Backing up Data Why Should I Backup My Data? In these modern days more and more is saved on to your computer. Sometimes its important work you can't afford to lose, it could also be music, photos, videos etc. A lot of people also work on laptops and carry these round with them. Laptops are more likely to fail than a desktop machine due to the life it leads, getting battered being carried around. So you have the possibility of the laptop dying and you may be lucky and be able to retrieve the data, but these days that is unlikely as if returned to manufacturer or shop, they will either be wiped clean and returned or replaced. So your data is lost. You also have the problem of theft, laptops are easily accessible, left in cars, stolen from home or even in school, the result is your data is lost. If you work on a desktop machine, you also need to think about the above issues, what happens if the machine fails? what happens if the machine is stolen? Some schools get broken into and all the PC's stolen, so people lose work. Another problem with computers is the threat of viruses. By visiting one site you can infect the PC and make it unusable without antivirus, firewall and spyware protection. You may also have your PC wiped and all your data lost if taken to an expert or even call a customer support line to wipe the virus from the PC. Although you may have turned your PC on everyday for the last 3 years, you cannot predict when it may fail or get a virus etc. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but the answer is to back up your data, how regular will depend on how much you do and how often, it can be quite simple and easy and cheap or can be more extensive depending on your requirements, its down to how much you want to back and how often. Where to Backup and What do I Need? You have lots of different options for backing up data, different methods offer different protection. a) Another Hard disk in the machine By having another hard disk in your machine and having your data on both drives, you are protecting your data against viruses (even if someone wipes the main hard disk) and against hard disk/pc failure. This can be scheduled to run, meaning minimum input required. It does not protect you against theft of that machine or fire. b) Copying to another PC/NAS By copying your data to another machine or Network Attached Storage (NAS), you are stopping the data relying on that computer. If the computer failed, got infected, stolen etc. you still have a copy of the data on another PC. This can be scheduled to run, meaning minimum input required. This does not protect you against fire or theft if both machines are stolen. c) Copying to a DVD or external device This is one of the best methods of backup IF the device is taken off site. You can use a variety of devices to do this, a USB pen drive, USB/Firewire external hard disk, ZIP drive, tape drive (I would consider replacing these) or a DVD or CD. Creating a backup on an external device will immediately protect you against anything that happens to the PC; virus, failure, theft etc. By moving it off site, you will also protect the data against fire. Using a writeable CD or DVD will give you a historic record if you do it monthly etc. you can keep a catalogue of backups.
The actual operation of backing up can be fully automated with some methods or require direct action. The first 2 methods mentioned above can be automated. By simply copying or backing up files or if using the first method using RAID. The 3rd method can be automated if using external hard disks, but it will require you to plug in the drive before the task and unplug and remove after the task has been completed. If you do a fully automated backup system, check its running every week or so. A scheduled task to copy files can fail if the password for the user used to set it up changes or if the destination is full. It may fail for other reasons depending on the task. It will not alert you when it fails. We use a combination of all 3 at B Squared. We have a central server using RAID (4 hard disks in total), every night the data is copied to a 2nd backup server. Every week it is also backed up to an external 3.5" hard disk. We have 2 hard disks and swap them over each week, so that we always have an off site back up. These back ups are also catalogued on a NAS device at a separate location. This may sound over the top, but it gives us a range of redundancies, if the server fails, we have the backup server to take over. If there is a theft of all computer equipment, we have the offiste backups we can use. A lot of companies are now 100% reliant on their computer system and would not be able to function with out it. USB Pen Drives start as little as 10 for 2Gb. This will be adequate for backing up documents and some photos. Just don't lose it!!! USB Hard Disks start at around 50 for 250Gb. This is a 3.5" model, so not hugely portable (1" x 5" x 8") and needs a power supply to work. You can get 2.5" models that are much smaller and lighter (0.5" x 3" x 5") but cannot store as much data (currently up to 160Gb) but are a great stop gap between a USB pen drive and a full size USB hard disk. 3.5 hard disks go up to around 1Tb (1,000 Gb or 1,000,000 Mb) and are getting more popular due to the amount of music and video being downloaded from the internet, people creating a media PC and the number of photos being taken on digital cameras. The external hard disks are great for storing lots of things, especially as laptops have limited hard disks and people are unsure about upgrading their desktops, they can just plug in and go. Firewire hard disks works the same as the USB ones, but will only work on PCs with firewire ports, you can get firewire cards for your PC or firewire cards for your laptop. Firewire works at the same speed as USB2 so doesn't offer any real benefits. Nearly every PC in use today has USB ports, so you can take the drives anywhere and plug them in. To backup to a DVD or CD, all you need is a DVD or CD writer. Technology has moved on quickly in the last 5 years and most new PCs come with a DVD writer (can also write CDs) and laptops come with a CD or DVD writer. Machines bought in the last 4 years will probably have a CD Writer. It is just a case of buying the discs and copying the data to the CD using the supplied software. CDs can hold 650Mb and cost as little as 10p each and DVDs hold 4.9Gb (4,900 Mb) and cost not much more at 15p each.
