As a beta tester, no one knows better than I the importance of having good, current backups. With disaster lurking around any corner I'm almost fanatical about it. Not only that, I had two hard drives go bad in one year. Nothing brings home the importance of a current backup set for your system better than a disaster that potentially could cost you all your data.

Mention backup and most users cringe but today, backup is easy and it's relatively inexpensive. There are several inexpensive and simple solutions which help minimize the chance of being caught in such a situation yourself.

Tape is slow, but it is high capacity and the media is inexpensive on a cost per megabyte basis compared to most other media. Tape drives come in a number of different capacities. However, hard drives have enlarged to the point where just one standard tape is not always enough to back up an entire hard drive. In fact, even the upcoming recordable DVD doesn't have that capacity on a single disk.

Further, the higher capacity tape drives are now aimed largely at network systems and are no longer at an attractive price point for consumers. However, there are several less inexpensive solutions.

The easiest and fastest solution is the CD-RW drive. Media for these devices come in two types, CD-RW for "Compact Disk Re-Writeable" and CD-R for "Compact Disk Recordable." The re-writeable disks, as the name implies can be re-written or reused multiple times as you would a floppy disk while a CD-R disk can only be used once.

***Francine Brokaw currently has a column up that reviews one of the CD-RW drive solutions.

Backup Strategies

Most backup devices come with software, and Windows 98 has its own backup utility, as does Windows 95-- but neither is particularly versatile and neither supports many devices. To be safe, be sure the device you buy comes with its own backup software or the backup software you wish to use supports the device you plan to buy.

Personally, I use "Veritas Backup Exec." The Windows backup utility is a smaller version of this very same software, but as I said above, it is not as versatile or robust. I use my CD-RW drive for backup purposes. Many who use such a drive use CD-R media because it can be purchased in bulk for prices as low as $.40 per disk or less.

The problem I find with CD-R for this purpose is that CD-R is "use once" media. To me, that adds to the cost-- not to mention what it does to your local land fill. While CD-RW disks cost more, you only pay for them once and they can be used over and over. CD-RW disks can be purchased for between one and two dollars each.

I have one disk for each day of the week, Sunday through Saturday and any day I boot my computer I run a backup. That gives me what I feel are an adequate number of sets and when I begin re-using a disk, the backup set I'm wiping out is at least a week old. Also, if I accidentally delete something of importance and don't realize it for a few days, I have a week's worth of backups that might contain the file I've lost. It also comes in handy if you are infected with a virus. Often, a single backup might contain the virus as well but if you can go back a few days, especially if you can pinpoint the exact date you were infected, you can restore most of your data with very little loss. You can even format your hard drive and use the somewhat older backup for restoration to a point before you were infected.

Because my hard drive is 30GB, I can't possibly run a full backup and, in truth, it shouldn't be necessary. You have the original disks for your applications and operating system, you have the disks for your drivers, hence, you don't really need to run a full backup except for convenience. And, as I've pointed out, most media today can't hold 30GB, so you are left with a selective backup.

Most backup programs including "Veritas Backup Exec" give you a simple means of doing this. "Backup Exec" uses an Explorer like interface that allows for easy selection of files and folders to be backed up. You usually only have to do it once, since they also give you the option of saving a backup job that you've created. Then the next time you run a backup, you simply open that job and it will backup the same folders and files selected previously.

Windows simplifies this process because it installs with a "My Documents" folder. Over the years, I've found this folder quite useful since I can create any number of sub-folders to suit my needs and save files I've created to an appropriately named sub-folder. It makes backing up easy because I don't have to worry about all the sub-folders, changes I've made to existing files or any new files I've created because I only need to select "My Documents" and the backup program backs it up along with anything it contains.

Some applications such as Intuit's Quicken and QuickBooks have their own backup routine. Just as you can place the "My Documents" folder anywhere on your hard drive, you can also select where you would like to place the Quicken and QuickBooks backups. I have my hard drive partitioned; usually placing Windows on drive "C," applications on drive "D" and placing data on drive "E."

I place both the "My Documents" folder and Quicken and QuickBooks backups on drive "E." Using specially designated folders such as "My Documents" allows for easier backup. Those of you who use Quicken and QuickBooks are aware of their backup routine which allows you to save a backup file somewhere outside the application, and that's what I place in a special folder on drive "E." I also have the respective Intuit backups divided into smaller increments. I have a "Monday-Wednesday-Friday-Sunday" backup and a "Tuesday-Thursday-Saturday" backup. That way, if I've really messed up on a Tuesday, for example, I can easily get back to where I started by simply restoring the previous day's backup.

