Computer Backup or Climbing Out of the Computer Crapper!

Climbing Out -- When You Realize That You're In Deep, What to Do to Get Out of the Crapper. If you can do one thing, and one thing only: Backup Your Computer!

If you have a problem with your computer, you do not have a backup, and you cannot make one, you have been flushed! So before you get to that point, even if you are circling the drain, do this one thing that will save you from every possible computer problem.

Change is good, right! Especially if you are in a bad place! In keeping with the metaphor of climbing out, I do have to say, sometimes we just find ourselves there ... in this case, all of us bloggers, and computer users in general .. where we do not want to be. So, how to jettison the bad and stay out of the crapper yourself? And what happens, if your trusty tool, your computer, isn't? So trusty, that is.

Everything was OK! But then ...

We don't even like to think about it. Your lifeline to the digital universe lets you down -- it's got a Virus or lots of 'em, it's making terrible noises and overheating, Java doesn't work and none of your Flash stuff will display, or suddenly it's HotHotHot! What will you do?

You can't ignore it; it won't go away. You ARE in the toilet. You need to know the quickest and least painful way to get out.

Well, you have 3 choices, actually. First -- You can pay to have it fixed, and put your baby with all of its delicate files and info into the hands of a stranger who will do God-Knows-What to it and will then return it to you. Whew! Stressfull! You are backed up aren't you???  Second -- You can fix it yourself. Well ... you can. If you can. Third -- Some combination of the 2, that is take some steps yourself, and let a pro do the rest.

Now, let me say this again -- You are backed up, right? 

If you are, great. If you are not, and you can still back up, do so, right now, with whatever backup tools you have. You don't have any???!!! See the article Computer Backup -- Simpler is Better in the Working Computers Blog.

A small excerpt makes an important point:

"having a boot or system disk clone is the single most reliable and speedy way to recover from a disk failure or even from an infection.

If your boot disk fails, you can boot from the backup disk. If your boot disk is infected (and you haven't cloned the infected disk to the backup), you can boot from the backup disk and scan and clean the original boot disk. If you lose a file, you can just go get it from the backup disk.
...
my favorite ( program that does disk cloning) is Casper (The Friendly Ghost) 7.0."

The other wonderful thing about such a backup is that it's cheap -- a 2 TB disk and the Casper Software will run you about $100 or maybe a little more depending on what you choose, and that's the cost of a diagnostic at The Geek Squad.

OK, let's assume you are backed up to a bootable disk. Hooray! 

You do, right?

Now, whatever the problem, and whatever course you take in fixing it, you are safe in the knowledge, that you are protected, every article, every email, every photo. And once your computer is fixed, you can boot it right up. 

So if you have just backed up, congratulations! You have pulled yourself out of the John Crapper! If you have been backed up all along, well, you were never there in the first place!

Who knows what's down there?

And don't let the Gremlins getcha!

Happy computing!


~Ted

I'm watching you!

PS Happy Halloween!
PPS Photo Credits: 
Man Getting Pulled In -- www.ebaumsworld.com
I Love My Computer -- sayingimages.com
Sloth in the Toilet -- various
Skull in the Toilet -- various

Here are my fellow Bathroom Blogfest participants. Check out their 'climbing out' posts, too.

