Implementing a Backup Strategy

Posted by dominic on March 30, 2011

As a data recovery professional I should know more than anyone the importance of backing up files. But I am now going to make an admission: as I write this, neither my personal laptop at home, nor any of my family’s computers, are adequately backed up.

Why on earth did I allow this to happen? Part of the reason is that we recently lost both the main laptops, one to a flood and the other to motherboard failure. In one case the hard drive itself was irreparably damaged, in the other case the drives were fine. Thankfully, I had a regular backup strategy so lost nothing of importance. Since then, we have two replacement laptops, but despite several months having passed, my own machine is not backed up at all, and the other machine has only been backed up very occasionally when I remember to do so.

The loss of the computers should if anything have reminded me of the importance of a backup strategy, but implementing a backup strategy is very like writing your will. In both cases, significant effort is involved, but there is no return on your investment, until or unless the worst actually happens. At that point, your decision to make the effort is of utmost importance, but while we believe the worst will never happen, we can put off the onerous tasks indefinitely, because we do not have the time owing to all the vastly more urgent other tasks that are competing for our attention.

This is not to say that I have not attempted to sort out my backup situation. In fact I did attempt to install Acronis TrueImage on my machine, a backup solution I have relied on for years, and which has saved my data on more than one occasion. And I should add, that Acronis also allows the whole system configuration to be backed up, as well as files and folders themselves, so that it is a simple job to restore your system after a hard drive failure, to exactly how it was last time the backup ran. I also particularly like the way that the backup files can be mounted as a logical drive, so that you can see your backed up files inside the archive.

However, it seems that the particular version of Acronis which I used was incompatible with Windows 7, despite information which appeared to indicate the contrary, so I spent some time on and off attempting to install this version, and hence delayed putting a proper backup plan into place. This is how I find myself in a situation where my backups are totally inadequate, and today is the day I will act to change this. I write this in hope that these words will encourage you, my reader, to do the same, if you too are in a similar situation.

After some research I have concluded that the free software Comodo Backup is one of the best free solutions. It produces backup files which can be mounted as logical drives. It allows backups to external drives, or across the network, or even to an ftp site. It allows backup onto CD or DVD. It allows you to back up the registry and machine settings as well as files and folders. It supports encryption of backups, and a mixed backup strategy using several different media, e.g. backups scheduled both to an external drive and an online storage space. It even allows important files to be sent by e-mail as part of the backup process. And as with most backup software, it allows backups to be scheduled.

Another piece of software to consider is Comodo Time Machine. This is not backup software, but instead allows you to revert to a previous version of the system configuration, just like the Windows restore option, but in a much more flexible way. The windows restore function has allowed me to restore computers from a virtually non-functional state to a fully working system in the past, but is limited in various ways, and Comodo Time Machine provides a simpler and more powerful solution.

I would also urge you the reader to consider other backup solutions such as Acronis TrueImage Home. This is currently on the PC Pro A List, and has been given a top rating by PC Pro. The latest version at time of writing is Acronis TrueImage Home 2011 currently available for under £30. It is worth reading the features on offer and comparing with the free software such as Comodo, to come to a decision as to which is the most appropriate software for your needs. Features offered by Acronis include Acronis Nonstop Backup, i.e. continuous monitoring of changed files, and backing up of these files, without having to run a scheduled backup, and also backup to a VHD (Virtual Hard Drive) file, so that you can have a full copy of your hard drive in a file which can be used with a Virtual PC. These are impressive and potentially very useful features. However, it’s worth noting that some reviews on amazon indicate users have had problems, and PC Pro recommend trialling the software for the 30 day free trial to make sure it works well for you.

Please also see our article Backing up to an external hard drive and note that the prices of external drives are now so low that – particularly in conjunction with free backup software – there is no reason not to be adequately backed up.

If you have successfully implemented a backup strategy as a result of reading this article, or if you have any other feedback, please do drop us an email at mailto:info@cambridgedatarecovery.co.uk or contact us via our contact form. And we would be delighted to hear from anyone who has successfully restored their data after a failure, as a result of reading this article – even if that means you do not require our data recovery services.

Category Categories: Backing up, Data Recovery

Backing up to an external hard drive

Posted by dominic on March 16, 2011

Hard drives should normally form the main part of your backup strategy, as it is easy to make backups every day, or every few days, onto your backup drive, and keep the backup up to date.

Many different backup programs are available, either commercial software for as little as £20 or £30, or some highly regarded free software. These programs can usually be set up to run scheduled backups so that no action is required to remember to back up. However, if using a laptop as your main computer, this does probably mean that you need either to remember to connect up your external drive in order to run the backup, or else you will need to set up your system to enable backups over your wireless network to a hard drive attached to a desktop PC or to a NAS (network attached storage device). In these cases, you do need to remember to ensure that the device you are backing up to is turned on.

If you do not have backup software, then you can still perform a backup simply by copying the files across manually, or by writing a script to do this. I will be discussing simple backup scripts in another article, but these are in many ways the simplest approach to backup.

Backups can be slow, taking anywhere from 30 minutes to several hours. Backing up over a wireless network may be fine when performing an incremental backup (i.e. only the changes since the previous backup), but for performing a full backup, it is likely to be painfully slow to back up over the network. In these cases, connecting a USB hard drive is often the simplest and fastest approach to performing the backup.

It is also worth mentioning online services such as google docs, which can be used to quickly upload important documents to a secure space online. As well as providing an additional backup method which has the advantage of being offsite, it can be invaluable to have access to your documents when away from your own computer.

Hard drive prices have continued to fall, for at least 5 decades. Currently it is possible to pick up portable 1Tb hard drives (only a USB connection required) for around £80, or 2TB desktop drives for as little as £85. And if you wish to add additional storage to your desktop PC, 2TB SATA drives can be obtained from £60. These prices are minimal compared with the cost of recovering data in the event of loss. Here are some links to current good deals.

