Writing is hard work. Losing what you have written due to computer failure is hard too, at least on the psyche, and unnecessary. Developing a backup plan is easy and will keep you from worrying about losing what you have already written. Backing up your work is a lot like a storyline; what, when, where, and how. I will address each of these issues in this article.

What to back-up?

You want to backup everything that is important to you. Only you can judge the final answer to that question. For Windows® users, the simple approach is to back up the entire My Documents folder. Every version of this Microsoft® operating system since Windows® 95 has included a My Documents folder. It is the default container for saving your documents, thus it makes backups a breeze; just select this folder when using your backup software.

If you have saved documents in other folders, you could either remember to manually select that folder during the backup process, or move those documents to the My Documents folder. I find it easiest to keep everything in one folder. This also helps when automating or scheduling your backup jobs.

When to back up?

How valuable is your data? How often does it change? Some people backup every day (or night). Others decide that once a week is often enough. Still others will only do it once a month. If you are backing up manually, the frequency of your backup plan should be something that fits your schedule and ability to remember to do it. If you are scheduling unattended backups, then you might decide to backup more often. Just remember that unattended backups will require you leave your PC turned on at least on the scheduled day of the backup.

Where to back up?

This may be the hardest question to answer and will vary with each individual more so than any of the other three questions. There are literally dozens of options to answer the WHERE question. One thing to keep in mind when choosing the WHERE is the opposite end of the backup, the recovery. You want the recovery to be as simple as the backup and the recovery may be taking place on a different computer than the backup occurred. Thankfully, in today's computing environment, most options for local backup are also portable, so if you did have to take your backup to a different machine, or put your documents on a new computer, all of these options will work.

Another important thing, in my opinion, is backing up means putting your documents on a media or device that is not inside your current computer. In other words, a separate partition or second hard drive is not a viable backup device. While it may be better than nothing for the short term, if something happened to that computer, not only would your primary set of documents be lost, but the backups would be gone too.

Single computer household

If you only have one computer in your house, and you purchased your computer within the last 3 years, there's a good chance the computer has a CD or DVD burner installed. This will make for an excellent backup device. A CD-R (write-once CD) can hold up to 700MB of files. Trust me, that is a whole lot of word processor and spreadsheet documents. And, when bought in bulk, CD-R discs can cost as little as $.25US each. And if you want to talk about space on blank DVD's? Those will hold up to 4.7GB of data. That is over 45 times the size of the hard drive I had in my first computer! Again, when buying in bulk, they cost only slightly more than CD's The downside to using an optical drive for backups is that they are primarily attended backup only. The upside is they are fast, and the documents are backed up in native format, meaning you can drop the disc in any computer that has the same software installed and open your word processing or spreadsheet document.

Another great option is a flash drive. You may also have heard them called thumb drives or USB keys. Some popular manufacturers are SanDisk, Lexar, Kingston, and Samsung and can be purchased in sizes ranging from 16MB to 8GB. These are little "sticks" that connect to the USB port on the front or back of your computer and, when attached to the computer, look like another hard drive to your computer. They will typically be labeled "Removable Disk" when you open the My Computer window. The advantage to these devices over CD or DVD is that they are "drag and drop" copy operations. Primarily, these are attended backup devices, but since they are seen as a "hard drive" by your computer, they could be used for scheduled backups as long as you remember to plug them in before leaving the computer.

External Hard Drive

These devices are easy to find and even easier to use. Connecting to your computer using a USB cable, just plug the power cable in to your surge protector, plug the USB cable in to your computer, and open My Computer. You will see a drive labeled with the next drive letter available on your system. To move or copy files to this device, just drag and drop. You can create new folders on the drive and save directly to the drive. It's as easy as using the drive inside your computer, except that it has the advantage of being portable. Many of these drives also come with software to set up automated backup routines.

Multiple computer households

If you have 2 or more computers in your house, then along with the above solutions, you also have the option of networking your PC's. This will allow you to back up your files to the other PC. While this is not portable (unless one of the computers is a laptop), it does provide the safety net of having your hard work stored somewhere besides your own hard drive. Unless a catastrophic event like a fire or act of nature takes out both computers, the chances of two separate hard drives crashing at the same time is unlikely. And, if such a catastrophic event occurs, recovering your files is not likely to be your primary concern.

Setting up a home network is fairly simple and there are plenty of tutorials available on the Internet. A Google on "setting up a home network" will result in thousands of results, and networking vendors such as Netgear, Linksys, and D-Link have excellent sites as well. All the gear you need is available at your local electronics or office supply store.

Once you have your network in place, if you still want the portability factor in your backups, you may want to consider a NAS or Network Attached Storage device. These devices are essentially external hard drives but instead of using a USB cable to attached to the network, they use a standard network or CAT5 cable to attach to your switch or hub. These drives are set up via a web browser interface from any computer on the local network. After setup, they are accessed via a drive letter assignment in My Computer. Even if you have no experience in networking, they come with good documentation to get you started and along the way you will learn some things about networking. So, not only do you get your backup solution, but you also get an education at the same time. The downside to a NAS solution is that the drive will only be accessible when it is plugged into a network. However, with home networks becoming more common, you should be able to find a friend or neighbor to plug the NAS device into to access your data.

I cannot recommend using floppy disks or zip disks as backup devices. Most new computers, desktops and laptops, do not include floppy drives and Zip disks require a proprietary device (Zip drive) to access the disk. If your current backup strategy involves either of these devices, I recommend moving those documents to something more ubiquitous such as CD.

