Computer Backup For The Traveler

If you do any traveling and you carry a laptop with you while you’re on the go, then you better know something about computer backup. Let me tell you why.

Here’s some background. I travel a lot. In fact, I spend most of my time traveling. When I say traveling, I’m not referring to a two-week vacation every now and then. I’m referring to extended travels around many parts of the globe, travels that takes months and extend into various countries and regions. After college, I spent a seven year stint traveling around the mountains and jungles of South America. For several years after that, I lived on a sailboat while cruising the Caribbean. I’ve traveled on nearly every continent, except for the cold ones which I’d rather avoid. Most recently, for the past nine months, I’ve been traveling around Southeast Asia. So why would computer backup be of interest to a guy like me?

Where ever I go, I take my trusty laptop and I’ve had quite a few laptops over the years. While I’m on the road, I enjoy writing. I have a couple of blogs where I make regular posts and I provide content for a few websites. I also keep a personal log of my journeys. Besides that, I use my laptop to edit the videos that I take chronicling my travels. In addition to videos, over the years I’ve accumulated thousands of still photos. All of this stuff is stored on my laptop hard drive. If my laptop gets damaged or stolen, or if the hard drive unexpectedly crashes, I could literally lose years of work. That’s why knowing how to backup a computer is important to me.

There basically four ways to backup a computer. Let’s take a look at them:

This is one of the easiest ways to backup your computer. Most laptops and computers these days come with some type of CD/DVD burner. If you’re running Windows, you can just use windows explorer to backup your files to CD.

Besides Windows, most CD/DVD burners come with some kind of preinstalled software that you can use to burn the files you want to backup to the DVD or CD. My laptop came with a scaled down version of Roxio. The basic Roxio software is pretty straightforward. You just drag and drop the files that you want to copy. When you’re ready, you click on the big red record button and Roxio does the rest.

Like I said before, I travel a lot. I need a backup and recovery system that’s durable and portable. The maximum storage capacity for a CD is 700 MB. That’s it! Not much when you consider today’s digital media. My hard drive has an 80 GB capacity and I’m currently using most of that. So for me to backup my entire hard drive onto CDs would take roughly 117 CDs. No way am I lugging around a whole spindle of CDs with 117 discs. As far as I’m concerned, that’s some major luggage and totally unsuited to any traveler. Plus, you have to consider the time it will take to just create the backup CDs. In today’s digital world of large files of music, photos, and video, it’s simply not a viable solution to backup data to CD.

The same goes for backup to DVD. While it would only take around 17 DVD discs to backup my hard drive, I’m still not keen on lugging them around. DVDs scratch easily and are easily broken. So for me and anyone else who travels a lot, backup to CD or DVD just isn’t a good solution.

Now here’s a nifty way to backup data that’s completely suitable to travel. Flash drives, also called thumb drives, data sticks, jump drives, and data keys are handy devices that are literally about the size of your thumb. They can carry massive amounts of backup data. They come in various sizes from 250 MB all the way up to 64GB. The nice thing about a flash drive is its portability. Most flash drives have a small carrying ring built right in so you can carry them on a key chain. To backup to a USB flash drive, you just stick it in the USB port and use Windows explorer to drag and drop the files you want to backup. But that’s actually the old fashion way to backup to flash. Today’s latest generation of flash drives comes with built in software enabling one touch, push button backup.

SanDisk is the leader in the field of flash drives. Their latest state of the art flash drive is the Ultra Backup 64GB USB Flash Drive. It can store up to 64 gigabytes of backup data on one tiny stick. It has a one-touch backup button so it’s super easy to use. Just push the backup button and you’re laptop backup is done automatically in seconds. Besides that, you can password protect the drive with AES encryption. This little honey is sweet and will surely impress your fellow travelers but it costs around $180.

Keep in mind you don't have to go with the state-of-the-art flash drive. SanDisk makes flash drives with less storage capacity and fewer features that make perfect backup drives without all the bells and whistles. Flash drives are offered in a variety of sizes, 250MB, 1GB, 2GB, 4GB, 8GB etc. You can get a simple, plain vanilla flash drive that will do the trick for less than $15.

There is a down side to flash drive backup. The same qualities, small size and portability, that make them a great backup solution for travelers, also makes them a not-so-great solution. The little buggers are easy to lose. They’re also easy to step on and they’re vulnerable to natural elements like moister. They’re also an easy target for theft. I’ve lost a couple just by being absent-minded and leaving them stuck into USB ports at various internet cafés.

Portable external hard drives are another good computer backup alternative for the traveler. As far as data storage capacity goes, a portable external hard drive tops them all. You can find portable hard drives that fit in your pocket that hold up to 500 gigabytes of data, enough storage to back up several laptops at once. Now that’s some real data storage.
The leader in portable hard drive technology is Clickfree. They specialize in all types of backup devices and their portable hard drives are top-of-the line. Clickfree portable hard drives are just slightly bigger than an iPhone and can fit into your pocket. Their portable hard drives are completely automatic. All you do is plug it in to your USB port and it immediately begins to backup your files. There’s no software to install and nothing to learn. So for the traveler, it’s just a matter of plugging in once in a while. They come in several sizes starting with 120 GB which sells for around $90. For me the 120 GB is perfect.

With these backup devices it’s very easy to do a mirrored backup of your entire hard drive. A mirrored backup includes all of your software applications as well as your data. With a mirror backup you can recreate exactly what’s on your hard drive without having to reinstall any of your programs.

Online backup is definitely my favorite way to backup a laptop while on the road. I highly recommend it to all travelers. Online backup’s ease of use is what I like about it. Once you get it set up on your computer, you never have think about it again. Online data storage is completely automatic.

Here’s how it works. Online backup providers like Carbonite and Mozy own huge servers that they have located in various parts of the country. When you use one of these online services your files are stored in several different locations making them immune to natural disaster. If there is a problem in one location, your files are still safely stored in another.

When you subscribe to Carbonite or Mozy you’re given an unlimited amount of data storage on their servers. You pay a monthly fee that is less than $5 and you can backup as much data as you want. Now here’s the good part. Once you sign up, it takes about 10 minutes to download the backup software onto your laptop. It starts running immediately and automatically backs up your computer any time you’re logged onto the internet. There’s nothing to plug in. There’s nothing to schedule. It’s just done for you. The software runs in the background on your hard drive. You don’t even notice that it’s happening. So, while you’re checking your email at the local internet café, you’re files are getting backed up.

The reason that online backup is perfect for the traveler is that there’s nothing to carry around with you, no luggage. The problem with all other backup methods, CDs, DVDs, Flash Drive, and Portable Hard Drive is that you have to carry it around with you while you travel. It’s never a good idea to store your backup in the same location as your laptop. But that’s unavoidable when you’re traveling. Ideally, you should store your backup in a remote location away from your computer. Online backup achieves that goal.

Here are some other advantages of online backup:

• Accessibility- You can access your files from anywhere in the world

• Immunity from natural disaster, loss, and theft

• Reliability- You don’t have to worry about scratching or moister damage. It can’t be stepped on.

• Real time protection that is automatic. There’s nothing to remember.

• Security- Online providers like Carbonite and Mozy use the same encryption methods as banks. No one has access to your files but you.

• Easy to restore - Data recovery with online backup is as easy as connecting to the internet.