What do I Backup? What to backup isn't always the most obvious thing. Obviously you want to back up all your work, but what else is important? If you want to backup My Documents, your email, Favourites, its easiest to backup C:\Documents and Settings\username Just make sure all your documents files are saved within My Documents and not on another drive My Documents - The default storage location for a large number of documents and files. Most information is stored within your My Documents folder, you will find that there are sub folders automatically created for music, pictures and received files (via MSN etc.). It is the default location when creating documents. When using your PC you need to make a conscious decision on where to store ALL your documents and files. The My Documents is a good place as it is all kept in one location. You can create folders within My Documents to organise the files as you want. My Documents will be different for each user and also if you log on to the network at school and on to the laptop at home, they will also be different. If this is the case and you want each user to access the files, then you may wish to choose another location. The actual location of My Documents is C:\Documents and Settings\username\My Documents Favourites - the list of your favourite websites from your web browser The Favourites folder is located:- C:\Documents and Settings\username\Favourites if you do not log on to the PC, the desktop just comes up and its ready to use, then you are probably logged in as Administrator Email - if you use an online email provider (yahoo, gmail, hotmail etc.) then your emails are stored on a server on the internet. If you use Outlook Express, Outlook or Thunderbird then the emails are stored on your PC and if the PC is damaged, stolen or fails you will lose your emails. There are 2 things that need backing up, the emails themselves and also the account settings. The account settings make it easier to set up again, they won't really change, so a single copy will normally do. If you use Outlook Express, you can get the location for the emails via the Options menu, but it is generally C:\Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Application Data\Identities\{GUID}\Microsoft\Outlook Express {GUID} is a random number/code. The files will be things like Inbox.dbx etc. To export the account settings go to Tools > Accounts and highlight your email account. Select Export and save in My Documents. This will then be backed up with your documents. If settings change which they rarely do, then you can just replace the file in My Documents When restoring the emails you may come up against some problems with Outlook Express. The folder isn't created until you first run Outlook Express.
Once Outlook Express has been opened, you can't change the folder until you restart the PC. The easiest option is to (a) create a new folder called email somewhere (b) open Outlook Express and go to Tools > Options > Maintenance >Store Folder and change the location to the folder you have just created. This should then create the files inside the new folder (c) close down outlook express and restart the PC (d) copy all the files into the new folder (e) open up Outlook Express all the folders and emails should now be visible, you sometimes need to repear (c) and (d) a second time, depending on how confused Outlook Express has got. Music, Photos and Videos - these are often stored in My documents, but you need to double check, it depends on the software you use. You will normally find an option to change the location in the options menu, you can find out the current location and change if necessary, preferably to within My Documents Downloaded Files - if you use file sharing software, the files are often downloaded into their own folder which isn't the easiest to find, they are quite often within the Program Files folder. You will normally find an option to change the location in the options menu, you can find out the current location and change if necessary, preferably to within My Documents If you backup all of the above, it means if the computer is lost, stolen or fails or if you upgrade the computer, you won't lose any information and you will have all your emails, favourites, documents, music, photos etc. System State What is the 'System State'? The System State is all the settings for users and options on the computer. Its not really used on desktop machines as so few options are set (you can back it up if you want to, but no need). On networks with servers (Server 2000/2003, this is a requirement IMO. It backs up the whole active directory (the database that is full integrated into various services and runs most of the network, users, DHCP, DNS, WINS etc. ). If the active directory gets corrupted and you have no system state backup, you will have to start back at the beginning with the network, disable AD, enable AD and then set up all the options - DNS, WINS, DHCP, user profiles, group policy etc. again. If you have a system state backup, you can just restore the backup and restart the server and all will be restored. If the failure is fatal, you can even build a new server, install Windows 2000/2003 server (same OS as the backup was taken with) and then restore the backup and all the settings mentioned above will be restored. The network would be up and running, only requiring, software to be installed, user profiles and folders to be restored and printers set up. I would recommend doing the system state backup weekly.
