilities significantly from version 6.)

“Backup or Restore Files and Folders” is the second option on the main splash screen, and it's certainly easy to do. I selected the whole Podcast Asylum folder (4.5 GB, just the right size for a DVD) and clicked “continue,” and the backup proceeded along its merry way.

Not speedily, I might say. Burning the data to the DVD wasn't that time-consuming; it must have been the conversion to the proprietary .ashbak format and the data verification. The result is four .ashbak files of just about 1 GB each, and I imagine that if I'd been backing up a larger quantity of data, I'd have had several DVDs full of these 1 GB .ashbak files, rather the way my Ghost backups are made up of numerous 2 GB .ghs files.

The good and bad news about proprietary formats like this is that you have to have the Ashampoo Burning Studio software in order to restore the files. That can actually be a help, if you don't want everyone and his brother to be able to get at your data. (Ashampoo lets you password-protect the files as well as compressing them, too.) Restoring is straightforward: you can choose the backup that's on the disc in your drive or a backup from another location (Ashampoo will back up to other media than CDs and DVDs). Beyond that, your options are to restore data to the original location or to a custom location, and to overwrite files already in that location, or not.

The verdict: it works, you can get it free while the offer lasts, and if you prefer optical discs for backup, it's probably a good choice. It doesn't make complete drive images, and you can't automate or schedule it, two limitations which mean it would be a bad idea to rely solely on Burning Studio 6 for your backups. But for those end-of-year archives, it's got possibilities.

Of course, you can use Ashampoo Burning Studio 6 to make ordinary copies of files onto CDs and DVDs. To do that, you use the “Burn Files and Folders” option instead of the Backup utility. And you can do all the other usual things one gets a program like this for: copy discs, make audio CDs, burn disc images, and make video DVDs. Judging by the ratings it gets at Download.com, it does these things pretty well. I'll have to try it the next time I need to make a CD for my mother.

Technorati Tags: Ashampoo,Burning Studio 6,Nero Burning ROM

It's Time for the Annual Archive: FileSlinger™ Backup Reminder 01-11-08

This is the post I was planning to write last week, your annual reminder that you need to archive your data at the end of each year. (If your fiscal year is different from the calendar year, you should create these archives then.)

I've written about year-end backups on several occasions before. Because (as I pointed out in December 2005) these aren't really backups, I'm going to stop talking about "year-end backups" and start talking about "annual archives." At the end of 2004, and again in December 2006, I described the kinds of data that goes into one of these archives. My focus up to this point has been on archiving your data for tax purposes, so those posts address primarily financial and business data.

The need to back up--and archive--all supporting documents relating to your business income and expenses has not gone away. I've just made 4 DVDs to add to the tax box. There's one for each of my business personas (the FileSlinger, the Author-izer, and the Podcast Asylum) and one with the new promo photos the Ur-Guru took this year. (You can see some of them on Flickr.) The most time-consuming thing about making them was isolating 2007 data. In some cases I had already done this, but I haven't been completely consistent.

Once it was done, I removed all finished projects from 2007 from my C drive to make room for 2008 projects. I'm not that pressed for storage space on my machine, but it's annoying to have to look through folders for clients I'm finished with, or previous versions of documents I'm working on, when I want to get to my current work. So I use making the annual archive as an opportunity to tidy up my hard drive.

That's all business as usual. But more and more people are using computers to do more and more things. You might well want to make an annual archive even if you don't have to worry about tax audits. Here are a few examples of data that it pays to be able to save each year even if you're a student, a stay-at-home parent, or retired.

Coursework and Student Records

You might want to go back and use that essay or project for something else one day, and chances are you're going to remember it by what class you had to do it for. You might need your grades and transcripts in order to pursue an advanced degree or get a job. And you might need to provide someone with evidence that you really did take such-and-such a class. But you're probably not going to need it all on your main hard drive, and you may not even need it on your main backup drive. Burn it to a CD or DVD, label it with the year, and archive it. (Preferably off site.)

Some class projects take up more space than others. If you're studying video, you'll probably need more than one DVD per year. You might consider using an external drive to store your annual archives. Toshiba has just announced 1.8-inch hard drives with capacities up to 120 GB. I wonder how long it will take before someone comes out with a tray, rack, or box designed to store them safely.

And Speaking of Photos and Video...

Film cameras have all but disappeared. Digital cameras mean we take more pictures, because we don't have to worry about running out of film, and if they don't come out, you can always delete them. How are your photos organized? In some cases, it might make sense to sort them by subject, but if you archive each year's photos into a folder with the date, you'll have a much easier time when it comes to showing your grandchildren what you looked like in high school, or embarrassing your child by showing his baby pictures to his first girlfriend.

Also, if you take a lot of photos, your hard drive starts to fill up. Keep the best ones on your hard drive and store the rest on DVDs or an external drive. Then you won't have to look through 1000 photos to find the two you actually wanted to print.

If you use a photo-sharing service like Flickr or Photobucket, those can act as backups of the pictures you upload, as well as helping you organize them and letting you show them to other people. There are even programs to back up your Flickr photos.

E-mail and Contacts

Even if all your correspondence is personal, you might want to save it--and to save the e-mail or postal addresses of the friends and family members you write to. If you make a copy for each year, it will save you a lot of time and trouble when you decide to write your memoir or family history. Your calendar information can be useful there, too. Even if you never write a memoir, your children or grandchildren might want to know what your life was like back when. If you're like me, you forget a lot of the details.

