I shudder when I think of how much data I have lost over the years. I am a very mobile worker, and therefore need access to my data wherever I am. As a result, I carry data on external devices, and use a couple of laptops depending on what I'm doing and where I'm going. It's not all work mind; if I'm staying over in a hotel, I want some games, music, Internet, word processing and video to entertain me too.  I have a Virtual Private Network (VPN) setup to my home, but sometimes the poor signal strenth expierienced in large metal buildings or big hotels can completely kill this.  So that does leave me carrying a hard drive.

Unfortunately, hard drives are very mechanical in their build, and are extremely vulnerable to drop and bumps. Even small knocks; I remember dropping a hard drive 6 inches onto a hard wooden floor, which turned out to be a killer blow. 6 inches! Equally, hosting your files on a VPN and accessing files such as video over a contract 3G network can be either slow or costly, depending on your tariff. Dropping these files onto DVD or CD isn't the sole answer either, as they are small capacity-wise, susceptible to sunlight, moisture (I've had CDs that have been left in a cold car overnight; In the morning, the film actually peels right off), and scratches. USB flash keys and cards seem to tick most boxes, but they can be easy to lose, small in capacity as well and easy to break. Finally, tape drives are too cumbersome to be portable, and aren't cheap either.

There are lots to ways you can lose data.  Let's have a quick look.

• Physical Failure.  Hard disks are basically spinning plates with a needle passing between them.  Eventually, these WILL fail, and the data contained on them could be at risk.  This can happen through general wear and tear, external influences such as shock and knocks to the drive or the device that it is installed in, or loss/theft/fire.  Because it is likely that the drive will eventually fail, the actual physical drive as an asset can be viewed as expendable.  However, the data contained on that drive isn't.
• Software Failure.  Separating the operating system (such as Windows) from your data files is essential.  If Windows fails, then you can restore Windows from your backups.  If your files are damaged, then you can restore your files from your files backup.  If both Windows and your data files were backed up in the same job/file, then you won;t be able to selectively restore one or the other; it'll be both or nothing.
• Virus.  I am absolutely gobsmacked that people still run computers without virus checkers, then moan like crazy when they get infected.  It isn't even a trade secret; the Confiker virus got more exposure than most news stories this year.  NEVER scrimp when it comes to a virus checker; for the sake of a couple of pence per day, you won't need to sit waiting for your machine to boot up, or wonder why it's not starting, or even sit on the phone to your bank trying to work out how someone got your credit card details.  Virus can attack Windows, AND your personal files. 
• Mistakes.  Yep, the ol' "User Error".  I remember when a company I was working for started procuring Dell D600 laptops.  The touchpad on it was good; however, it would accept a tap on it as a mouse click as default.  For a month, I had many many jobs asking to restore whole directories.  When I started looking into it a bit more, I found these missing directories in other neighbouring directories.  What was happening was people were tapping on the pad then moving around the screen when viewing the list of directories.  The comuter was taking this as a click and hold, and thus dragging whatever directory the mouse was hovering over at the time.  Anyway, the point is backups can restore files and directories that are accidentally deleted or altered.  Taking this one step further, it is a safety net when installing applications, games and updates.
• Power Abnormalities.  Computers are pretty delicate instruments underneath the metal case.  If a power surge or a spike passes through the components, that's pretty much it.  Again, most computers have a warranty associated with it and therefore can be viewed as expendable, but the data on your drive is the result of many hours of downloading, typing, picture-taking, installing... you get the idea.  Protecting the computer from power means placing a buffer between the source of power and the computer itself.

OK, so there's a lot of risks. How do we combat them?

My first advice will be to get a desktop rather than a laptop. If you have a lot of files such as photos, videos, music, and general documents, then you really don't want them slung in your bag at all times. If you are using a laptop out of necessity or simply don't want the hassle of a static computer taking up space, you will have to skip straight to the backup sections below.