Name	Blog Name	Blog URL
Susan Abbott	Customer Experience Crossroads	Customer Experience Crossroads
Paul Anater	Kitchen and Residential Design	Kitchen and Residential Design Blog
Shannon Bilby	From the Floors Up	http://fromthefloorsup.com/
Toby Bloomberg	Diva Marketing	Diva Marketing
Laurence Borel	Blog Till You Drop	http://www.laurenceborel.com/
Bill Buyok	Avente Tile Talk	http://tiletalk.blogspot.com
Jeanne Byington	The Importance of Earnest Service	http://blog.jmbyington.com/
Becky Carroll	Customers Rock!	http://customersrock.net
Katie Clark	Practical Katie	http://practicalkatie.blogspot.com/
Nora DePalma	O'Reilly DePalma: The Blog	O'Reilly-DePalma Blog
Paul Friederichsen	The BrandBiz Blog	http://brandbizblog.com/
Tish Grier	The Constant Observer	http://spap-oop.blogspot.com/
Elizabeth Hise	Flooring The Consumer	Flooring The Consumer
Emily Hooper	Floor Covering News Blog	Floor Covering News Blog
Diane Kazan	Urban Design Renovation	Urban Design Renovation
Joseph Michelli	Dr. Joseph Michelli’s Blog	http://www.josephmichelli.com/blog
Veronika Miller	Modenus Blog	http://www.modenus.com/blog
Arpi Nalbandian	Tile Magazine Editors' Blog	Tile Magazine Editor Blog
David Polinchock	Polinchock's Ponderings	http://blog.polinchock.com/
Professor Toilet	American Standard's Professor Toilet	http://www.professortoilet.com
David Reich	my 2 cents	http://reichcomm.typepad.com
Victoria Redshaw & Shelley Pond	Scarlet Opus Trends Blog	http://www.trendsblog.co.uk
Sandy Renshaw	Purple Wren	http://www.PurpleWren.com
Bethany Richmond	Carpet and Rug Institute Blog	Carpet and Rug Institute Blog
Bruce D. Sanders	RIMtailing	http://www.rimtailing.blogspot.com
Paige Smith	Neuse Tile Service blog	http://neusetile.wordpress.com/
Stephanie Weaver	Experienceology	http://experienceology.blogspot.com/
Christine B. Whittemore	Content Talks Business Blog	Content Talks Business Blog
Christine B. Whittemore	Smoke Rise & Kinnelon Blog	http://smokerise-nj.blogspot.com/
Christine B. Whittemore	Simple Marketing Blog	http://www.simplemarketingblog.com/
Ted Whittemore	Working Computers	http://www.kinneloncomputers.com/
Chris Woelfel	Artcraft Granite, Marble & Tile Co.	http://www.artcraftgmt.com
Patty Woodland	Broken Teepee	http://www.brokenteepee.com/
Denise Lee Yohn	brand as business bites	http://deniseleeyohn.com/bites/

Cloud-based On-Line Back-Up -- Why It's a Very Good Thing!

A lot of companies these days are offering automated backup of your personal computer over the internet to their storage facilities. In fact, Dell offers 2 GB of on-line backup of all of their personal computers for one year after purchase. After that they expect you to pay of course. And they want you to pay for backup beyond the 2 GB limit as well. Anyway, is on-line backup a good thing for the home PC user?

You betcha! That's a YES!

It is a VERY GOOD THING!

The advantages are:

You do not need any specialized or additional backup hardware.

Your data is stored off-site, so in the case of complete disaster, your data can be easily restored to a new PC, if necessary.

You cannot screw up your backup by messing with the backup device.

It is easy to set up and fully automate.

It costs nothing (for up to 2 GB).

OK, that comes to 5 real advantages.

The only real downside is that the total backup is limited to the 9 to 25 GB or so range because of upload speeds over standard high-speed internet, so you will still have to have another backup strategy for backups of larger size.

Are you worried that your data won't be safe? Don't be; it's all strongly encrypted as it leaves your computer and before it goes out into the cloud.

There is also one service from Mozy, a subsidiary of the very large storage company, EMC, which offers ANY home user up to 2 GB of free backup storage, and beyond that $4.95 per month or $55 per year for unlimited home backup.

So for up to 2 GB, which is quite a bit of data, backup costs no money! How cool is that?

OK, 2 GB is not enough to backup all of your pictures and documents, maybe, but it IS enough to backup all of your unique identity info, that is, all of the login, password, mail server, cookies and other info that makes your computer yours, and that you can never remember or access when ... ooops, it's gone.