Your Blog

Most of the blogs I read are business blogs, but many people do use blogs to write personal journals. If you think you're going to want to read what you wrote on LiveJournal or MySpace or Blogger, better make a copy of what you've posted. It's good to back these things up regularly, but even if that's too much trouble, save your blog onto a CD or DVD at least once a year. (Most blogs don't take up a lot of storage space.) If you want more details about backing up your blog, see my previous posts on the subject or do a Google search for "backup <name of blogging platform>." There are even tools like Blurb BookSmart to let you back up your blog in hardcopy format by turning it into a book, though they don't work with all blogs.

That should be enough to keep you busy for a while. Remember to store your annual archives somewhere other than the place you keep your working files: in another room, at a friend's house, in your safe deposit box.

Technorati Tags: Flickr,BookSmart,LiveJournal,MySpace,Blogger

Is It Time for Year-End Backups Again? FileSlinger™ Backup Reminder 12-29-06

We interrupt this program for a special announcement: 2006 is at an end! Okay, you knew that, and I knew that, but I was all set to write the next installment of the website backup series when it finally hit me that this was the last posting of 2006 and therefore time for me to say something about archiving your data at the end of the year.

This is the fourth December of the FileSlinger™ Backup Reminder. That leaves me wondering whether I can say anything new on the subject of making special end-of-year copies of your financial and business data to put with your tax archives. In any case, since not everyone has been reading since 2003, it won’t hurt to start with a little review.

If you already create yearly archives of your paper files for tax purposes, you’ll have a pretty good idea of what needs to go onto your year-end backup CD or DVD. (And remember: use brand-name media for anything that needs to last, and don’t use rewritable CDs or DVDs for archiving, especially if you’ve written and erased data from them before.) You can also keep year-end copies on a network drive or external hard drive, but it’s easier to put CDs into the same files as your paper. (Put them in jewel cases first to protect them from dust and scratches.)

Financial Data

In the United States, the IRS requires you to keep all tax-related financial records for seven years in case they decide to audit you. The popular recordkeeping programs Quicken and QuickBooks both allow you to create a special end-of-year backup. There’s even a QuickBooks Year-End Center to help you do this. (If your fiscal year starts in July, you’ll be doing this at the end of June rather than the end of December.)

In Quicken for Windows, this function is found under File|File Operations|Year-End Copy.

For more help with archiving financial data, see About Financial Software.

If you filed your 2005 taxes online or used tax-preparation software, be sure to put a copy of the returns onto a CD with your 2005 files.

Receipts

If you shop online and get receipts by e-mail, make sure you save those. If you print them out and save the printed version, that works just fine. You don’t have to save the receipts separate from your other e-mail, though it can be useful to keep them in their own mail folder.

Invoices

If you have QuickBooks or another program automatically generate your invoices, you don’t need to make a separate copy. If you create your invoices manually, make sure you include copies of them in your archive.

Bills

For me, at least, switching to online billing was something of a mistake, because I always end up printing the bill (or at least the first page) and the payment confirmation. That means I have just as much paper to manage, and I have to pay for the ink. Because I do have the printouts, I don’t worry about saving the e-mail notices. If you don’t print the bills, make sure you save the bills in electronic form. It will be much easier to produce them in the event of an audit than if you have to get them from your vendors.

Business Data

Even if the IRS doesn’t want it, you’ll want to keep copies of your client projects. If the project is finished, move everything off onto CD or DVD and file it. (Look at all that free space on your computer.) If the project isn’t finished, you’ll want to keep a copy of the files on your hard drive so you can continue working on them, but this is a good opportunity to make sure you have proof of what you’ve accomplished for the year.

You definitely want to keep copies of contracts. While old-fashioned contracts require signatures and usually manifest on paper, these days contracts often go back and forth as PDF files and e-mail messages can act as contracts. Make sure you have copies of these in case you need to refer to them or to re-negotiate them.

E-mail

If you’re subject to Sarbanes-Oxley and other data retention rules, you have my sympathy. Even if you aren’t required to keep track of absolutely everything, you’ll want to keep copies of business-related e-mail. You can create a special Outlook archive file just for your 2006 business mail and put that onto a CD.

Software

Because you might not have all the same software installed seven years from now, it’s a good idea to keep a copy of your financial, e-mail, and other programs on CD along with your data. (Backwards compatibility only extends so far.) Make sure you have the serial number or registration number for the program available, too.

Privacy

Most of what you need to archive at the end of the year is confidential or at least private. That makes it a good idea to password-protect any files or folders you are backing up. Outlook, Quicken, and Quickbooks have this function built-in. For other files and folders, you might want to use a compression tool like WinRAR which allows you to put a password on the archive file. You’ll also be able to fit more data on one disk this way.

And that’s it for this week’s backup reminder. I do recommend making your year-end backups before the New Year’s Eve party, rather than after, at least if you plan to celebrate in the traditional manner. Computing under the influence may not be illegal, but it can be dangerous.

FileSlinger™ Backup Reminder 11-10-06: Xbox "Backups" and Dual-Layer DVDs

I don’t own an Xbox 360 and I suspect most of my readers don’t, either, but some of the millions of people who do decided that they wanted to be able to back up their games. (In this case I strongly suspect that “back up” is a euphemism, but, on the other hand, even Microsoft does allow you to make a single copy of their software CDs in case the originals are destroyed.) However, copies of game discs don’t work in an unmodified Xbox. Before long, enterprising gamers found ways around that problem, whether through firmware hacks or by replacing the original chip with a modified version.