Assuming you have a desktop that you want to backup, the first step is to install a second hard drive into your PC. Secondly, if not done already, you really really need a virus checker. Lastly, you need to install and configure a backup policy.

Installing another hard drive into a PC isn't nearly as technical as it used to be in the days of DOS and MFM hard disks (click the links at the end of this hub to learn more about the history of hard disks). The greatest challenge is obtaining a PC with enough power connectors internally to accept multiple hard disks, and also buying the right hard disk.

There are two ways of finding out what disks you will need, and also whether your desktop will take it. One is to jump onto Google and search for the technical specifications of your particular make and model of PC. The second, more reliable method is to pop the lid of your desktop and actually take a look.

First, find and identify your existing hard disk. Take a look at the below pictures for help identifying the connectors.  There will be two physical types - Serial ATA (SATA) and IDE. 

Once you have taken a look in your case and found what type of drive you can fit, you will need to make sure there is a spare power and a spare data connector available. If you are short of power, then you can buy power splitters from any good computing outlet. Most computers have both IDE and SATA connectors; try to fit a SATA hard drive as they are faster, but for general purposes, IDE will be fine.  Try to buy as big as you can afford, but bear in mind that you will have to buy the same size drive but external later, so try to be sensible.  If you're simply storing photos and Word documents, you could probably get away with an 80Gb drive.  If you're collecting music and movies, you're definitely looking at the 500Gb to 1Tb mark.

The below guide goes into more detail if this is the first time fitting a drive. If you are not confident with this, don't take the risk; take your computer to a computer expert and pay for it to be fitted.

All right - you now have your new hard drive fitted. Time to make sure it will be accessible to Windows. Switch on your computer and log onto Windows as normal. On your desktop, right-click on My Computer (or go Start, then right-click My Computer), click Manage. In the left-hand pane, click Disk Management. Wait a moment for the computer to analyse all available disks.  Your new disk will appear in the bottom-half of the right-hand panewith an empty rectangle next to it saying Unallocated Space.  Right-click this, then click New Partition.  The below is chopped from the Microsoft website (I've included the link below) but with some more "definite" options included...   

In the New Partition Wizard, click Next.

Click the type of partition that you want to create (in this case, Primary Partition), click Next

Specify the size of the partition in the Partition size in MB box (leave this as it is - should automatically be the maximum size available), and then click Next.

Select a drive letter.  Try to keep it at the other end of the alphabet, as Removable USB Sticks and card readers will gobble up the next alphabetical letter as default which may cause problems later.  Click Next.

Click Format this partition with the following settings, and then complete the following procedure in the Format dialog box:

Type a name for the volume in the Volume label box. Call it Data.

Click the file system that you want to use in the File system box - unless othwerise instructed, choose NTFS.

Don't change disk allocation unit size, and specify a quick format.  Do NOT enable file and folder compression - I can't stress that last one enough!

Click Next, then click Finish.

Your drive will now appear in My Computer as the drive letter you specified.  Hooray!

Now that you have the additional drive fitted and working, it is time to organise your existing data and move it all to this drive.

Personally, I have a LOT of data spanning about a decade of computing. Yep - it would be a massive (if not impossible) task to replace. I also see the pain and desperation on people faces when they come to me, laptop cradled like a dying puppy, pleading for salvation because they have 5 years worth of holiday snaps saved on the disk. So yeah - backups are essential.

First things first, you need to create a functional and clean directory tree on this new drive. If you have an OCD friend, it will be worth getting them in at this point.

The point is to create a structure that can be browsed easily and organised efficiently. This stops you hunting around on a drive that could be potentially massive in the future. Remember; if you add up all those moments when you're searching for a file over the course of 3 years, that's going to amount to a fraction of the time it takes setting these up. Let's take a look at the below; this is the contents of my data drive:

As you can see, I have a drive called K: which has a sub-directory called Data, which is then split down into content. When I create or download something, I create a directory within these sub-directories and put the content in. After a while, you can have gigabytes of data, yet will be able to find whatever you need within three clicks.

