Are you trying to automatically backup your computer?

You’re ahead of most people already. People have gigabytes of data on their computers comprised of their most precious photos, carefully selected music, years of financial documents, and so much more. Yet, most never backup or do so very infrequently. Below we’ll discuss how to automatically backup your PC.

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Why it is critical to backup your computer automatically

There are multiple ways to backup, any doing something is better than doing nothing. Most, but not all, approaches to backup require some manual intervention. Unfortunately, like dieting or exercise, things we know we should do but that don’t happen automatically, often are put off and forgotten until it’s too late. So, let’s start with a few options for how backup your computer.

How to backup your computer automatically

Select a backup system that takes care of all the critical tasks automatically. Below are the primary items to check in whichever solution you decide.

Automatic initial selection of files
Many backup options enable selection of files, but it is challenging to determine which files to backup. You can decide to backup just your My Documents folder and Desktop. This is a reasonable start for most people. However, do you save files in other locations? Often applications save files in other locations without asking. Some of these files are in hidden locations such as folders with C:\ProgramData. A backup system should help identify which files and folders to backup automatically.

Automatic file monitoring and selection
Every time you snap a photo, download a song, or change a document those files or file changes should be backed up. Requiring you to manually remember to backup new or changed files is both significant extra effort and a guarantee that files will be missed. Backup systems should automatically notice all new and changed files and determine whether they should be backed up.

Automatic starting of backup
You are often busy when in front of your computer and you should not need to remember to turn on and turn off when the backup occurs. It should simply occur at optimal times.
Examples of common backup schedule options are:
- Continuous – Backup as soon as a file appears or changes. The benefits of this type of backup is that you have the lowest likelihood of losing any data. If your computer crashes or is stolen, your data is completely up-to-date.
- When Idle – Backup when you are not using your computer. This is a reasonable approach and is conceptually interesting since your computer is not doing anything anyway. However, if you turn off your computer typically when you are not using it, your backups may never have time to complete.
- Scheduled – Backup on some schedule (e.g. every night at midnight.) This is a good option if you know your computer will typically be on at certain times when you will not be using it.

Solutions to automatically backup your computer

Backup to another drive inside your computer
If you have two drives inside your computer, they may already be configured in a RAID1 configuration. Most desktop computers that are configured in this way have duplicate data written to both drives at the same time, thus protecting against single drive failure.
This backup is of very limited value because it does not protect from theft, user deletions, viruses, floods, or any other computer destruction. (Note: many computers have two drives to increase storage space but are not configured to keep a duplicate copy of the data.)
If your computer did not come configured from the manufacturer with RAID1, it is not easy to set this up. However, if you are interested in trying, here is a detailed tutorial on how to setup RAID.

Backup to an external USB hard drive
USB drives are available in a variety of sizes and are fairly easy-to-use. Most modern computers will recognize an external USB drive as just another hard drive as soon as it is plugged in through the USB port. Most users purchase these drives to store additional data on them when they run out of space on their computers. However, it is also common to use these drives to backup data by periodically copying and pasting files and folder from your computer onto a drive. This technique is fraught with failure though for several reasons: (a) users don’t find all the files they need to backup, (b) they forget to backup regularly, and (c) they copy the wrong files, often writing old files over new ones. Therefore, it is important to setup an automated system that will backup your data to these drives. Many of these drives come with some type of application to help do this.
Backing up to an external hard drive is a good solution, but it requires your computer and your backup to be in the same place. This means that in the case of a fire, flood, or theft you are likely to lose both. It also means that you cannot backup or restore if you are not at the location of your external drive.
Some of the larger vendors of such drives are Seagate, Maxtor, and Toshiba.

Backup to an online service
Numerous online backup services exist and many work in a similar way. You install a small application on your computer, it scans your hard drive, encrypts your files so that they are secure, and sends them to the online service over the internet. These services range in how easy they are to use, how much space they allow, and how much they cost. Make sure you do not confuse an online storage service with an online backup service. Online storage services typically rely on you to pick which files to upload and will not automatically backup your data.
Backing up to an online service is the most robust approach to securing your data because your backup can occur whenever you are connected to the internet and your data is stored remotely so that none of the typical reasons the data on your computer vaporizes could affect your backup.
Some of the best online service vendors are Backblaze, Carbonite, and Mozy. All three are easy-to-use, provide a free version to try, and charge just $5 per month for unlimited space.

Start automatically backing up now!

We’re always busy and it is too easy to put off. But once your photos, music, and other documents are gone…it’s too late. And some of the solutions listed here are easy and inexpensive enough that there is no reason to not start immediately.