Now Engadget and others are proposing that the spread of this Xbox hack and the desire to copy games is fueling sales of dual-layer DVD-Rs. Like the Xbox 360, these have been around for a while, but both the media and the drives have been rather expensive until recently. I have a dual-layer DVD-R drive, but I’ve never written a dual-layer disc. I haven’t used up the single-layer DVD-Rs and RWs I have, and I don’t have any files too large to fit on a DVD. I suppose dual-layer DVDs might be nice because I could fit the entire contents of some folders on them, but it’s a modest gain in convenience.

Readers of Engadget claim that it’s unlikely that copies of Xbox games really account for the spread of dual-layer DVDs and drives to create and play them. Back when I was taking basic statistics in college, our professor warned us repeatedly that correlation does not imply causation. New media formats and new hardware start out expensive and get cheaper pretty quickly. The less technology costs, the more people buy it, as long as it works. And even if every Xbox owner started a veritable copied-game factory, it’s unlikely that they could account for the expected sales of 100 million dual-layer DVDs. It’s just as likely that readily-available, inexpensive media are driving the increase in Xbox game copies.

There are plenty of absolutely legitimate, non-game-related uses to which one can put dual-layer DVDs, and I’d love to hear from any readers who are using them. (If you’re hacking your Xbox, though, it’s probably better if I don’t know about it.) They’ve got an obvious application for people creating large media files, which is more and more of the population these days with the spread of digital video cameras.

Whether or not you have either a dual-layer DVD-writer or an Xbox, however, you should back up your important data. Then, if you want to, you can read the complete Engadget article.

FileSlinger™: Backup Reminder 09-08-06: CD Backups in Mac OS X

Last week I arrived at a client’s place for a non-IT-related job and found a note saying “Do you know how to do CD backups?”

In the circumstances, the answer was “maybe.” I know several ways of getting data onto a CD, but only on PCs, and my client has one of the new Intellimac/Macintel machines. The last time I owned a Mac, it had System 7.1 on it. OS X is mostly a mystery to me. I can operate programs like Word and Quicken, but overall I’m not too comfortable. And I had never tried to burn a CD.

I decided to see what happened when I inserted the blank CD-RW to which my client had attached the note. A dialog box popped up asking me what I wanted to do next. There were decidedly fewer options than when I do the same thing on my Windows machine, which always includes several options for burning a CD (because I have several programs that can do so).

Dragging files to the CD icon on the desktop didn’t seem to work, either. I eventually fumbled my way into the Disk Utility and made my way through the slightly convoluted procedure of first creating an image from a folder and then burning a CD from the image. It worked, and my client (who only recently upgraded from an ancient iMac and can fit all her documents onto one CD) was happy, but it seemed to me that there had to be an easier way. “Easier” is what Macs are known for, after all.

There is, in fact, an easier way, and if I’d been thinking clearly I would have discovered it before I started in with the always-dubious BullYourWayThrough technique. A Google search conducted this morning revealed several detailed descriptions of how to make various kinds of CDs using the built-in software. Boston College starts at the very beginning, with a description of what CD-ROMs are and where to find the “eject” button on a Macintosh keyboard.

When presented with the “You have inserted a blank CD” dialog, instead of opening Disk Utility, open the Finder and drag the files you want to put onto the CD over to the CD’s Finder window. (This drag-and-drop approach will be familiar to anyone who has burned a CD using Windows XP’s built-in software.) Then you just select File|Burn Disc (again, similar to Windows’ File|Write these files to CD).

Now if someone could just explain to me why the OS X “burn” icon looks like a radiation warning symbol…

FileSlinger™ Backup Reminder 06-30-06: Back Up While You Can Still Afford To

Backup Awareness Month is over, but that doesn’t mean you should stop thinking about backups. (Did anyone win a drive from Maxtor? Inquiring minds want to know.)

In an attempt to cut down on music and movie piracy, Spain has decided to impose a new tax on blank media: CDs, DVDs, memory sticks, even cell phones. In creating this law, the Spanish government somehow overlooked hard drives as a possible storage device for illegal copies of software and media, and elected not to impose it on the ADSL lines commonly used for downloading such material. (Here in the US, we wouldn’t need to tax DSL lines: the slow speed of our so-called high-speed connections makes downloading ripped DVDs too much trouble.)

The problem, as the outraged people of Spain have quick to point out, is that there are more uses for blank media than violating copyright laws. (There are more problems than that: the law apparently lacks any mechanism by which the money collected through this tax will be returned to copyright holders.)

The amount of the tax has yet to be set (or at any rate, to be revealed to the public), but it probably won’t be so large as to deter people from buying blank media. And if it does, the hard drive manufacturers will be sitting pretty.

It’s quite possible that such a tax will come to the US. Spain isn’t the first European country to attempt to curb copyright violations in this manner, and the film and recording industries appear to have decided that since they can’t prevent piracy, they might as well try to get a piece of the action.

So go make your backups while media is cheap!

Links:
Pierce IP Law Blog
The Register
Slashdot

FileSlinger™ Backup Reminder 04-14-06: Back Up Your Taxes 2006

Yes, it’s that time of year again. Of course, you may be up to your eyeballs in your 1040s and Schedule Cs and too busy to read this today, but it’s not enough just to file (or even pay) your taxes. You have to make sure you keep backup copies of the returns to prove that you’ve done them.