But, once again, it's FREE, and it's EASY, and it will PROTECT you from misery in case of disaster. Also, it can save you a lot of money, paying some guy to figure out and/or recover all of the specific personal info you've accumulated over the years you've been using your computer, and that could be hours and hours.

Even I do it. How does the story go? The cobbler's children go unshod ... well, it's so easy I even follow my own advice.

You should, too.

Oh, you want to comparative shop? Check out Carbonite, SOSOnlineBackup, and iDrive, as well as services offered by Symantec and McAfee of Internet Security fame, or just google online backup services.

They all cost money.

Remember to test the restore feature! Mozy fared well in independent testing of the home-based software solution, and better than some of the others.

~Ted

Bring in the CLONES -- Do You Really Have a Backup? Or, HEY!, Backups Fail, and What Are You Going to Do About It?

OK, we all have our computers backed up, right? Right?

Those of you who answered "No", or who did not answer...hey, you GOTTA back up your machine. But it's a PAIN, right?

And, I often wonder, is that backup REALLY complete, or there at all? Or corrupted, and it just LOOKS like it's there ... until I try to restore something from it. Sigh.

If you use the Windows supplied backup software, which is different for Windows 7 and  Vista and different again for XP, you may think you have your files backed up, BUT when you actually go to restore a file, you may discover, with Vista, for example, that only non-binary files have been backed up.

With XP, the hodgepodge of complete system backups with "System State" saved, along with incremental backups can easily overflow available backup devices.

Sadly, it's best to have multiple backup strategies in place, because, well, you know, you may not have what you think you have when you need it. So, belt AND suspenders.

Use the Windows backup tools.

Also, CLONE YOUR DISK.

Make a complete image backup of your hard disk to a similarly sized disk, or 2 disks, once or twice, a week. That's what I do with my important home system, and it has saved my bacon more than once.

Yes, it's overkill. Yes, I am backing up a lot more data than I have to. Remember, though, redundancy is safety. Belt and suspenders.

Plus, your backup, as a cloned disk, can be BOOTABLE.

You lose your primary disk. You still have your backup clone(s). You boot from your external cloned disk -- which means you are up and running from a hard disk catastrophe in minutes. Try doing that with a conventional backup! You can then do a so-called bare-metal restore from your clone to your new primary disk. Oh My God, it's a wonderful thing.

There are several commercial products available that do this wonderful thing.

Norton Ghost 15.0, Casper 7.0, and Acronis True Image Home 2011, are all programs which offer the ability to clone your disk. They all do other things as well, from full-fledged backups, to scheduling, to, well, all kinds of stuff.

The most important thing for me, though is the cloning.

Casper is the simplest, though by no means simple, and I use it all the time, and it has saved me from drive failures, Windows update and upgrade failures, and dumb things I don't want to talk about.

I schedule mirror image backups 2X a week to 2 (external) eSata drives in sequence.

You may not have eSata ports, but you certainly have USB ports, so use an external USB drive, or better yet get an external drive with both eSata and USB interfaces.

External USB eSata enclosures are available for less than $25, and you can get a 500 GB Sata 2 2.5" Seagate Drive for $60 -- it takes 2 minutes to snap the drive into the enclosure, and you're ready to go.

I have purchased just such items from Amazon (no connection but that of a satisfied customer).

Now, my cloned images ARE there on my external drives, and I KNOW they are, because I go look. Also, I am notified when Casper has completed its cloning operation.

It can happen at night, and it does not get in my way.

It's a good thing. Safe. Portable, too, those external hard drives.

Also, if you want to upgrade your hard disk, the nice thing is that Casper will STRETCH the Windows partitions to a larger drive. You want to go from a 500GB drive to 1000GB drive? No problem, and the whole disk will be used.

Clone yourself. Well, your disk anyway. Clone ZEN.

~Ted

Beyond the Psychiatric Box