What drive "E" gives me is a warehouse in which to store my files. I save "MS Word" documents there, I save "MS Access" files there and I save my Intuit files there. When I save, I customarily do it twice, once to the drive "E" location and once to a CD-RW that contains the same folders much as we used to do with floppy disks.

That method gives a reasonable low-level backup. So, why run an additional backup if you have drive "E" and a CD-RW disk to which you save files? First, as someone who has been doing this for quite some time, with floppy disks, tape and now CDs, I can tell you from first hand experience media does, on occasion, fail. When that happens, it's a big help to have the files available somewhere else, even if the backup format isn't the same as long as they are, in some way, accessible.

Second, sometimes we simply forget to save to both places or we have some time constraint. Regardless of the reason the double save wasn't done, running a backup at the end of the day or the session ensures all files you've created will be backed up.

Third, while some of this may sound like a lot of work, it is enormously empowering. When you are well backed up, that's one less thing to worry about. Your hard drive fails, you only need to worry about replacing it, your data, however, is safe and secure. Those precious files you've made over the years can easily be placed on the new hard drive or new computer. A backup is the best insurance policy you have against hardware failure and when you use a CD for backup purposes, you have something you can use on most computers today.

When you are well backed up, you have less worry when trying something new. If it messes things up you have the peace of mind of knowing, even if it's a little work, you can get your setup back to where it was before things went awry.

There are other means of backup besides the above. One of the best is imaging a partition or hard drive. The disadvantage of this is the image will be quite large, usually too large to store on a CD. When DVD-RW hits the market those disks will be able to handle large image files. For example, my "C" drive is 5.84GB of which 3.47GB is used. Symantec Ghost, an excellent product for this purpose will create a compressed image of my "C" drive that is about 1.7GB.

That's far too big to be held on a CD but can easily be held on a DVD disk. You can overcome the size limitation by saving the image to a free partition on your hard drive. The problem is, if the hard drive fails, you've lost the image. This is handy however for short-term issues. There's something you want to try that may really blow out your setup, you can save a Ghost Image to another partition, run the test and if catastrophe strikes, you can quickly restore the image and you are back in business.

If you are set up as I've outlined above with operating system, applications and data on separate partitions, I don't recommend using imaging for backup. It has been my experience, the restored images of operating system and applications on their respective separate partitions don't work as well as when they originally reside together on the same partition and are restored to the same partition.

Also, if you are going to buy a new computer, this is not the way to go because the image will also contain settings and registry entries from the old setup that won't work or will cause problems and conflicts on any new system.

It can take about 30 minutes to run a backup using a CD, much longer if you use tape. In either case, it's well worth it in the peace of mind it will give you.

How to restore?

A full backup is a convenience, which, as I've said, is difficult to do today because of the size of our hard drives and the amount of information on them. Nonetheless, if you do a full back up, treat it as a means of preventing the possibility of missing something. However, you don't need to restore everything and probably shouldn't. If you suffer some catastrophe, which requires you to restore everything, you are better off to install your operating system and applications from their installation disks and only restore your data files from your backup. Applications and operating systems run better from fresh installs. Backup software usually allows for the option of a selective restore that allows you to pick and choose what will be restored.

Backup software also allows you to routinely backup the Registry. That's fine; it's a good safeguard against corruption. However, you only need to restore the registry when such a corruption has occurred. In my opinion, if you run into a situation that would require you to restore the registry, you should start over fresh and individually install the operating system and applications after reformatting your hard drive.

If you are doing a restore where you individually install your operating system and applications, there's no need to restore the registry, it will rebuild as you reinstall and restore your data. Sometimes when a driver goes bad it becomes necessary to reinstall that driver. Again, in those cases or if you can't find or don't know the specific files, it's best to reinstall from installation disks. Modems, sound cards, and graphics cards often fall into this category.

One last thing to remember; applications such as "GoBack" are not backup programs and shouldn't be treated as such. They are recovery programs and a bit too thorough as far as I'm concerned. If you use the option to have them watch the entire system, when you "go back" you lose everything you've done, all files created after the restore point. Windows Millennium has a similar feature but it only protects system files. Hence, if you restore to an earlier point you don't lose data you might have created after the restore point, and that's much preferable, but still, it's just a recovery system and shouldn't be used in place of backing up your system.

A little time and effort can go a long way to safeguarding months or even years of work stored on your hard drive. It will give you peace of mind and is the best insurance policy against losing what you couldn't otherwise replace.