Whether you need these particular directories is up to you; if you are purely a musician, you might want to create genre-named directories off the main Data directory.

Once you have created your directory structure, start moving all of your user data from your C: drive into these directories.  Don't move anything program or application-related from the C: drive, just any movies, music files, Words documents etc.  If in doubt, don;t move it or ask for help.

All right - everything's sorted into tidy directories on a separate hard disk. Now is the time to back them up.

Remember I said about buying another couple of hard drives, but external ones? You will need to buy two external USB hard disks now, one MUST be at least the same size as your Data drive. For argument's sake, it's best to buy one as big as your C: drive and as big as your Data drive. Some people may prefer to buy one large external drive for the purpose of backing both drives to it; fine, but if you were to lose this one external drive, you'll lose both backups. Eggs and baskets.

You will also need to purchase some backup/imaging software. There is an argument as old as the hills about backups and software solutions - whether the Windows Backup that comes packaged with XP is any good. The simple answer is "not for backing up Windows".

Strap yourself in - this can be a bumpy ride. Making a copy of the data on a particular drive is only half the battle; being able to do something with it when the time comes is the other half. With Windows backup, as long as you are trying to recover user files, it is just about adequate. However, if you have a problem with Windows and need to restore from Windows Backup, forget it. It lacks the ability to recover Windows without going into Windows itself, and in that way is seriously useless. The more superior pieces of backup software out there gives you the ability to boot the computer into a "recovery" mode, which you can then instruct to start restoring Windows/files from a backup.

Anyway, you will need to purchase some backup software to backup Windows with. It is arguable that you can skip this step if you're not worried about recovering Windows; the actual data files will not require any software to be purchased. I do perform Windows backups now, but there was a time when I was confident of restoring Windows manually if a problem did occur. It's a really really really big pain to keep loading in Window, the drivers, all the applications, IP settings, themes... Anyway, your preference.

Purchase and install some imaging software. My personal preference is a product called Acronis True Image Server, which is no longer available. Acronis do sell other imaging software which is an enhancement to TIS.  Symantec Ghost is probably the most well-known, and Backup Exec is the one used by most businesses for tape backups.

When running the software for the first time, schedule a job to backup the entire contents of C:\ to one of your newly-purchased external drives.  Pick Incremental Backup; this allows you to backup a lot of times to the same drive.  When choosing dates to backup, I prefer a Wednesday evening and a Sunday evening.

Good DR (Disaster Recovery) policy dictates that your backup should be off of the premises every night.  If possible, take this backup and leave at work, only bringing back home on the day(s) that you have scheduled a backup for.  If you're not too concerned about losing Windows in a massive crisis, leave the drive plugged in.

Finally, remember to create a Recovery Disk.  This can be on CD or USB Flash drive.  I prefer CD as CD booting is more compatible with older machines.

The idea behind all of this is if Windows fails to boot because of a disk or software issue, you can boot your imaging software from the Recovery Disk, then point it to the external drive's last backup, then restore it to the C:\ drive without harming anything else.  If the C: drive is actually physically kaput, then you simply replace it with another new one, boot from the CD, point at the latest backup and restore to your new hard disk still.  If you want to take it once step further, buy a replacement hard disk NOW, then if the worst comes to the worst, you have the disk to hand and can be up and running within the hour.

I've collected too much data over too long a time to just risk losing it; all the photos of friends, holidays, clubs, university work, randomness - I couldn't replace it, and I bet that I'm not the only one that values their photos. If you're running a small business, this becomes even more apparent.

The one problem that I have faced when trying to pick a suitable way to backup data is accessibility. If you backup your data to a tape drive, you MUST be assured that the tape drive can be mounted onto another PC if needed, and that you will always have that tape drive. The "fun" thing about tape backups is that they are best suited for very infrequent recoveries or a complete recovery; you can't go through the contents and run a file when you need to; you need to catalog the contents, then extract to a location. It takes time.

