01 Mar 10 Creating Data Backup Workflows

Backing up data is an important task that most people, if not all, should learn to do. Imagine if you had a hard drive failure and all your data was gone, how would you react? Would you be able to recover some or none of you data? Think about the amount of data that is stored on your hard drive right now. You may have digital photos, digital videos, financial information, school or work assignments. Many of those can’t be replaced, so why leave the well being of your data to chance? It is important to develop a good data backup workflow for your files.

When I talk about a data backup workflow, it doesn’t have to be complex, or expensive. You will, however, probably need to spend a little money to help protect your files. There are many ways to backup your data, and I’ll talk about a data backup workflow that works for me. I will use by digital photos as an example as those are something most people probably have stored on their computer.

The first thing I do is I copy my digital photos from the memory card to an external hard drive. This will allow me to easily do one of two things: creates a copy of the files that aren’t on my local hard drive, and also allows me to access my photos from another computer by simply plugging in the hard drive to another computer. My digital files are always organized by year and then event so it is easier to find the photos for a specific event and time.

Once they are on the external hard drive, I then start the backup application that I have installed from my online data backup provider. This application will scan my digital photo directories on the external hard drive for any changes. If the application detects changes, the changed/added files are then automatically backed up online. This provides protection for my data as the files are stored offsite – away from my computer.

Next, when I want to edit my digital photos, I copy them from the external hard drive to my local hard drive and then begin to edit the photos. I never edit the original photos on the external hard drive; I always edit a copy locally.

Another method you could use is to burn multiple copies of your files to DVD-ROMs, and then transport those discs offsite. DVD-ROM discs, however, no longer work for me as I have currently backed up over 200GB of data, which is too large to manage easily on discs.

As you can see from my backup workflow it isn’t hard or expensive to keep my data safe. I use an external hard drive, which can be purchased relatively inexpensive for the size of data it holds, and an online data provider, which I get unlimited storage space for less than ten dollars a month. The important thing in my workflow is that I make two backup copies of my files, and I always have one copy offsite.
Which ever backup workflow you choose, just remember that is very important that you create a data backup workflow that works for you.

Tags: data backup, data backup workflow, good data backup workflow, online data backup