Cutting the Cost of Backing Up

By Wayne Maruna

In the movie Ghost Town, actor Ricky Gervais’s character plays a dentist.  His advice to one departing patient was “Remember, only floss the teeth you want to keep.”  I chuckled at that.  It reminded me of a visit to my own dentist.  After he had cemented in a filling, I asked him if there was anything I should avoid.  His answer was “Loose women!”  Pretty clever, I thought.  I mean, for a dentist.

Ricky’s advice was similar to the preaching I continue to do about backing up your computer system.  Only back up the computers that have info you would not want to lose.  It may not have the same clever ring to it, but it’s just as true. 

If you already have a backup system in place, good for you.  Go to the head of the class.  There are only a few reasons I can think of why someone would not bother to take the necessary precautions:

1 – “It will never happen to me.”  Wrong!  Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.  (I could go on, but I have a word limit.)  If your hard drive is lucky enough to be on the high side of the average known as ‘mean time before failure’ (MTBF), then there is some malware out there with you in its sights.  Think it will never happen to you?  Go watch the movie Gremlins again.

2 – “It’s too hard” / “I don’t understand that gobbledygook”.  Well, OK, I can kind of appreciate this excuse, but until you at least try it, maybe with some handholding at first, you’re going to need some cheese to go with that whine.  Especially when you lose all your data.

3 – “It costs too much”.  Sorry, I’m not buying that one.  You bought a house and/or a car, right?  Did you buy insurance?  Of course you did.  The backup software and hardware are the insurance for your data.  If you only bought the computer, you did not buy the whole package and should not be allowed on the virtual superhighway known as the internet without the insurance.  You can buy an external hard drive for as little as $70 or less.  The software can be had for $30 or less.  So for $100, you can assure yourself of the ability to recover from disaster as it impacts the data on your computer.

I’ve recommended Acronis True Image backup software for quite some time.  I know from experience that it works, and it has a decent user interface.  It’s not perfect, but for the average user, it can work well.  But I’ve also been on a quest for a long time to find backup software that is reliable and also FREE.  I’ve found at least two such applications.

One is called Clonezilla.  You can get it from www.clonezilla.org.  If your excuse for not backing up your machine was #2 above, Clonezilla is probably not for you.  It is a Linux based application which must be downloaded from their website as what is called an ISO file, then burned to CD.  You don’t actually install the program on your machine.  You boot from the CD and follow the command line instructions to perform the backup (and if ever needed, the restoration) using your external drive.  You would definitely need some hand holding the first time through to make this work.  I ran a test on it and successfully backed up and restored a hard drive, so I know it works.  It’s a nice, free program, but you have to have some PC smarts.

The other is called Macrium Reflect.  Sounds like it might come in a purple pill, no?  There is a pay-for version and a free version available at: http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.asp.  This program installs under Windows and has a graphical under interface (GUI), which means it looks like any other Windows program.  In fact, it is very similar to Acronis True Image.  Within the program, you are able to ‘burn’ an emergency recovery CD, just like with Acronis.  The boot CD is another Linux based program, but it has a GUI.  In my test of the program, I was unable to boot one machine with the recovery disk (major problem) but it worked just fine with another machine.  So if you try this, be sure to test your ability to do a restore function.  On the first machine, I had to create an alternate recovery CD using something called ‘BartPE’ with a Macrium Reflect plug-in.  Instructions are on their website.  This is definitely not for the PC-challenged person.

            With Acronis available for as little as $29 (www.ugr.com) it might seem that the above free programs are not worth fussing with.  Probably so, but if cost is your excuse, then you have one less reason not to back up.  I haven’t found a free external hard drive yet, but the price of those continues to drop. There are some internet based storage sites available but I’m just too uncomfortable relying on someone else to store my private data. 

            So remember to floss the teeth you want to keep, backup the data you’d hate to lose, and above all avoid those loose women.  My wife says that’s particularly good advice.