Its a new year. My new year's resolution is to revisit the way I back up my data. We at Us & Company Computers spend a lot of our time with customers replacing dead hard drives in computers and trying to recover data from hard drives that have not been backed up. Today I am backing up my external back up hard drive because it died last night. Thankfully it showed up again this morning when I plugged it into my computer. I had an opportunity to grab the small amount of data on it that I normally don't back up because this IS the back up hard drive. Its backed up now onto a DVD.

What is my backup strategy and how can I improve it? My backup strategy is rather complicated and a bit redundant. Sometimes I think I think too much ; P

My strategy starts with deciding what data I have that I can't or don't want to recreate if I happen to lose it. I also consider what data is irreplaceable. Because my goal has been a paperless office that means a lot of my data is not automatically backed up on paper. Plus I have spent a lot of time scanning old photos and fixing them up.

The first thing I do is separate my business data from my personal data. This is where the paperless piece becomes very important. I don't have paper backup so how I back up the other things is that much more important.

First thing on the list is our accounting data. If we were to lose this a world of bad things could happen. I back this up in three different places. Every time I do something with the accounting software I back up to an online backup facility. This is a secure backup so I don't have to worry about the data being compromised when it goes over the internet. Once its there its as safe as possible. The backup servers are in Canada, so that it is really really offsite. ;)

There is more to our business data than our accounting. We also have emails and customers records, plus copies of the invoices we send out. This data lives in my users folder, specifically in my Desktop and Documents folders. Once a month I burn everything in those folders to a DVD which I put in my truck. That's offsite and reasonably secure, as long as I remember to lock my truck when I park it.

That takes care of my business data. Now I need to think about my personal data. I do have paper copies of the old photos that I'm scanning, but I don't have paper copies of the digital pictures I am currently taking and putting in iPhoto. A lot of them are crap (I love digital cameras!) but the ones that aren't I would not want to lose.

Plus I have personal financial data and personal email that I want to keep. Not to mention other things that I keep around.

I back up my personal financial data with the business accounting data. Plus when I back up the Desktop and Documents folder monthly that takes care of the personal stuff that is there too. However my pictures are another story.

Redundancy in back up is a good thing. This is why I periodically (not a set schedule but should be) back up to my external firewire drive. I just copy my users folder over to the hard drive and let it copy it all. I also put oddball things on that same hard drive. That's why when the hard drive died I had to back up something else. Those were things I honestly didn't care if I lost but I hate losing anything!

At the end of the year I put the previous years digital images online. I currently use the Kodak site for that but there are others that give you a certain amount of space for pictures for nothing, as long as you buy a certain amount of stuff from them. During the year I periodically burn the iPhoto folder to a DVD.

I am anal when it comes to backup. I have lost data over the years and I am determined not to have that happen again. I am looking forward to using Time Machine in Leopard. I expect I will need to buy another external hard drive for that. Maybe this will be my improvement for this year.