A few weeks ago, the Dutch tax office deleted 100,000 tax returns filed by businesses. When they restored the data from their backups, they came up 35,000 returns short. That’s 35,000 companies, large and small, which have to file again. This is especially bad because businesses are required to file online and the tax office’s computers are still not working properly, which means that in addition to re-filing, many companies will have to pay late fees.

Just to make the situation worse, the Dutch tax office refuses to accept its own online confirmation as valid proof of e-filing. (The Ur-Guru’s words on this subject are unprintable.)

Makes me grateful for the good old IRS—whatever its failings, the Infernal Revenue Service isn’t that illogical. But this story is proof that you can’t count on the government to keep your records safe.

If you still do all your taxes on paper, keep photocopies of the forms and any money you send in, and keep the cancelled checks. For those who, like me, use software to prepare their taxes, keep digital copies as well as printouts.

I’ve used TurboTax Web by Intuit (I’m a Quicken user) to prepare my taxes every year since I became self-employed. Some people prefer the offline, buy-a-CD version because of concerns about internet security, but I haven’t had any problems with the online version and I figure it’s not really any riskier than most of the other commerce I conduct online. Probably less risky, in fact, even though my Social Security Number and EIN are on the tax forms, because none of my bank account or card numbers is on there.

But I digress.

After TurboTax leads you through all its questions and sends you digging through your records (and when will I learn to record my mileage on 1 January?), you get an opportunity to preview your taxes in PDF form. Likewise, after they are completed and filed, you get to print a PDF copy (and this one will say “copy”) on it.

Naturally you should print this, but you should also save a copy of the PDF, encrypt it, and put it onto a CD. The files aren’t large, so you could fit several years’ worth onto one CD, but there’s also something to be said for putting each year on a separate CD, labeling it, and then storing it in a safe place. I recommend encrypting the PDF file itself or putting it into a password-protected .zip file. Use a good-quality brand-name CD and keep it in a jewel case to protect it from dust and scratches.

And store your e-file receipt with it, just in case there’s a massive computer failure at the IRS headquarters.

FileSlinger™ Backup Reminder 12-30-05: Don't Use CD-RWs for Year-End Backups

Another year is drawing to a close, which means it’s time for your year-end backups. (For more detail on end-of-year backups, see my December 2004 backup reminder.)

Strictly speaking, year-end backups aren’t really backups; they’re archives. You make copies of all your important computer files from the year in question to store with your paper files. You need to keep anything relevant to your taxes (like your Quicken or QuickBooks data, bank statements, invoices from vendors, invoices to clients, and so on) for seven years.

That means that if, six and a half years from now, the IRS wants to see those files, they’d better be able to read the CD or DVD you put them on. (Or, yes, tape, if you’re really that kind of masochist. We do know that tapes, if not in use, can last 30 years and still be readable.)

Inexpensive generic CDs work fine for short-term backups or anything else which you consider disposable, but if you want the disc to be readable even one year from now, make sure you use high-quality brand-name CDs and DVDs. Otherwise they may start to rot, and when you take them out of their jewel cases, you’ll be able to see through them.

And yes, jewel cases do provide the best protection against scratches and dust, though you can get away with plastic or paper sleeves if 1) you can seal them and 2) you’re not putting the disc in, say, an overstuffed archive box where the surrounding papers will exert the pressure of 20,000 leagues under the sea.

And, finally, don’t use rewritable CDs or DVDs for archival purposes. First, you don’t want to write over this data, so there’s no point. Second, you’ll be wasting your money: rewritable discs are always more expensive than write-once discs. Third, if the disc has been written to numerous times before, it will be more vulnerable to data loss in the writing phase and won’t last as long in storage.

And finally, CD-RWs are not compatible with all CD drives, particularly those on older machines. Though it’s unlikely that you’ll be trying to read your year-end backups seven years from now on a Windows 98 machine, it’s possible that you’ll need to get into your archives one year from now on an older machine that you’re using while your new, top-of-the-line computer is in the shop for repairs. As “Dr. Gizmo” advised in Wednesday’s Syracuse Post-Standard:

The ‘RW’ method was added to the ways CDs work long after the technology of recording CDs was invented, and could not have been more troublesome if the inventors of the CD had decided to use hot peanut butter as the method of making rewriteable CDs.

The pits etched by the recorder's laser on a CD-RW are much smaller than the CD standard calls for. Most old CD drives and many current home and car CD players can't figure out what's on a CD-RW.

Don’t take chances with your important business and financial records. Copy them onto good quality media, put them into jewel cases, and store them in a safe place away from your office.

Then you can ring in the New Year with confidence.

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.

Replacing Tapes with DVDs

In his August 15 post Rethinking backup, ZDNet's Paul Murphy suggests replacing standard tape drives with a combination of RAID array and DVD superdrive. "The cash savings are obvious but other things may be more important. For example, high quality DVDs outlast tapes, cost less, and require less storage space."

It's true, people talk a lot about the 30 year shelf life of tape, and DVDs, like CDs, are sometimes subject to "rot." But if you're actually using tapes instead of keeping them on shelves, they wear out very quickly, getting stretched, tangled, etc—just like audio cassette tapes.

