Backups: A Testimonial

I have written several times about the need to make frequent backups of your data. That's true for all computer users but especially true for genealogists. We often spend hundreds of hours and a significant amount of money collecting data. It's a shame to lose all that when your hard drive crashes.

Reminder: all hard drives will crash sooner or later.

I'm delighted to report a great success story. Newsletter reader Eileen Souza sent the following message.

Dick, I can't thank you enough for your article on backing up to an online service, particularly www.mozyhome.com. This was the best $4.95 per month that I have ever spent.

On Tuesday my external hard drive crashed.  This drive contained all my family photos, all my financial records, all my emails and contacts and over ten years' worth of family history research.

Normally, I would have been devastated; but over a year ago, after reading your article, I started backing up this drive to MozyHome.  When the crash occurred, I just ordered a new 500 GB hard drive ($99) that arrived Friday and a special restore of my 31 GB of data on MozyHome to be burned to DVD and delivered [via] FedEx next day ($85), which I will receive Monday.  Mozy's service is excellent.

While waiting for my data to be delivered, I have been able to download my email, contacts, finance records and various other files that I needed before Monday. So far, all restores have been successful and I have not lost any data.  This is a marvelous service.

Since my Western Digital My Book 500 GB external USB drive failed, I have been doing some reading.  This type of drive does not seem to have a long life.  Mine lasted almost two years.  I saw many reports of one year.  These drives have dropped in price and are especially good for storing media files.  A 1 TB drive can now be had for as low as $114. I guess I want to say, you should be prepared for the short life span, so be sure to back them up.

Again, thank you so much for helping me to prevent what could have been a terrible tragedy and keep up the good work informing us about genealogy and technology.

Eileen

Thanks for letting all of us know, Eileen. It's great to hear of a success story.

Comments

[Nancy]

Will Mozy back up my external hard drives. I tried Carbonite but it would not back up external hard drives so I did not go beyond trial period. It was useless to me.
Thank you

[Dave]

Dick:

I used to be a fan of Mozy, but a couple of weeks ago I received an email saying that they were no longer going to support their Mac software application and that in order to continue using the service I would have to upgrade to a Mozy Pro account. I don't know how they can get away with this when I've paid for two years of service and then they tell me that I need to upgrade my account to continue using services that I've already paid for. That is extortion.

I wrote to them two weeks ago asking for an explanation and I have not yet received a reply.

This is something that Mac users should be aware of before subscribing to the service

[Marilyn]

I want to add my thanks. Over the years I have backed up my work by using several different methods, but it was such a bother that I didn't do it very often. I lived with the fear that something could happen and my back-ups would fail. I've had 2 hard drives crash in the past 5 years. Fortunately I could see it coming and I got everything moved to a new computer before it finally died. But that was no guarantee I would not be surprised next time. Then my CD might be un-readable (which happened to me often). My external drive might also be in the fire, flood, power surge, or whatever. I might have put off backing up for the past couple weeks; it takes so much time to do it regularly and I was going through too many CDs.

Anyway, when I signed up for Mozy it was like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders. I haven't had to use them yet, but I cannot believe the relief I feel. My husband has Mozy also and he uses it frequently. He has a macro button that deletes a bunch of files. Sometimes he bumps the macro button and deletes files he still wants. No problem. Mozy has them all.

Thank you Mozy. And Thank you Mr. Eastman for telling me about Mozy.

[Dick Eastman]

---> Will Mozy back up my external hard drives?

Yes, if they are fixed drives. Details may be found at http://support.mozy.com/docs/en-user-home-win/faq/concepts/external_drives_faq.html

"MozyHome supports drives that Windows recognizes as "fixed." MozyHome does not support "unfixed" removable drives such as thumb, flash, or external drives. If your external drive is not "fixed," first copy the data onto one of your "fixed" drives, then select the data for back up."

[0Joyce]

I am not a computer geek and don't do alot with backing up any of my files. I probably should I just don't have the time and energy to do it right now and just have my files backed up on a disk. I don't have alot of pictures on my computer either.
What I can't believe from this article is the price that she paid for the "overnight" service. First of all IT wasn't overnight - it took the weekend to get there - if it had been overnight it would have gotten there on Saturday. You talk about paying too much for genealogy services THAT was outrageous. The company could have sent it OVERNIGHT by the U S Postal Service - IT would have been there on Saturday AND delivered - and you would have paid ONLY $16.5o. What a waste of cash.

[Bob Larson]

Dick,

There are several other options. One option allows users to monitor their hard drives for a predicted failure using the internal diagnostics most hard drive vendors have built into their HDs. There are a number of HD software programs that do this. I use Personal SmartCheck by URL Toy Software at www.urltoy.com. Their software name is misleading for the HD software since they acquired another company. It monitors the HDs on a number of critical factors and determines how long the HD will last. It keeps updating itself to give a fairly reliable failure time estimate.

