Just occasionally, I think I might have been writing this blog for too long. Only very occasionally, because it won’t be “too long” until everyone backs up, the technology to do so is completely mature, and no one needs to hear about the subject any more.

But the end of one year, and the beginning of another, is one of those times. How many ways are there to say “Okay, make a copy of all your project-related and financial data from the past year, copy it onto a couple of CDs or DVDs, and store it with your tax information”?

Well, let’s see.

I first addressed this subject in December 2004: “Year-End Backups.”

Why do you need a year-end backup? Primarily for tax purposes. Just in case you’re faced with the dreaded audit, you want all your financial information readily available. (The more organized you are, the faster the IRS will go away.)

In December 2005, the post was “Don’t Use CD-RWs for Year-End Backups.”

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.

And in December 2006: “Is It Time for Year-End Backups Again?”

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.

Instead of a December 2007 article, I wrote the next post on this subject in January 2008: “It’s Time for the Annual Archive.” (I’d finally given up calling it a backup, since it isn’t, really.)

I’ve just made 4 DVDs to add to the tax box. […] 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.

Last year I appear to have skipped the annual archive article, though I dutifully went through and created my annual archives. They got as far as my Buffalo Quattro drive, and somehow never made it onto CD.

So here we are at the beginning of 2010, and it’s time to clear 2009 out of our computers. (Please!)

If you’ve been making annual archives all along, and only keeping your current projects on your C drive, then creating your 2009 archive should be a comparatively easy process. Just copy all your data onto appropriate storage media. What kind of media depends on the type of work you do. If you work mostly with text-based documents and spreadsheets, it shouldn’t be too difficult to fit your project files onto a few CDs or DVDs.

On the other hand, if you’re a photographer, create a lot of video, develop software, record uncompressed audio, or otherwise generate data in simply stupendous quantities, then you’ll probably need an external hard drive or some Blu-Ray discs. (The hard drive might be cheaper, honestly, but keep it in an airtight plastic box.)

And what if you haven’t been making annual archives all along, and your computer is full of years’ worth of undifferentiated data?

Well, don’t you have some fun in store for you?

Fortunately, it’s not as bad as all that, because you can use your computer’s search feature to find you all the files that were last changed in 2009. And then in 2008. And in 2007. And so on. Then you copy those files onto your storage media for archiving. Once you’re sure that the archive copies work (insert the CD or connect the XHD and try opening a few files), you can delete the old files from your computer’s hard drive.

Wow! Look at all that space you have for your 2010 files.

Do the same thing for your e-mail, making sure to create a new archive folder for Outlook. (You need to re-name the existing archive.pst folder to something like archive 2009.pst.)

Of course, if there are projects from 2009 that you’re still working on, you should continue to keep them on your computer. But if you’ve closed off the job and aren’t working for the client anymore, the files can go to a separate location.

Though you still might want to keep more than one copy. The annual archive is just something to keep with your tax documentation in case you (or the IRS) need to refer to it later. It’s not really a backup. So having a second copy of those 2009 files could be a good idea. You never know when a client from four years ago will call and say “Do you still have that…?”

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.

Dear FileSlinger clients, colleagues, and friends:

Before you go out to ring in the New Year, take some time to prepare your year-end backups.

Why do you need a year-end backup? Primarily for tax purposes. Just in case you’re faced with the dreaded audit, you want all your financial information readily available. (The more organized you are, the faster the IRS will go away.)

So the first candidate for a year-end backup is your accounting or personal finance software. Quicken has a built-in feature for making year-end copies. (Go to File|File Operations|Year-End Copy and follow the instructions.) If you use a different finance program, check the help file. At the very least you should be able to export a certain date-range.

Other candidates for year-end copies are any bills, receipts, or invoices that come to you in electronic form. If they arrive by e-mail, you can either save them as individual text files or make a special mailbox (Eudora) or archive .pst file (Outlook) for them.

You should also save any invoices that you send to your own clients. In fact, you may want to make a special copy of all your client files for the year. If you have clients who span several years, creating subfolders for each year within the client’s folder can help make finding your current documents easier.

Once you’ve selected the files that need backing up, copy them onto a CD or DVD and put them with your tax files for 2004 or in your safe-deposit box. (If you want to know more about creating yearly tax archive files, check out the Organizer Extraordinaire‘s Tax Time Tune-Up tips in her book, How to Do Space age Work with a Stone Age Brain™.

And don’t forget to make your regular weekly backups, as well.

Happy New Year to all, and may 2005 be a year of no data loss.

Sallie

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Remember, if are getting rid of an old computer and want to deduct it from your 2004 taxes, you need to drop it off by the end of the day today. The Alameda County Computer Recycling Center is open until 5 PM.