To make the proposed solution really successful, however, a company would have to determine which data really needed backing up. A tape holds a lot more data than a DVD, even though going through multiple DVDs to recover data might be faster than going through a single tape. And no one seems to have found a way to automate what Murphy calls "Just the Facts, Ma'am" backup: "a super automated diff[erential backup] that stored just the changes in those files."

Readers have written in with a number of suggestions, including Intelligent Disk Backup from Net Integration Technologies. Many object that without the software to sort and compact the data, the proposed solution isn't really a solution.

The tone of the discussion starts to deteriorate after a while, but there is an important lesson in this. The easiest way to back up is sort of like the quickest way to move house: throw everything you have into boxes and put it on the truck. But that means you need a bigger truck--and maybe even a bigger house to move into. There's a trade-off between the simplicity of backing up your whole drive and the storage space it takes to do that.

If you only have a handful of computers, you can probably get them all backed up onto one external drive, but then again, that depends on the computers. A handful of computers like mine would easily fit on one good-sized XHD. A handful of the Ur-Guru's computers, on the other hand, need something more.

If you have storage space to spare, then you don't have to worry about compressing or selecting the data you back up. If not, you need to determine priorities. Maybe all the data that really matters would fit on a single DVD.

30 GB DVDs on the way

Just when you thought that new dual-layer DVD burner would last you a while, Toshiba and Clariant decide to dig in and create a 30 GB HD-DVD disc. HD-DVD itself is still in the prototype stages, as is rival format Blu-Ray, so who knows whether we'll actually see production models. It does, however, appear that we're going to see a continuation of the compatibility problems we've had with DVD recording formats. It's probably best to wait to see which format emerges triumphant before making any next-generation optical drive purchases.

FileSlinger™ Backup Reminder 12-10-04: What's all this about printable CDs?

Dear FileSlinger clients, colleagues, and friends:

Have you backed up your data this week? If not, make sure you do so before the end of the day.

I've devoted a few of these newsletters to CDs and DVDs (known collectively as "optical media") and backups. To recap briefly, for any "archival" backup that needs to last more than a year, it's best to use brand-name CDs and DVDs, and safest not to apply stick-on labels because of possible damage from the adhesive.

Lately I've been noticing more and more ads for "inkjet printable" CDs. On the face of it, that sounds very enticing, especially to those of us who are visually oriented and creative. I print my own business cards, brochures, greeting cards, and even bumper stickers, so why not CDs?

It's easy enough, and not very expensive, to get CDs with a special inkjet-printable coating. Try putting them in most inkjet printers, though, and neither the CD nor the printer is going to be usable thereafter.

In fact, only a few consumer inkjets (that means printers that normal people can afford) are capable of handling CDs. The Epson Stylus R300 M starts at about $179 and the Epson Stylus Photo R800 starts at about $325. Otherwise, you have to buy a dedicated CD printer, and that will run you easily $1000. (See CNET Shopper for a listing of models and prices.)

A somewhat less expensive alternative is to get a thermal inkjet printer. These start at about $70 and are more compact than their inkjet counterparts, but they print only CDs and not paper. Like inket CD printers, thermal printers require specially treated media.

Both methods of imprinting CDs are considered safe, though not as good for archival CDs as just writing on them with a CD marker (about $5 a pack). If you're planning to write on CDs with other pens, you might want to get the ones with the coated tops, just to be safe.

For a thorough treatment of the different options for labeling and printing CDs, see the article at CD-info.com. There's even a link to a service which will allow you to print customized blank CDs in small quantities. (Most CD-imprinting companies require a minimum order of 100.)

Remember—the important thing isn't to have backups that are pretty—it's to have backups, period. Don't put it off until tomorrow.

FileSlinger™ Backup Reminder 7-30-04: Microwave CDs

Dear FileSlinger clients, colleagues, and friends:

It's time to back up your data again. It's also time I thought of something really original and new to say in this reminder notice, but all I have for you this week is a tidbit on how to destroy your data...which, of course, you might want to know, given what's happened to our right to privacy.

The Ur-Guru was watching "Unscrewed" on his laptop last week and I caught a segment about ways to make sure your data is totally destroyed. A few were rather fanciful, such as the liquid nitrogen combined with a sledgehammer.

However, almost everyone has a microwave, and it turns out that if you microwave CDs on the "popcorn" setting, they arc into artistic craquel patterns and become completely unusable. (The microwave appears to survive just fine.)

In general, fire is a more effective way to destroy a hard drive than water.

Data recovery centers have been able to retrieve data from computers that were buried under water or mud, but fire is much harder on a disk. (Some firefighting chemicals also damage electronic equipment.) This is one reason you should make sure your computer is properly ventilated and doesn't get too hot. Laptop users need to be especially careful: get a laptop with feet and put it onto a hard surface where air can circulate under it. (Your lap is the right height for using a laptop, but it has the wrong topography.)

I'll be back on Friday with more random backup remarks and another reminder. Until then, may your data be safe!

Sallie

FileSlinger™ Backup Reminder 6-25-04: Dead Media

Dear FileSlinger™ clients, colleagues, and friends:

I've been searching the Web for interesting items on backups and came across an article discussing the frequent failure of backup systems (due to one reason or another) and the even-more-frequent failure of businesses and individuals to have backup systems. One response written to this article was from a developer at a major storage management company, insisting that his company's products were very good and you could count on them. The further responses to this letter ran along the lines of "As if."