How do I Backup? There are a few methods of backing up :- (a) RAID - will be covered later (b) Windows Backup (c) Batch file using XCopy or similar (d) manual copying If you want to backup to a CD or DVD, its probably best to use the software that came with the drive. Windows Backup Windows 2000, XP, 2000 Server and 2003 Server all come with a built in backup utility. Accessible through Start > Programs/All Programs >Accessories > System Tools > Backup You choose what to backup:- - whole computer - not recommended, no real benefit - selected files - system state You will normally go for the selected files option, if you are copying to another drive, PC, external hard disk or NAS, you could create a scheduled backup to copy the C:\Documents and Settings\username to the device, this will copy all My Documents, email and favourites. If copying to another PC or NAS, you will need to map a drive first, this will be covered in section 7. You can either take a backup immediately, or if you go through the backup wizard, you can choose to create a scheduled task, you can choose how often, what day, what time and also give the backup task a name. You will need to specify a location for the backup, either on the 2nd HD, external HD, 2nd PC or NAS. If you schedule a backup make sure it runs correctly every so often. To do this go to Control Panel > Scheduled Tasks. Look for your backup task, the result should be 0x0. If the result is something else, the backup is not being made. Batch Files A batch file is a simple file, it is just a list of DOS commands executed one after the other. The commands themselves are the same as you would enter in Command Prompt. You just type the commands out in notepad, click on save as, change the file typ to all files and save it with the.bat extension The following is an example of a batch file Code: xcopy "E:\Logos" "V:\Z\Logos" /E /H /Q /K /D /Y /I xcopy "E:\CD Documents" "V:\Z\CD Documents" /E /H /Q /K /D /Y /I xcopy "E:\CD Production - Master" "V:\Z\CD Production" /E /H /Q /K /D /Y /I xcopy "E:\CD ROM" "V:\Z\CD ROM" /E /H /Q /K /D /Y /I xcopy "E:\Documents" "V:\Z\Documents" /E /H /Q /K /D /Y /I xcopy is a new microsoft tool for copying files and folders. The original copy command would only copy files, not copy folders and sub folders. The switches (the /E /H etc. )on the end have the following effects...
