Blast from the past: originally published May 3rd 2002.

Once you have a small business up and running with a handful of computers you have to look at a serious backup strategy. Programs can be reinstalled, updates downloaded again, but the data generated by yourself and those around you is unique and should be protected. The best way to protect that information is to store it centrally and perform regular backups. To accomplish our goal we’ll look at both ends of the process; setting up the server and setting up the clients.

Let’s take a …

Blast from the past: originally published November 15th 2000.
Backup should be a key component of any computer user’s routine. No matter what we do with our computer, there are files you don’t want to lose. The only way to guarantee they’ll always be there is to back them up.

For the day to day user or individual who is concerned with system failure or file loss the best method is RAID 1. This process takes two hard drives and mirrors the contents from one to the other. After the initial setup …

In the wake of the Gmail temporary loss of accounts a lot of tech sites are highlighting ways to back up your account.  I like the suggestion of Hotmail accessing your Gmail through POP but that’s another cloud solution to maintain.  Using Thunderbird and POP access is another good idea but you need to have it running to pick up your mail.

The best solution I’ve found is MailStore Home.  It will backup and restore your email from basically any email client native or online and it’s free for personal use.  …

Blast from the past: originally published June 25th 2005.
Tape libraries are not new to the industry, but entry-level rackmount units can fit the small to medium enterprise bill. I recently had the opportunity to install and experience an adic FastStor 2 LTO eight slot 2U rackmount tape library.
We had been using a single tape drive that required swapping tapes daily. This was sometimes hard to remember but guaranteed a backup of critical files that were frequently accessed. As we added more storage it sometimes required swapping the tape out for daily backups, which …

Setting up a PC for a friend and they needed some sort of backup.  My first thought is always Windows Home Server but this was a single PC and the extra cost couldn’t be justified.  I turned again to Macrium Reflect Free Edition: the user had an older 200 GB Maxtor external USB hard drive that would hold the backup files.  To be fair I first tried Paragon Backup & Recovery 10 Free Edition and ToDo Backup but neither one did exactly what I wanted: a backup that could be …

Steam is a great service: log in on any PC and play the games you’ve paid for.  The only downside is the download; modern games are between one and five gigabytes, which makes for a long download.  Or after you reformat your system and go to start playing games but have to wait a day for Steam to download them all again.
Luckily steam has a backup feature: right click on your game in the Steam Games menu and select “backup games files”.

You’ll be prompted for a location: I’m saving my …

If you don’t back up your files at some point you will lose them.  We rely on mechanical storage to keep our information and inevitably it will fail.  People used to say it didn’t matter since it was only a resumé or invitation on a home PC: that’s changed since we buy our books and music online and take our photos and videos digitally.
A backup is a copy of your files somewhere else: CD or DVD, other PC, , or in this case online.  There are some excellent free services …

I’ve gushed extensively about the wonder that is Windows Home Server.  I recently gave Windows Small Business Server 2008 a spin to check it’s backup handling but it left me wanting: no current Windows platform backup program gets as much done at such a low cost as Windows Home Server.
For the small business backup is key.  You probably have file sharing set up on your local file server and nightly backups of that data, most likely to a removable hard drive or NAS device.  You may even have a dedicated …

There are two basic types of external hard drives for sale: those that use 3.5″ hard drives and those that use 2.5″ hard drives.  The 3.5″ units typically have an external power supply, multiple connection types (USB, eSATA, Firewire) and have some sort of stand to keep them in position.  The 2.5″ units have no external power connections and normally connect via USB.
The important item here is that the 3.5″ units are designed to remain stationary while the 2.5″ units are designed to be mobile.  It’s this alone that should …