Backup strategy A quick guide on how to save your data 5/20/2008Mathieu Chellat

Why?  Human error.  Data corruption.  Hard drive failure.  Virus attack.  Theft.  Fire.

In the chemistry department (U drive)  The chemistry department provides 500 MB of free backed up storage on our U:\ drive, take advantage of it.  The U: share: “The U: share is the equivalent of the /home directory on the chemistry Unix server and can be accessed from all PCs (and on request, from all the Macs) in the Department. You can use it to store all your documents. The U: drive is periodically backed up.”  Go here to learn how to access it from your computer.here

Your U: drive in Explorer  The U: drive is considered as a network drive, that you can use like a normal hard drive.

On a flash drive (8 GB)  Flash drive prices have dropped tremendously lately.  Don’t consider getting less than 8 GB.  The more expensive, the faster. Brands: Corsair, Sandisk, Kingston, OCZ, Patriot, PNY.

On a flash drive (16 GB or more…)

On an external hard drive  Hard drive prices have dropped as well.  There are mainly two different types:  2.5” (laptop HDs), small but slower and more expensive.  3.5” (desktop HDs), faster, cheap but bigger. Capacity2.5 ’’3.5 ” 120 GB$80NA 160 GB$90NA 250 GB$105NA 320 GB$150$ GBNA$ GBNA$ GB (1 TB)NA$ Brands: Western Digital, Seagate, LaCie.

Hard drive winners 2.5 ’’3.5 ’’

Online  Multiple online websites offer online backup.  But you need something that will automatically backup what you want, on a daily basis and that is reliable.  Mozy provides that for free (2 GB) or $4.95/month (unlimited). Mozy Alternatives to MozyHome: Burn a new CD or DVD every Sunday night and store it at your brother-in-law's office. Pay $200/year for an online backup service that uses old, mediocre software. Buy a $200 external hard drive and hope your office doesn't burn down. Do nothing and don't worry about backup. (We suggest closing your eyes, plugging your ears and repeating "I'm in my happy place, I'm in my happy place.") Run a cron job of rsync, gzip and mcrypt piped over ssh to your friend's server over his DSL line.