Backup Strategy

You have to back up your files. Only my Mom does not have to. She is new to the computers world, and the only things she has been using are online applications (all from Google), namely Gmail, Documents and Spreadsheets. So Google admins take care of her data. But you have to back up. I doubt you have everything already moved to an online service. So... what do you use for backup? Windows backup? Ok, this was a joke. What if you plan to migrate to MacOS or Linux some day? Do you want your data to be left in some proprietary format? If you think, you probably back up individual files and directories, in their native format. Like pictures in *.jpg and music in *.mp3 and so on... So how do you track what has already been backed up and what hasn't? My "MyDocuments" folder contains some 50 thousand files. Far too many to keep track of them manually.

For several years I have been using a very nice utility, called SyncToy from Microsoft. Some of you may not be eager to put a job as serious as a backup in the hands of Microsoft, let alone a toy from Microsoft (I wonder what sort of a budget they had to come up with a name for a backup utility?). But if you trust me, I can really recommend this tool. For two years or so it has not lost a single file and I moved the entire backup set between at least two machines and three or more backup drives... The principle of SyncToy is a folder pair you create. One on your PC, the other on your backup device (an external USB drive in most cases I suppose). SyncToy has several modes of dealing with the folder pair. It can synchronize everything, or for example just echo the changes from one folder to the other. And it is clever. Even if you mess something up (like accidentally delete a folder and synchronize the delete action), the worst case is all the deleted files will be in your wastebasket. SyncToy is fast. As I have said, I synchronize the entire 50 thousand files MyDocuments folder every couple of days and the entire procedure is a matter of minute or two.

So do yourself a favor. Get an USB drive (around $100 or less), get the SyncToy and back up your data. You deserve a good sleep. Backup helps.