Online Storage

Another option for backing up your work is online storage sites. Whether you're considering an online email account (Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc.), online backup sites, or the free space provided to you by your ISP for having an account with them, there are advantages and disadvantages to these options.

One advantage to this option is being able to access your documents from any computer that has Internet access, such as at Internet cafes or a relative's house while you are traveling. Another good use of this type of storage is when transitioning computers in your house and you do not have the capabilities of networking the machines to transfer your files. Also, if you have large files that surpass the email size limit of the ISP's involved in the transmission, you can upload a file to an online site, send the link to a friend, and they can download the file from that site.

There are several drawbacks to using this type of system as your primary or only backup option though. A Google search for "online backup sites" returned millions of pages. A quick read of some of the sites Terms of Service (TOS) revealed that most of these sites are going to pass along your personal information to "marketing partners". In other words, be prepared for an influx of spam in your Inbox. They also reserve the right to go into your data 'for suspected wrong usage or if requested by law enforcement'. How do you know they won't be snooping and then use the 'just making sure you didn't have child porn in there' card.

This blogger has a listing of 50 such sites, with links to each site. While this is a helpful list, many of these sites state they will DELETE YOUR DATA within 7-14 days if there is no download activity. What kind of option is that, to have your backup wiped out if you forget to have some activity every week?

You need to find out how long your files will live in your Gmail, Yahoo, or Hotmail account before they clean those files too. These details are generally included in the TOS, and most of these types of accounts will say they will do their best to notify you if there is a change in the TOS, but what if they changed the TOS and you didn't log into your account to see it before it was too late? Your backups could have been swept away just when you really wanted to retrieve that older version of your novel.

Another thing to consider is how do you get the files to their servers. You certainly don't want to email one document at a time, so this will entail learning to use a program like Winzip to package many word processing documents in one file to email to your online account. Or, if the online service doesn't provide a clear "browse and upload" system, you will need to download, install, and learn to use a File Transfer Protocol (FTP) program.

I really have a hard time recommending an online service as your permanent backup solution. There are too many drawbacks, but the biggest drawback is loss of control.

It's one thing to lose files yourself. We've all done it and have only ourselves to blame. But, when it comes time to recover or restore what might be the most important file you've ever had to this point in your life, do you really want to find out that someone else lost or deleted your file just because they could and you have no recourse to their action?

Backup solutions are about solving potential problems, not creating new ones. Keep your backups local and some day you will be glad you did.

How to back up?

Now that you know what you are backing up and where you're sending the data to, you need to decide how to get the data there. The term backup means different things to different people, but essentially it is making a copy of your files in a location different than the original location. With that in mind, I look at backups in two lights; attended and unattended.

Attended Backups

An attended backup is just what it sounds like; you are there to orchestrate the backup. The most common type of attended backup is the "drag and drop" method of copying your files from one place to another. USB flash drives, external hard drives, or NAS devices are the most common destination of this operation. You could also use the hard drive of another computer on your local network. The next most common attended backup would be copying your files to a CD or DVD, since this requires you open special "burning" software and manually selecting the files that you want to put on the CD or DVD.

Unattended Backups

Unattended backups do not require you to be present during the copy operation. Even better, you can schedule the backups to occur at times when your PC is not in use (but powered on). Scheduling backups is a great way to make sure your hard work is backed up on a regular basis, even every night if you are writing every day as Linda Sue Park does.

There are lots of software packages available to enable scheduled, unattended backups. They will range from the 'I need a computer degree to use this stuff' to 'hold your hand' wizard driven software like the Backup program included with Windows®, One note for Windows XP Home Edition users, the Backup program is not installed by default on your computer. You will need to put the XP CD in the drive and browse to the Value Add folder to find the installation routine for this program. You will also find programs ranging in price from free (my personal favorite!) to hundreds of dollars. Usually, you will find that programs that are very expensive are also designed for corporate or enterprise use and aren't really appropriate for simple backup jobs that home users are doing.

One thing to watch out for when using these types of programs is how they store their backups. Many of these programs have their own file system for the files inside the backup, thus requiring the program be installed on the "recovery" computer when it's time to restore the file. For instance, the Backup program included with Windows will create a file with a .BKF file extension. In order to restore files from this backup, you will need access to a computer with the Windows Backup program installed to "read" the file.

For that reason, my favorite backup program is the free (there's that great word again) Replicator [http://www.karenware.com/powertools/ptreplicator.asp] program from Karen Kenworthy. While this program is not wizard driven, the screen to set up your backup job is self-explanatory and the resulting backups have the files saved in their native formats which makes restoring or accessing the files as easy as opening the backup destination and copying the file back to its original location.

A Bit of Back-up Teminology

One thing to note regarding terminology; many people use the terms backup and image interchangeably. This is not correct.

An image is a complete "picture" or copy of your entire hard drive and requires special software such as Norton Ghost to perform. While imaging is a great thing to do, it is impractical to perform a system image daily.

A backup is a copy of a select set of files and doesn't require special software to perform, although a Google for "backup software" will return lots of options for you to choose from.

Summary

Hopefully this article has let you see that backing up your valuable data is neither hard nor time consuming. Just remember that whatever you choose regarding what, when, where, and how, the rewards far outweigh the risk of not backing up.