You can download their trial software for 30 days then pay up to $30 for two years on two computers if you like the software. I'm sure other software vendors do the same on trial software. If I see an HD ready to fail within 90 days, it's time to replace it and load your recovery disks or Windows software with the downloaded patches then load your saved data. I don't recommend waiting 30 days for replacement as you're risk will be much higher of losing data.

The HD vendors such as Seagate and Western Digital includes software to determine if you're having an HD problem, but don't tell you when it will fail. That may change soon. Of course as one reader commented that higher capacity HDs seem to last only two or three years. Maybe the HD vendors don't want you to know the actual time failure. So it makes sense to monitor the HD performance for failure.

Another option beside backup HDs is to obtain a backup server. I bought an HP Home MediaSmart Server with 1 TB of storage, but capable of 4 TBs of HD storage. It saves all important data and my emails on any HD, as long as it uses the NTFS file system and not the older FAT system used in earlier Windows. FAT programmed HDs can be converted to NTFS on Windows XP very easily. Go to HP's website to see more info on the home server at http://h71036.www7.hp.com/hho/cache/599445-0-0-225-121.html? or http://www.mediasmarthome.com/. Select these or copy and paste these website addresses into your browser for quicker access.

Even though the HP MediaSmart Server ($600 with 1 TB storage) is capable of more features such as remote web storage access for friends and family and playing movies to your TV set via a wireless digital media adapter such as X Box or similar device, I use my server for data storage only. I have three computers via a router/switch feeding the server. You can have more computers feeding the server.

There are other back up servers available for less money just for storage only under Network Access Servers (NAS) or buy or use another computer and install the Windows Home Server software that HP MediaSmart uses and add a data router or switch to do the same.

The least expensive backup is the use of CD and DVD storage. I use this method also for pictures, videos and especally for genealogy data all the time. Even though more costly, I use all these methods of backup listed above due to the type of data I work with.

There are always more solutions at varying costs and more to come with new technology. It really depends on your level of backup requirements. As Dick and several readers have discovered, don't wait to backup your data.

Hope this info helps your other readers.

A devoted genealogist, author, speaker, and family historian

[Elyse]

Dick - you are so right when it comes to backing up your data.

Before I moved a couple of months ago, all of my stuff was on a computer that was extremely old and that my mom had used when she was taking some extra college courses about computers. Most of the parts in the computer were from different years and different companies and were old. I had noticed a month or so before we moved that the computer was having trouble staying cool because the fan and power source were beginning to go out.

Sure enough, after we got settled into our new apartment, I tried to start the computer up and it wouldn't start. I desperately tried everything, calling everyone into the room to look at and make sure everything was plugged in correctly. But I couldn't get it to start.

Thank heavens I had atleast backed up some of my stuff - only my family tree. At least I didn't loose everything.

[Dick Eastman]

Hi Bob, I agree with almost everything you say (wrote) except that I would add that everyone should always have an OFF-SITE copy in case of a major disaster at the house.

Ask anyone who has been through a hurricane, tornado, flood or fire. A backup that is in the same house will probably be destroyed at the same time the computer is destroyed.

The off-site backups can be performed by an online service, as mentioned earlier, or by an act as simple as periodically copying files to a CD or DVD disk and taking them to the office for off-site storage. Whatever the method used, I would never depend solely on backups that are stored at home.

I would also never depend upon any single method of backups. I have local backups on separate hard disks at home plus the same data is stored on off-site backups on Mozy.com.

- Dick Eastman

[Brenda]

All this is great, if you have the monies to do it. There are many of us who cannot afford monthly bills to store data. Not saying it is not a good idea just saying .. even 4.95 a month is not affordable for some.

[Devin Knighton]

Dick, thanks for sharing Eileen's story and for your continued support.

Just to clarify, Mozy still provides Mac users with unlimited online backup for $4.95 a month. Recently, we reminded our home customers that certain functionality, like support for backing up a server, would be provided with our MozyPro offering, a service designed for small businesses. But those who are using Mozy to back up their iMac or MacBook at home can still continue using MozyHome without upgrading to MozyPro.

[Dorothy]

Mozy offers free backup service for a limited amount of data. This is what I use. If you don't have a huge amount of data on your PC this is ample. If you have too much data for the free service you can choose the files that you want to have backed up.

[Jason Presley]

I think the most accurate statement about data loss I ever heard came from a Drive Savers rep when I had to call them about a drive we lost, "There are two kinds of people: those who have lost data and those who will."

Backup, backup, backup!