/e : Copies all subdirectories, even if they are empty. Use /e with the /s and /t commandline options. /h : Copies files with hidden and system file attributes. By default, xcopy does not copy hidden or system files. /q : Suppresses the display of xcopy messages. /k : Copies files and retains the read-only attribute on destination files if present on the source files. By default, xcopy removes the read-only attribute. /d[:mm-dd-yyyy] : Copies source files changed on or after the specified date only. If you do not include a mm-dd-yyyy value, xcopy copies all Source files that are newer than existing Destination files. This command-line option allows you to update files that have changed. /y : Suppresses prompting to confirm that you want to overwrite an existing destination file. /i : If destination does not exist and copying more than one file, assumes that destination must be a directory. The important switches are /e and /h as this ensures EVERYTHING is copied within the folder, no matter what it is. /d means that if a file hasn't changed, it won't be copied again, it will only copy new or modified files. /q just removes all the messages that xcopy generates /y stops any confirmations that come up. This means the command can run unattended, you are not prompted to overwrite files etc. You may be prompted the first time xcopy runs as it creates all the folders. E:\ is the local drive and V:\ is the drive on another PC. In a batch file the quotes are required if you use filenames or folders that are longer than the old standard of 8 characters. Manual Copying This is simply opening up My Computer and copying the files yourself. This requires you to remember to do this as frequently as required so you don't lose your data. Doing it manually has the problem of it can be easily forgotten and not done. But it is the simplest method. RAID- What is it and What Can it, Can't it Do? RAID stands for Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks. It is a way of linking hard disks together, to give increased performance and/or redundancy. You have 2 ways of setting up RAID, hardware or software. Hardware RAID is done by a controller on the motherboard or on an expansion card that controls the hard disks. The operating system and software only see 1 disk. The 2nd method is a software RAID, this is done with the operating system. A software RAID is not recommended due to the resources required. The 2 most common forms of RAID are; RAID 0 :Striped - This is when data is split in 2 and written to 2 hard disks, this halves the writing time, as only half the data has to be written to each disk. This offers no redundancy. If one hard disk fails, all data is lost. RAID 1 :Mirrored - This is when data is duplicated to 2 disks. They appear as one and can only be accessed as one, but the RAID controller writes and reads from 2 disks at the same time. This can give slightly faster read times, but the main focus is on redundancy. If
one hard disk fails, you still have a copy of the data. You can insert a new hard disk (same size or bigger) and rebuild the array. On some computers you can combine RAID 0 and RAID 1 to create a mirrored striped array, this requires 4 hard disks but gives the benefits of both methods of RAID. RAID 5 is the next most popular form of RAID. It uses a minimum of 3 disks and works in a similar way to RAID 0, it splits between the data between the drives BUT it also writes what is called a parity block. If a drive fails in a RAID 5 setup it can use the remaining disks and the parity block to rebuild the array. So basically RAID 1 and RAID 5 duplicate the data inside the PC, meaning if a hard disk fails, the server can still run, the drive gets replaced and the array rebuilt. This is a basic requirement in a server, without it if a hard disk were to fail, the server would require rebuilding, without the server nothing on the network would work. Depending on the situation it could take a day to rebuild a server or 2 weeks or more. RAID only protects the servers 'uptime'. It means the server can keep running through a hard disk failure and the failed drive can be replaced with minimal disruption. It does not offer any protection against fire, theft or anything that could happen to the computer. This is where off site backups are crucial. NAS - What is it? NAS stands for Network Attached Storage, basically it is a hard disk or multiple hard disks that are available on your network. They are just designed to store data. Some schools have what is called a 'share box' where they can store files or programs. This is basically a NAS, a large hard disk accessible across the network. They can be used when your servers hard disk becomes full, you can simply move a range of files to the NAS device, moving roaming profiles would just require mapping the NAS drive on the server and changing of the location for the users profiles. NAS devices are getting more common in the home, you can just plug them into your internet router and access them from any computer on the network, so photos, music and videos can be stored in a central location. This is the main benefit of a NAS over a USB drive, the ability for any PC on the network to connect to it. Linksys do a device that allows you to plug USB drives into a device for sharing across the network (called the NSLU2). They come in a variety of shapes and sizes, 85 gets you a 160Gb NAS with a single hard disk. 550 gets you 2Tb across 4 drives, with USB ports to allow more hard disks to be added. Some NAS devices require you to install software on each PC that wants to access the device, others just need you to know the name of the device. To your computer they appear as another computer on the network, you can browse the files the same you would do on your PC. When browsing the folders and drives on the NAS, you can right click on any of the folders and click map network drive, this adds the folder as a drive on your PC, so it can be accessed through the My Computer and will appear as M:\ or the letter you select. Mapping the drive makes it easier to use as it will appear in the drop down box as a drive when saving documents and also makes it easier to copy files over. You will need to map a network drive if you wish to use a scheduled batch file to copy files across the network or create a backup task. You can map a drive to any shared folder on the network in the same way. I hope this document has given you a brief introduction into what to backup and how. Backing up is one of the most important tasks in IT, most of the valuable information in a company is held on their computer system and loosing this data would be catastrophic.