Then there were two articles on the subject of "dead media"—the first one arguing that because hard drive read/write speed can't keep up with processor speed, we need another kind of disk to replace them. Many programs these days resist writing to the drive in order to maintain their speed—which is part of why you need so much more RAM than you used to. (And why having programs set to autosave your files can slow you down a lot if you are working with large files.)

Writing to other media is even slower. My new DVD-writer will write to a CD at 24x, but slows down to 1x when inscribing data on a DVD-RW. (Anyone who can answer the question "1x what?" gets a prize.)

The other article discussed the obsolescence of longer-term storage media—anyone remember 5.25" disks? Since back in the days when I was an academic discussing electronic library projects with colleagues, people have been concerned that if they store their data electronically, it will be unreadable in the future, whereas writing on paper could still be read centuries from now.

Well, maybe. There are in fact fairly substantial fragments of perfectly legible ancient writing preserved on Egyptian papyrus. I got to spend one summer proofreading the printout of the newly-digitized version of a lot of them, back at the University of Michigan. But the survival of those documents depended on special conditions of climate and storage, and there are not very many people who can read the actual papyri (or even medieval manuscripts, in the case of Greek and Latin), because the style of writing is strange even to those with knowledge of ancient languages.

Most of the ancient texts we have today come to us because they were copied over and over: as one copy deteriorated, another was made. Greek texts went from papyrus to parchment to vellum to paper and were eventually mass-produced by printing press and finally scanned or typed in to electronic databases.

So it is with our electronic data. When we get a new kind of storage medium, we tend to copy our old data onto the new medium. This is just as often because the new media takes up less physical space as because we are thinking about long-term preservation. When I got a ZIP drive, I was able to get rid of a lot of floppy disks by copying them onto ZIP disks. The same holds true for ZIP disks and CDs, though before rewritable CDs became so common, ZIP disks still had an advantage over them. In most cases, we will keep moving what matters to us onto new media—and, if we still use those files at all, into new formats.

Besides, computers allow us to make so many copies, without deterioration of quality, that it becomes ever easier to make sure that some copy of a work is preserved. The challenge becomes one of having so much data that we can't remember or can't find what's there, so I will conclude by saying: label your backups.

But first go and make them.

More backup news next week,
Sallie

FileSlinger™ Backup Reminder 6-18-04: DVD-writing tips

Dear FileSlinger clients, colleagues, and friends:

A couple of times this week I had a strange experience with my DVD-writer: it would be writing merrily along and then suddenly the computer would give me a warning message and reboot. I asked the Ur-Guru, and he offered the following advice for better CD/DVD-recording results:

The real issue is; why the black screen; why the reboot, and what is really going on. My money is on not sustaining the speed to keep writing and buffers not being optimal or not having enough CPU power if other stuff is running too.

1. try not to do stuff on the machine while it's writing a DVD
2. try to turn off your screensaver and other background stuff if you are writing DVD's.

To sustain enough throughput to the DVD while writing you have to ideally NOT do any of that stuff while it's writing...you could be getting buffer underruns and nasty stuff like that (a laptop would be more prone to that given that they are slower and disks are always slower).

The "buffer" is the place the computer holds the material it's recording in memory, and if you don't have enough available RAM, then some of what you're copying could be lost (that's the "underrun" part). And it's true, I've been doing some fairly memory-intensive work this past week, in particular working on a lot of graphics. Also, the fact that my DVD-writer is external means it's slower than if it were built in.

In case anyone is wondering why laptop hard drives write more slowly than desktop hard drives: it's because they spin more slowly. A typical laptop hard drive is 4500 rpm (yes, the same kind of rpms we used to use for vinyl records), while a typical desktop hard drive is 7200 rpm. The faster it spins, the faster you can read from or write to the drive (that is, open or save files).

So why are laptop drives slower? One reason is that because the faster a drive spins, the more heat it generates, and laptops are not equipped with very good cooling systems. If the drive overheats, it can cause more problems than burnt hands for the computer operator. Also, the faster the drive spins, the faster it uses power, and laptop users generally want their batteries to last more than 30 minutes at a time.

To sum up my guru's advice in one line: don't distract your computer when it's writing to a CD or DVD.

Tune in next week for more adventures in backup,
Sallie

FileSlinger™ Backup Reminder 5-7-04: Differential DVD-RWs & reByte

Dear FileSlinger clients, colleagues, and friends:

It's Backup Friday again—prepare to make your backups. In fact, go make them first, and then come back and read this. Or just make the backups and don't bother to read it—I'll never know.

So far my DVD-writer is working out very well. It's much faster now that I got a 9-foot firewire cable and connected it to the back of my XHD.

I had a discussion with the Ur-Guru about whether the backups I'm making onto that rewritable DVD are in fact "differential backups." To him, a differential backup means that only the bytes that have changed get backed up. That means each backup would not copy a whole file, only the changes to the file. That sounds pretty confusing to me, and it doesn't appear to be what's actually happening. (It's also what Microsoft describes as an "incremental backup" in its help files.)

What Rapid Backup is doing is checking for files which have changed and copying any that have a more recent "last modified" date over onto the DVD. I've got it set to run every hour, and it does so pretty unobtrusively, though it did once cause some serious slowdown when it tried to back up a very large Word file while I was working on it.

So I have on that DVD all of my most recent documents and data files, except

1. files that were open when RapidBackup tried to copy them and
2. files that have changed since the last copy session.

