My friend’s Facebook post says it all: “and just like that, my 6 yrs life vanished in the lost of thousands of pictures, journals, music and documents”. 2 days latter after taking her hard drive to get checked out: “thank all for the concerns, unfortunately I wasn’t able to recover anything from the old drive, unless I pay over $2000 to do some extreme work. Those memories will be kept only in my heart…”

Computers are like anything else, they will break at some point. Fortunately, setting up a backup strategy takes about 15-20 minutes, so here’s how you do it.

There are 2 main strategies for backups. I prefer the 2nd, but its worth knowing about the first as well.

The first option is to purchase an external hard drive.

As of this writing, you can pick up an external hard drive for about $110. An external hard drive is a separate component that plugs into your computer via a USB port. Make sure when purchasing the drive it comes with backup software – most do, but check to make sure. Here’s an ad on J&R’s website for an Iomega External Hard Drive with Express Backup Software.

The upside to an external hard drive is that its easy to setup, plugin and start your back ups. The downside is that this solution only protects you against computer failure or computer theft. If your house burns down, the external hard drive itself fails, or someone steals the hard drive, you’re still out of luck. Also, its one more thing to maintain, care for and power.

The second option is to use an online backup service.

An online backup service securely and automatically copies any new files from your computer to secure backup servers located at the online backup service data centers. The service usually has more than one data center, so that means your files will still be protected if a disaster happens to the data center itself.

The upside to this option is there is no upfront cost (i.e. you don’t have to front $115 for any hardware), your files are definitely protected from disaster, theft and hardware failure, you have online access to view and download the files. The downside is a monthly fee (usually about $5 month, so nothing steep), can only backup when connected to the internet, the initial copy of your computer or of any new very large files can take a while to upload to the online service. The service I like is Mozy.com and will run you $4.95 per month.

With both of these options, your time is only invested in the setup which is done via a software install. After everything is setup, the backup software runs in the background and makes sure your computer’s files are all copied correctly to the backup solution (external hard drive or online backup service).

While I prefer the online backup, either solution is worth the invested time and money. Let us know your experience with backups.

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How To, Protect Your Computer by Chris