Simply copying the files using copy and paste isn't suitable either; if there's an error or the file is being used, then the WHOLE operation cancels. Similarly, if Windows needs to ask for permission to copy over a file, or a file that is marked as Read Only, a popup will appear and the whole operation will stall until you notice that you need to press OK. Also, Windows will either overwrite all existing files or none at all. This isn't good either, as a full copy and paste of my drive takes hours and hours to complete. If I choose to not over-write existing files on the backup drive, I may not have a complete backup; I might have altered a text file on my PC, but Windows only sees the duplicate filename, therefore will ignore it. Hmm.

If we use an imaging or backup software to backup our data drive, then we will have to "mount" the file as a drive if we need to access it (this is simply so you can browse the file's contents). In this respect, we might as well save to a tape drive. If you needed to recover the files because your computer had gone wrong, then you would have to buy the backup software again to install on your new PC in order to read the files. This isn't ideal, and there's no guarantee that future versions of the imaging software will be backwards compatible with your backup (I've had this happen to me, oh joy upon joys!).

The easiest and best solution for your data files is a free utility called Robocopy. It is similar to xcopy in DOS (for those who are a little more old skool) except it is very resilient to pauses, errors and also allows the user to choose whether to overwrite.

• It is a little fiddly to get going from scratch - thankfully, your friend Mr Werd is here to help! Firstly, download a copy of Robocopy from the links below. It comes part of Microsoft Windows Server 2003's admin pack now, which is chock-full of toys if you are running Server.
• Save the Robocopy executable to C:\Robocopy. Create another directory in C:\Robocopy called logs.
• Below the link is a sample batch file that I use. Copy the text, then open up Notepad on your machine. Paste the text in.
• Change TYPE THE SOURCE HERE to your data drive. For example, D:
• Change TYPE THE DESTINATION HERE to your second external hard drive, for example K:
• Click File, Save As
• Change "Save as type" to All Files. Browse to C:\Robocopy, then name the file to robocopy.bat and click Save.

Now all you need to do is double-click the robocopy.bat to perform a backup. The text file in C:\Robocopy\logs will give you a report on what files were backed up. The switches in the batch file specify to overwrite the file if it is newer than the existing file. This should generally meet most people's requirements. If you want this automated, look at the Scheduling link below; simply get Windows to run the robocopy.bat at certain intervals.

At the end of this, you will have a complete copy of your data files that you can access simply by plugging into your machine or anyone else's (if you want to access these files on a laptop). Although I wouldn't recommend it, it is useful for taking out with you if you're a mobile worker. If you do damage the backup drive, at least you still have the original, and vice-versa. How you use your backups is up to you. You should keep both backup disks off your home or office premises just in case there is a burglary or fire.

 @echo off

echo Starting to backup

c:\robocopy\robocopy.exe "TYPE THE SOURCE HERE" "TYPE THE DESTINATION HERE" /E /SEC /XO /r:3 /w:5 /V /ETA
/log:c:\robocopy\logs\Backup.log
echo Backup Completed

:END
pause

All right - so you should have three items that should be taken off your premises (or at least in a safe or in a separate room); one USB external drive with Windows backed up using an imaging software, a second USB external drive with a complete copy of your data files, and the Recovery CD for your imaging software.  If you have a need to access files when on the move, taking these backup disks with you serves two purposes; giving you access to the files, and taking them off of the premises so that the source and the backups aren't in the same room so to speak. 

Backing up laptops can be done in exactly the same manner, but you probably don't have the luxury of installing a second hard drive in it (although I have seen some with two HDs).

There is another thing that we have failed to mention, and generally is part of any Disaster Recovery planning. Buying a small inexpensive Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) is a necessity if there is a big risk of power outages in your area. A laptop does have its own UPS of sorts in the form of its internal battery. Desktops don't have this luxury, so it's worth looking in your nearest hardware store.

The other thing is a surge protector. A UPS can act as a surge protector, but sometimes spikes and surges harm the UPS itself so is worth protecting your investment.