I like having this option because I don't have to shut my computer down in order to use it, which I do with the Ghost backups. I'm still making those once a week, though, because the ability to restore my computer just as it was is priceless. But I make a lot of changes to my documents in the course of a week, not to mention all that Quicken entry.

Okay—last week I promised you a bit of "What will they think of next?" in the backup department. This is the reByte™ system, which is a computer built for one purpose only: backing up what's on other computers.

To me, reByte seems like a geek's solution, particularly if you're going to build your reByte™ system out of an old computer. It presupposes enough space to keep a second desktop PC around just to make backups on, as well. And while it automates backups and can back up your whole network in one place, it doesn't create drive mirrors that will restore your software and system state as well as your data. The reByte™ answer to the obvious question "Why not just get an external hard drive?" is "There's nothing to install on your client PC and nothing to remember."

I'm not about to run out and get one, myself. I don't think it's a very good solution for an individual. But for a company that's got several networked computers and no existing backup system, it might be a reasonable and economical option.

More backup news next week!

FileSlinger™ Backup Reminder 4-31-04: The DVD-writer arrives

Dear FileSlinger clients, colleagues, and friends:

I've actually been up late two nights in a row making backups. (You must be thinking "Get a life.") My new DVD-writer arrived on Thursday. It came with Sonic Simple Backup, which I thought I'd try, so I installed it and started up a job.

It turns out that my data (documents, photos, Quicken, and Outlook) takes up almost exactly 4.7 GB, which is the capacity of a DVD.

It also turns out that if you operate a DVD-writer from a USB 1.1 port, it takes a very long time to record that much information—much longer than the backup of my entire drive to my firewire XHD via Norton Ghost. I've ordered a 9-foot firewire cable and a hub, so I should be able to take care of that problem.

SimpleBackup recorded and verified a backup, but since it didn't have the capacity to make scheduled or differential backups, which is part of what I wanted the DVD-RW for, I decided to uninstall it, reformat the disk (a much faster process than writing to it in the first place), and then install a differnt program, the freeware utility Rapid Backup, which lets me not only specify the directories I want backed up but schedule backups on an hourly or daily basis and monitor files for changes in order to make backups. So far it seems to be working fairly well, and the resulting backups appear on the disk as a file system which can be accessed via Windows Explorer.

Last night I was up late because I forgot to delete the oldest Ghost backup before recording the newest one, and had to start over.

I am told that I should make my ongoing differential backups to my XHD and then copy the whole backup to the DVD-RW. I'm sure they would be faster to write, at least at the moment—but then, it takes much less time to write a few changed files to the DVD-RW than to copy the entire 4.7 GB over.

If anyone is thinking of getting a DVD-RW drive, my experience with this one has so far been good. It's a Panasonic internal drive set in an aluminum case by Meritline.com, and the combo USB 2.0/Firewire version cost less than $200 including a rewritable DVD. It works with either Windows or Mac and with XP and OSX, all you have to do is plug it in and turn it on. It will then, as the instructions promise, "enumerate itself." (That means it shows up as a drive with a letter, in my case Drive F.) It also comes with video and sound recording software for making DVDs with. I don't think I'm going to start doing any video editing soon, but you never know—more and more of my clients want videos for demo or other purposes, and DVD is rapidly becoming the medium of choice.

I still consider my pocket-sized 80 GB external hard drive my main backup drive, and it's not that much harder to carry around than a DVD.

Tune in next week for a new twist in the backup field. Meanwhile, keep making those backups!

FileSlinger™ Backup Reminder 4-23-04: DVD-writer & REV drive

I have just ordered a combination USB/Firewire CD/DVD writer and will let you know how it works once it arrives. Until recently, DVD writers were more expensive than external hard drives, but this one was only $180 and came with a rewritable DVD. I'm thinking it's a good option for backing up those items which change occasionally and are too large to fit on a CD—not to mention for producing backups that can be stored off-site.

I'm also going to be attending a seminar tomorrow entitled "A Plain English Conversation about Computer and Network Security for the Small Business," part of which promises to focus on backups. I'll include any new insights in Friday's backup notice.

Meanwhile, the storage technology industry—which I am coming to think of as backup technology industry—continues to produce new media and devices. Iomega, the maker of my venerable 100-MB parallel ZIP drive, is now offering a Removable Hard Disk System (which it calls the REV). The drive (available either as an external USB 2 drive or an internal ATAPI drive for desktop PCs) takes 35 GB removable disks and claims to be 7 times faster than tape backups.

At $350 for the drive and $60/disk, it's not an inexpensive solution, though the drive ships both with Iomega Backup Pro and Norton Ghost. The REV system claims to be more cost-effective than DDS-4 tape backups, but if any of you are currently using, or considering investing in, tape backups, it's news to me. The REV system also suffers from the same problem that Iomega's ZIP and JAZ do: although you can transport a lot of data on one disk, only another REV drive can read it.

Personally, I still prefer the external hard drive option: simpler, more portable, and less expensive. But I'd love to hear anyone's opinions to the contrary and reasons for them.

Stay tuned for more backup news,
Sallie

FileSlinger™ Backup Reminder 12-5-03: Disposing of Old Data Backups

Dear FileSlinger clients, colleagues, and friends:

I'd like to welcome the new members to this list, and provide a little background for you. Every week I send my clients (and other interested parties) a reminder to back up their data. This is an easy habit to get out of if you don't have an automated system, and until I started this mini-newsletter, I was not making backups regularly enough myself.

