BACK to Menu!Next File.. The complete guide to backup Posted at: Tuesday 31st July 2007 by Stuart Andrews (Custom PC Magazine) Owning a powerful PC that can store hundreds of movies, hours of downloaded music and a lifetime of photos and documents is great. Until the hard disk crashes, and you realise there's no backup. Stuart Andrews looks at ways to keep your digital stuff safe. I know what you're thinking: backup is boring, right? The sort of topic that people drone on about in corporate IT departments, but one that has nothing to do with you and your overclocked gaming and BitTorrent monster rig? Okay, now imagine that you've just lost everything stored on your current system: four years of digital photos, music you've purchased and downloaded, home movies, and any (totally legitimate, of course) downloaded films and TV shows, plus all your saved games and work. If your hard disk crashes or a virus trashes your system, that's exactly what could happen. Doesn't seem so boring now, does it? As digital media and direct download content become a more pervasive part of our lives, backup will become even more essential. A surprising number of download services won't allow you to grab another copy of an album or movie should you lose your own, and replacing content of your own is usually all but impossible. Backup doesn't have to be complicated; it can be as straightforward as buying an external hard disk to which you can copy files as and when you feel like it. Some people need an automated system, with scheduled daily backups and additional safeguards, while others only need a basic working system. The most basic approach to backup is simply to copy the entire contents of your hard disk to another drive, either manually or using the disk-cloning features of an application such as Norton Ghost or Acronis TrueImage. Cloning gives you a backup that, should your drive fail, can restore your operating system, applications and data in minutes. The downside to this blunt approach is that it's slow and eats up hard drive capacity. You certainly won't want to back up in this way regularly. The opposite approach is to copy only files that you can't replace from installation discs or existing media. You find where all your documents, media and application user files are kept, and then simply maintain a safe copy of them. This takes less time and requires less disk space, but it means you have a long haul ahead of you if the drive crashes and you need to restore everything, as you'll have to reinstall your OS and apps manually. What's more, manually copying these files on a regular basis is still a bit of a chore. This is where proper backup apps come in. The trick is to complement full backups of an entire drive with incremental or differential backups. You make a full backup of your drive's contents or vital files on a monthly basis, for example, and then schedule the backup app to scan your system every few days and copy any new or modified files. The difference between incremental and differential backups is subtle, but important; an incremental backup copies only files that have changed since the last incremental backup. This means that it's fast, but it also means that you need to make sure you have your full backup and every incremental backup if you want to restore all your data. A differential backup copies over every file that has changed since the last full backup, irrespective of other backups made since then. As you only need the full backup and your last differential backup to restore, it offers slightly more protection. Another option is synchronised backup. You keep one set of files on your main hard disk and one on your backup drive, and use an application to synchronise them, so that any new or modified files on one drive are added to the other drive. It's simple and speedy, but you need to be careful about settings. Otherwise, you may find that a file mistakenly deleted on your main drive is rapidly scrapped from your backup. The days of backing up to CD and DVD are pretty much over for anything more than a quick archive of a few photos or music files. Even a 9GB dual-layer DVD will struggle with the average person's email, photos, video, music and downloaded games. As a result, the most sensible option is an external hard disk; it's fast, simple to use and it works. Expect to pay around £60 for a 120GB unit, and £200 for 750GB or more. Most connect via USB 2, but a few disks offer higher speeds by connecting to an eSATA port, should your PC have one - they've been appearing on newer motherboards, such as the Elite-listed Asus P5K Deluxe WiFi-AP. You can also save money and choose a faster or larger drive by taking the DIY route and buying a hard disk enclosure. Prices of these start at around £20, and you simply open them up and fit in any 3.5in EIDE or S-ATA drive. If you need to back up multiple PCs - your main system and a laptop, for example - then you might want think about Network Attached Storage (NAS). NAS plugs into your router (although some models include built-in wired or wireless router functionality, such as the Asus WL-700gE), and you back up to it via your own network. This makes NAS a slower method than an external HD - and painfully so if you connect over 802.11b/g WiFi - but it has side benefits. Most NAS boxes have FTP server features so you can back up from a remote connection, and most include a UPnP or DLNA-compliant media server. Store your media files on one of these, and you can watch movies or play music on other compliant devices without having to leave your PC switched on. Your final option is online backup, whereby a service provides you with a few gigs of online storage space on a server farm, and the means to copy your data to and from it. Many sites offer a limited amount of storage for free, but you'll usually need to pay for additional space, and sometimes for the bandwidth you use to upload and download files. The main advantage of this method is that you can use it as a means of sharing files with your friends and family, or between work and home computers. Again, however, speed is a disadvantage. The average ADSL upstream connection is simply too slow for heavy-duty backups. Think of online backup as a supplement to hardware backup when you want to keep key files extra-safe. For obvious reasons, encryption and compression also play a vital part. The good news is that you might not actually need any software. Windows XP Pro has a backup application, NTBackup, pre-installed, while Home users can install it from the ValueAddMSftNTBackup folder on the CD. The bad news is that while NTBackup is functional, it isn't user-friendly. Windows Vista Home Premium and Ultimate users receive a better deal with the new Backup and Restore Centre in the Control Panel, which offers easy and robust backup, scheduling and cloning features. However, even Vista users may find that other backup applications have additional capabilities that they need. Some external hard disks or NAS units ship with backup software, but these will probably be older versions of a commercial product or simplified versions of a corporate app. These may work for you, but might not be as fully featured or user-friendly as the inexpensive apps we cover in this feature. What needs to be backed up? Building a bulletproof backup system means knowing where your vital files are stored. This depends on the applications you use, and we've listed default locations for some common apps below. We've listed the locations for Windows XP, but Vista users can find the same files in only slightly different places. The My Music, My Videos and My Pictures folders in the XP My Documents folder are now stored in UsersPictures, etc, while application data that was previously stored inDocuments and SettingsLocal SettingsApplication Data is now stored in UsersAppDataLocal. iTunes: Has its own built-in backup option (FileBackup to Disc). Music is stored in the iTunes folder in My DocumentsMy Music. User data stored in Documents and SettingsLocal SettingsApplication DataApple ComputeriTunes. Windows Media Player: Music is stored in My Music Music. Note that Windows Media Player 11 won't let you back up licensed data as you could in Windows Media Player 10. Make an audio CD copy of licensed files in case you lose them. Outlook: All data is stored in a user PST file, normally found in Documents and SettingsLocal SettingsApplication DataMicrosoftOutlook. Outlook Express: Data stored in WindowsApplication DataOutlook Express{GUID} or Documents and SettingsLocal SettingsApplication DataIdentities{GUID}MicrosoftOutlook Express. The GUID is the bizarre string of numbers used to describe your Windows identity. Thunderbird: Data is stored in Documents and SettingsLocal SettingsApplication DataThunderbirdProfiles. Firefox: Data is stored in Documents and SettingsLocal SettingsApplication DataFirefoxProfiles. IE7: Favourites are stored in Documents and SettingsFavorites. Feeds are stored inDocuments and SettingsLocal SettingsApplication DataMicrosoftFeeds. Picasa: Has a built-in backup service. Photos are stored in My Pictures. Application data is stored in Documents and SettingsLocal SettingsApplication DataGooglePicasa2 and Documents and SettingsLocal SettingsApplication DataGooglePicasa2Abums. Steam: Has its own backup option. Files are located in Program FilesValveSteam. BACK to menu Next File..