Consumer Strategy

One of the first things I ask homeowners who come into our office with an ailing computer is “Do you have a current backup?” And all too often I hear silence in response.

While it is common sense for businesses to backup their digital data regularly, because that data is vital to the function of the business, it can be less intuitive to the home user. Many individuals will go their entire lives without having to deal with a hard drive failure, but the fact is that about 3% of drives fail during their first three years – that’s three drives out of every hundred. Are you willing to take that chance?

A hard drive failure within the first few years of your purchase will most likely be covered by warranty, but that does not include any data transfer or recovery from a drive that will not boot. And with more and more of our irreplaceable possessions being stored digitally, automatic personal data backup should be the norm.

For this article, I am focusing on external hard drives because of their price point as well as ease of use. The average consumer can spend about $100-150 on an external drive that will have enough space to store multiple complete backups of his/her primary drive. Once that device is purchased, there are two main ways to back up data to it – either file/folder or disk image.

• Most consumer programs use the file/folder method – making direct (or compressed) copies of each document or picture (or directory full) to the external device. In the event of a crash, once the drive is replaced and Windows is reinstalled, those files can then be copied back to their original locations. This method does not preserve programs or settings, just individual files. For example, programs like Microsoft Office will have to be re-installed in order to use some of those restored files. If you have kept all of your install CDs and/or Product Keys, then it is just a matter of time. Your system can be rebuilt, but you may still lose small things like stored passwords, wireless internet settings, or desktop images unless those things are explicitly saved to a file.

• The other, potentially more powerful option is using a program that makes a complete image of your drive. In this sense, ‘image’ means a bit-by-bit copy that can be applied to a blank drive. These programs generally come with a utility that will create a ‘Rescue CD’ that you can boot your computer to that will aid in making your replacement hard drive function exactly as the old one did before the crash. Once the restore process is complete it will be as if your computer has been shifted back in time completely to when the image was created. Unfortunately, if your crash was preceded or caused by a virus infection or some sort of hardware incompatibility, that same problem will be present in the stored image. In this case, the OS and programs would still need to be reinstalled manually, and then the disk image can be browsed like another drive for individual file/folder recovery.

If you have any questions about personal backup or any of Progressives services, please call us at 682-4990 or Email Us.