When visiting our clients one of the things I ask them is "What are you doing about backing up?" Some of them have a backup procedure and some of them don't. Most of them know they should but not all of them do. Alot of people come up with excuses when it comes to backing up. "I forget" and "it takes too long" are without a doubt the 2 most common answers I get when I ask people about their backups.
There are ways to get around these excuses, automating your backups is one of them and performing mirror or incremental backups is another. You can automate your backups so they run at a specific time of day by using backup software link Genie Backup Manager or Handy Backup. You can tell the program what you want to backup, where you want to back it up to and at what time you want it to backup. This way you can plug your device in or insert your backup tape and let the PC do all the work for you. You may even be able to configure it to send you an email with a Backup status. This will let you know whether the backup has succeeded or failed*.
What's a mirror or incremental backup you ask? By configuring your backups to perform a mirror backup, the software will only backup the files that has been changed since the last backup. This means that instead of your backup taking 30 minutes to an hour to perform a full backup of all your data, it could only take 5 minutes, depending on what's changed since your last backup. This is a great option when it comes to speeding up your backups but when it comes to any backup you should regularly check that they are working even if the software you are using tells you it has done it successfully.
There are a few ways to check if your backup has performed a successful backup or not but none of them are 100% successful. This part may scare some people but it is fact. One of the ways to check is by having a look through your backup software and see if it offers a log or report. This should let you know if any files have been skipped or if there were any errors with the backup. Another way is to manually check the files on the backup and see if they match what's on your pc. You can do this manually, which I would recommend doing with your most important files and folders or you can check the properties of the folders and check if they are the same size and have the same amount of files. Don't be too concerned if they are a couple of files off as these may just be hidden windows files that the backup software will purposely skip.
Either method you use to check your backups none can be 100% reliable which is why its important to backup often and not to the one backup device, If you have more than one backup you have more than one option to recover your data.
*The email function is a software, so check the backup software your using to see if it has this capability.
U'R Computer Ade, U'R Computer Tech Support Experts.