To keep the reminders from getting too repetitive, I've started including news and suggestions about different aspects of backing up and otherwise protecting your data.

This week's topic is Disposing of Old Data Backups.

You're probably all aware of the national epidemic of identity theft, and you know you need to shred anything with your personal or financial information on it.

But what about those old backup CDs? I don't know about you, but my computer contains the keys to my life—all my financial details, my passwords, even my signature, important information about my clients, and plenty of things that I wouldn't want other people to read just because they're personal.

So far I've mostly used ZIP disks for my backups and I overwrite old data rather than throwing the disks away. And ZIP disks, like floppies, can be erased or reformatted.

ZIP disks and floppies are on their way out, though, and a CD can hold a lot more information and costs a lot less. If you're not using rewritable CDs, sooner or later you'll end up with an accumulation of old data backups which are no longer useful to you but could still be useful to an identity

Don't just pitch these in the trash along with all those offers from AOL and Earthlink! You need to make sure that your old CDs are unreadable before throwing them away. Of course, we've already talked about the way cheap CDs can self-destruct and become unreadable. If that happens, you don't need to take any additional measures. But if you can read the information on the CD, so can someone else.

You can actually buy shredders specially designed for CDs, DVDs, and other media. These are usually built to an industrial scale with prices to match. Any large company should probably have one—in a soundproofed room.

For individuals and small companies, there are more personal-sized models from Aleratec ($49.95) and Royal ($99.99). The interesting thing about the Aleratec model is that it doesn't chop the CD up but instead drills it full of tiny holes. I suspect this is much quieter.

If you're not going to be destroying CDs all that frequently, or just don't have space for a second shredder, a good strong pair of scissors should work.

And remember—if you need any help creating a good backup system for yourself, just ask!

FileSlinger™ Backup Reminder 11-7-03: FTP, Labels, & Mac Backups

Dear FileSlinger clients, colleagues, and friends:

I've been shifting files from my ancient Mac PowerBook over to my new(ish) Windows XP machine in order to put them onto ZIP disks and be able to take the PowerBook (still completely functional apart from a damaged floppy drive) to the computer recycling people.

In the course of going over these files, I came across something that might interest y'all: a Technostress questionnaire which I used to use when teaching Intro to IT at the University of Warwick. If anyone wants a copy, just ask.

I believe I was actually making backups when one of my floppies got stuck in the PowerBook's floppy drive. It was my attempt to get it out that unseated the drive cable. (Apple does not advise you to open up your Macintosh. Neither do I.) I was preparing to move back to the US and had also quite recently bought a new PC and had a lot of information to transfer. After the floppy drive broke, I had to move everything by e-mailing to myself or uploading it to an FTP file server and downloading it again. (This was all by dial-up, too.) It's a trick you might want to keep in mind in case one of your removable disk drives starts acting up—though most computers these days take more than one kind of media.

Speaking of problems with disks and drives, a geek friend sent me an article about yet another potential threat to your data CDs: homemade CD labels. Despite the fact that these are supposedly designed to be put onto CDs, the author of the article discovered that the glue had eaten through the top layer of the CD and down into the dye layer where the data is stored, and the CDs were completely unreadable.

I have put labels on my CDs for some time, and so far none of them appears to have taken any damage—but they are all less than 2 years old. Personally, I'm wondering what Avery and Fellowes have to say about this.

The other thing that this final cleanout of my old PowerBook prompted me to do was consider the fact that about half of you on this list are Mac users, and many of my comments so far have been generally Windows-related. So I thought I'd do a little checking into Mac backup software.

From what I can see, the main drive-imaging program for Macs is Dantz Retrospect. Iomega Automatic Backup and Apple's .MAC get honorable mention in the search engines. Like Windows programs such as Norton Ghost, these are designed to allow you to restore your system—software, data, and all—in a very short time. I haven't tested any of the Mac programs personally—comments are welcome.

Next week I'll talk more about restoring from backups.

Thanks for reading!
Sallie

FileSlinger™ Backup Reminder 9-26-03: Use Brand-Name CDs!

Dear FileSlinger clients, colleagues, and friends:

First, go make your backups. Then, if you're interested, come back to this message for your storage media update.

Alarmed at last week's news about the unreliability of many no-name CD-Rs, a client asked me to expand on the subject. So I did a little further research, and can now tell you that it isn't just the brand of CD-R that matters, but the factory making them. The Kodak factory makes not only Kodak CDs, but also the Philips Gold and TraxData Gold CDs. These are all good CDs. So are TDK (which has its own factory), Ricoh Premium (ditto), Imation, Philips Silver, and Sony (all from the Taiyo Yuden factory). Avoid anything from the Ritek factory like plague, at least for data-critical items.

I have not yet found similar studies specific to CD-RW and DVD-R & DVD-RW media, but I strongly suspect the same general guidelines apply.

"Great," you think. "Now what do I do with the 100-pack of generic CD-Rs I just bought?" Not to worry. Cheap CDs are actually fine for a lot of things, because you don't need everything that you put on CD to last as long as, say, your tax records. Data changes frequently, and often a backup that's more than a month old isn't much use to you anyway. Anything that's going to be replaced with a newer version inside of a year is probably safe to put on a cheap CD.

But for anything critical, buy top brands, and if it really needs to last, go for the gold.

C|NET also recommends storing CDs in jewel cases and using only designed-for-CD markers and labels on them. (The markers were news to me!)

More storage news next week!

Cheers,
Sallie