Toshiba 1TB StorE Art portable drive

Seagate 2TB desktop drive

Western Digital Caviar 2TB SATAII Green drive

Category Categories: Backing up, Hard Drives  |  Comments 1 comment

London Data Recovery

Posted by dominic on February 19, 2011

We are sometimes asked whether we have a London office where hard drives can be delivered for recovery.  At present, however, we only have offices in Cambridge, approximately 1 hour from London by car or train.

We receive hard drives both in person and by post – when sending drives to us by post, we would always recommend sending via Special Delivery or courier, and the hard drive should of course be packaged carefully in a box with padding to protect against impacts.

Please do contact us if you have any concerns about getting your hard drive to us, and we will be happy to provide advice, or even recommend a reputable data recovery company with offices in London, if requested.

We receive hard drives for data recovery, and camera cards for photo recovery from all over the UK – both from local counties (Suffolk, Norfolk, Essex, Middlesex, as well as Cambridgeshire), and from distant ones – indeed we seem to receive a large number of memory cards for photo recovery from Scotland.  And we do also receive a few data recovery jobs from Europe, the USA, and even beyond.

Category Categories: Camera cards, Data Recovery, Hard Drives, Photo recovery

New techniques for camera card photo recovery

Posted by dominic on February 16, 2011

Over the past 2 or 3 months, we have made exciting steps forward in the recovery of camera cards where the card itself has failed, or has been physically damaged.

In the past, there have been cases where the cards have simply not responded to any attempts to read them, and although we have had techniques for reading from the memory chip directly, the success rates have been disappointing.

Since the end of 2010, we now have new technology which enables us to recover data and photos from almost every type of camera card, by removing the memory chip and accessing this directly.  It is a complex and time-consuming task, and we cannot recover every card we receive because in some cases the chip itself may be damaged or malfunctioning.  However, we are now seeing greatly improved success rates for all types of camera card, where physical recovery is required.

The cost of this type of recovery is significantly higher than for recoveries which can be achieved without opening up the card, so please contact us if you would like more information on these techniques for photo recovery.

Category Categories: Camera cards, Data Recovery, Photo recovery  |  Comments No comments

Choice of DVD/CD backup media for long term storage

Posted by dominic on February 15, 2011

In this article I will consider the best options for backing up onto optical disc – CD, DVD, or Blu-Ray (BD).  There are of course other options for backing up important data, such as external hard drives, network drives, or online storage.  However, in some cases backing up to optical disc is preferred.

Why back up onto CD/DVD?

The main reasons for choosing to back up onto DVD are that they provide a compact storage medium for small to moderate quantities of data, and that separate sets of data (e.g. photos for a particular year) can be kept on separate
labelled discs to provide easy access to the data required.

There are various advantages and disadvantages in using optical discs as a backup medium:

(1) Permanence – Once written, the data cannot be modified, so there is no danger of accidental deletion (subject to some provisos which I will mention below)

(2) Durability – optical discs cannot mechanically fail like hard drives, and are in principle durable for many years.

(3) Incremental nature – ability to back up additional sets of data onto new optical discs to add to the collection which constitutes the back-up/archive.

So far, so good.  However, here at Cambridge Data Recovery, we often receive recovery requests for CDs and DVDs which have either degraded over the years.  Also, even with newly-created discs, we see cases where the disc does not in fact show the data it is supposed to contain.  In either of these cases there is no guarantee that the data can be recovered, as it depends on the exact nature of the problem. Recovery may be possible in these cases, but of course it is far better to attempt to prevent this problem from occurring in the first place.

Choice of optical discs

The first step is to choose the most appropriate discs to use for the backup.  There are several reputable brands such as Verbatim, JVC, Memorex, TDK etc.  In some cases you may find that a particular brand works well with your recorder, and that another brand works very reliably.  However, the main issue here is not merely to find a _compatible_ disc, but to find one that will last for many years, or decades.

Choice of brand – Taiyo Yuden

There is in fact some consensus that the best discs for archival backup are manufactured by the Japanese company Taiyo Yuden.  These are more expensive than some other discs, but only by perhaps 50%. Taiyo Yuden were involved in the original development of recordable CD, so have been in the business a long time.  Therefore, for archival
purposes, where data needs to be stored for 10 years or more, I would recommend using Taiyo Yuden media.  Taiyo Yuden have fairly recently bought a controlling interest in JVC media, so you can also buy JVC branded media which are manufactured by Taiyo Yuden – I will provide a link at the end of this article.

Choice of disc type – DVD+R

These days, virtually all DVD readers/writers can handle both DVD-R and DVD+R media, and there is no apparent difference when using the two types.  However, very different methods are used both for the error correction, and for the tracking on these discs.  DVD+R is significantly superior to DVD-R in both respects, and therefore more
likely to survive.  Therefore I would definitely recommend using DVD+R rather than DVD-R as a long-term storage solution.  CD-R are also potentially reliable long-term, but DVD+R have the edge owing to the higher capacity/cost ratio.  And DVD-RW or DVD+RW should definitely _not_ be used as these are designed to be re-written, and will not
last long-term.

Conclusion and Links

Any backup strategy needs to involve regular backups to hard drives or online backup.  But if you also need to archive onto optical discs, I recommend using Taiyo Yuden DVD+Rs, or Taiyo Yuden manufactured JVC DVD+Rs.

Taiyo Yuden DVD+R media on amazon UK:

JVC DVD+R spindle of 100 discs manufactured by Taiyo Yuden

Taiyo Yuden inkjet-printable DVD+R spindle of 100 discs

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