Backup Laptop and Mobile Computers

Laptops and mobile computers are particularly challenging to backup. Since they are not always connected, they tend to store data on the local hard drives. And since they are not always connected, it is difficult to schedule a backup to an offsite storage facility. I know of a lot of cases where field personnel rarely visit the office and connect to the corporate network. In most cases their communication is over email and web portals. Experience shows that depending on manual procedures to connect a backup device and backup a laptop computer on a regular basis is unreliable at best and almost never happens. This is even more problematic because data on laptop computers is more vulnerable than most other data. Laptop computers are lost, stolen, and damaged in accidents much more frequently than other types of computers. And, the hard disk drives are more likely to fail because they are subject to more heat, less ventilation, and more shock than hard drives in workstations, desktops and servers.

The best solution is to use a reliable online backup service. These services are relatively inexpensive. They almost certainly cost less than equipment, support and procedures for any other backup method. The biggest problem with online backup services is that they depend on the computer being online and connected to the Internet for the backup to run. Almost all of the online backup services allow you to schedule a backup to run at specific times. The problem is that most laptop users don't necessarily have their computer connected to the Internet and turned on at any specific times.

A few companies are providing a very effective solution to this problem. You specify that the computer is mobile and the the system will back it up on an interval, whenever it is connected. For example; you may specify that your laptop computer is to backed up once per day. The system will detect when the computer is online, and if it has been more than a day since the last backup, an automatic backup takes place in the background. Some of these services even notify you via email if the computer has not been backed up in a week or some number of days that you specify.

Below is a list of providers known to have this mobile backup capability:

• Data Vault


• DiskSave Data Protection Services


• Rhinoback Online Backup


• Backups Anywhere


• Remote Data Storage, LLC

Backing Up Program Files May Not be Worthwhile

I recently had a conversation with a retired businessman about backing up his computer. He said he wanted to backup his entire hard-drive in case it fails. In most cases I don't recommend that people backup their entire hard-drives. Hard-drives have way too much capacity these days and attempts to backup the entire drive are time and resource consuming. The real problem that I have with backing up the entire drive, is that a large portion of the information on typical computers is occupied with disk-hungry program installations and other stuff that is loaded with the software.

Most people don't seem to realize that restoring your program file folders from a backup doesn't usually get your programs working again. Most programs need to be reinstalled from the distribution media. While copying the program files will physically get them back on the disk, many parts of the programs are installed into the host operating system configuration. Without the installation and configuration utilities, the programs don't show up on your start menu or anywhere else. You can't run them until they are properly installed.

Fortunately, most software manufacturers store user data files in locations that are intended for data files, such as the My Documents folder. This makes it very easy to backup what's most important. And you can also skip backing up gigabytes of program files, help files, samples, documentation and other stuff that hogs space on your backup media.

What if you lose your computer and you don't have your programs backed up? As a best practice, I recommend that you keep copies of all of your software installation disks in a safe offsite location. If your computer or hard drive is lost or destroyed, you can simply reinstall your software from the distribution media and then restore your data. This procedure will leave you with a clean system with working software and your data. Attempting to restore programs from backup media is likely to leave you with problems that continue until you start over and reinstall your software.

One last point. Making backup copies of your data only will result in faster backups and less media required. So you will be more likely to get good backups more often. Don't forget to store copies of your backups offsite so that you can recover if your home or office is damaged or becomes inaccessible.

Backing up your email folders or MS Outlook .PST file

Many of us are finding that some of our most valuable data is contained in our saved email folders. We send and receive all kinds of emails with important information, receipts, instructions, and various other kinds information and attachments that we save for future reference. When I am looking for important information on my computer, it is not unusual for me to find what I am looking for in my saved emails. In fact, I am finding myself using my email folders as a general data store of information. I often send myself an email with important stuff that I don't want to lose because I am more likely to be able to find it again in my email folders than buried in a file on my disk somewhere.

I dare say that I am not the only person who keeps valuable information in their email folders. I have noticed a distinct trend. When I am helping people recover from data losses, more and more of them are placing top priority on recovering their email folders. I have identified several contributing factors to this trend.

• Email application are where we are spending a larger percentage of our computer time.
  
• Email is the primary way we share and exchange documents and information with other people.
  
• Most companies, mine included, places restrictions on the amount of storage our online mailboxes can occupy, which forces us to save our historical emails in personal folders.

This growing dependence on data stored in our personal email folders causes our personal email folders to grow to substantial sizes. Attachments and images are major contributors to the size. I have posted many articles about the lack of attention paid to backing up data on personal and workstation computers. For those atypical people who actually do backup their data, many of them don't backup their email personal folder file because it is too big to fit on a CD and in many cases it doesn't fit very well on a DVD either. The other problem is the time it takes to backup these huge personal folder files. And most backup software can't properly backup the files while they are open and in use.

I use MS Outlook for email and I do backup my files. My .pst file was pushing 4GB because I am basically an email pack-rat. But I find it necessary to save a lot of emails for CYA purposes as well as the reasons discussed above. I basically use my email system as an information storage and retrieval system. I use a very good online backup system, which has the ability to backup my .pst file while it is in use and also backup only the changed parts of the file. This works great, but occasionally my entire .pst file needs to be backed up and it can take hours to do it properly. A few weeks ago, a brilliant thought came to mind. Actually, the more I think about it, the more I don't think it was so brilliant, but just an indicator of how stupid I was for five years. Basically, I decided to break up my historical emails into multiple personal folder archives. One for each year, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, and also start the 2007 archive. My plan is to start a 2008 archive at the first of the year. You see, I will only need to backup the previous years only once each because they are frozen and will not change again. The current archive for this year is much smaller than the growing monster I have been backing up for the past few years. Now my I can backup my current Outlook .pst file very quickly and I still have good offsite backups of all of my previous pack-rat emails.

Regardless of which email system you are using, I highly recommend that you break up your archives into smaller more manageable files. And I also highly recommend that you use an online backup service to backup all of your data. Look for a provider that can backup open files and also backup the changes to your files (often called delta backups). Most of the dirt-cheap consumer programs don't provide adequate functionality and security. Below is a list of 10 online backup providers that I have researched and found to have the right features and security that you need to protect your data.

Rhinoback Online Backup
Data Vault
Robo Copy
Premier Backup Solutions
Secure Site Backups
Global Data Vault
Backup Guard
Applied Data Solutions
E-Storage
Ontimebackup

The above list is not in any particular order and there are probably others that are just as good. I just ran out of time after looking at several dozen providers and came up with this list of 10.