How to Backup a Hard Drive

My hard drive crashed early this year. My computer had been acting strangely for a couple days, and despite doing the usual not-very-technical things I do when something seems amiss in my computer (running antivirus software, defragmenting the hard drive, etc.), one day I turned on the computer and... nothing.

When it became apparent that none of the easy fixes (such as rolling back to the last known good configuration) was going to work and it was either pay someone more technical to go in and fix it or reformat the hard drive and start again, I decided to reformat. I wasn't worried. After all, I had everything backed up on my external hard drive.

But then the unexpected happened.

While sitting at the kitchen table and transfering files from my external drive to my laptop, I had to jump up suddenly to get my three-year-old daughter, and... CRASH! I caught the electric cord with my foot, sending my external hard drive with all my data and more than 14,000 photos crashing to the floor. NOW I was worried.

Watch out for banana peels and helicopters
But apparently I'm not alone in my clumsiness and bad luck with hard drives. I read an article on ZDNet in which a data recovery company reported some of the ways people accidentally destroyed their hard drives - leaving a banana peel to rot on it, using WD-40 to stop a squeak, accidentally dropping the computer from a helicopter, and having a truck run over the backpack in which the laptop was located. Fortunately, most of those disasters will probably never happen to the majority of people (particularly the helicopter incident!). But hard drives can and do fail for much less dramatic reasons.

Fortunately for me, everything on my external drive wasn't completely lost, and I had my photos backed up on CDs and online, so I was able to recover everything I needed.

In the process, I learned a valuable lesson - back up your back up. You never know when you might be sitting at the kitchen table and suddenly send your entire life crashing to the kitchen floor.

If you're concerned about protecting your files, using a secure online backup service is another option and a good idea even if you already have an external drive. After all, even if all your content is stored on CDs, DVDs, your mp3 player, an external hard drive, or a USB flash drive, if your house is destroyed by fire or a natural disaster or a burglar breaks into your house and all your electronic devices are inside, you'll still lose your valuable data. The chances of that happening may be as slim as the chance you'll destroy your hard drive with a rotting banana as in the story above, but why take a chance? Online backup is inexpensive, secure and reliable. It's especially useful for anyone who uses a laptop and travels because you can find and restore your files from anywhere.

For digital photo backup, you can simply choose a free online photo sharing service such as Shutterfly. Don't rely on Flickr unless you purchase the professional plan; Flickr does not keep your original images if you have a free account. All you'll be able to access are the compressed and resized versions they save.

For complete backup, or for saving just the most valuable files, services such as these offer inexpensive plans that can help you protect your files.

- Mozy offers limited (2 GB) free storage and monthly unlimited plans starting at less than $5

- SafeCopy offers a free trial and has simple yearly plans starting at only $50

- Elephant Drive also offers a free trial and has monthly unlimited plans starting at $4.95

- Keepit also offers unlimited monthly plans for $4.95 and also offers the option to prepay for 12 or 24 months

If you use Windows XP, you already have a built-in utility that can automatically backup your files on a schedule you select. If you use Windows XP Professional, the utility is already ready to use, but if you have Windows XP Home, you'll need to install it from the CD first.

How to Install the Backup Utility on Windows XP Home Edition
- Put the Windows XP Home Edition CD in the CD drive.
- Locate and double click on the "Ntbackup.msi" file, which you'll find here on the CD drive: \VALUEADD\MSFT\NTBACKUP.
- Double clicking this program will start the installation wizard. When the wizard is done, click Finish. You can now follow the instructions below to backup your hard drive.

How to Backup a Hard Drive with Windows XP Backup Utility
- Go to Start>All Programs>Accesories>System Tools>Backup. Click Next to start the wizard.

- When asked if you want to back up files or restore them, choose back up and click Next.

- Choose what you want to backup. Do you just want to back up My Documents? Everyone's documents? Or everything on the computer and create a system recovery disk to use in case your hard disk crashes? Make your choice and click Next.

- Select a place to save your backup. The backup utility cannot save directly to CD or DVD, but you can select an external hard drive, a removable device such as a USB flash drive, a network shared drive or a separate partition on your computer's hard disk. After making your choice, click Next.

- You will now have the choice to click Finish, which will start backing up your hard drive immediately, or click the Advanced button. Unless you want to manually backup your hard drive periodically, click Advanced to schedule automatic backups. Then select Next to open the When to Back Up page, and click Set Schedule. Pick the times and days you want to backup and then select OK. That's it! Your hard drive will now automatically backup according to the schedule you selected.

When my hard drive crashed, I had more than 14,000 photos of weddings, births, graduations, holidays and everyday events on my computer. Fortunately, I had most of these important photos copied to CD or DVD. But I didn't have all of them on disc, so I had to order backup CDs from the online photo sharing sites I use.

If you use an online photo sharing site, backing up your photos is easy. My favorite is Shutterfly because it's free, there's no limit to the number of photos you can upload, and they don't require you to buy something every year to keep your account active.

For other ways to save your photos, check out my page on Options for Digital Photography Backup.