Data backup

Backing up your data is not something to be taken lightly - which is why I don't (take it lightly). Back when I first got my PC, I used to think that viruses where things created by Norton and Mcafee so that they could stay in business. That was until I got hit by W95.CIH - it wiped out my hard disk. What I did not know at the time was that it only wiped out the Master Boot Record so that all partitions appeared to be non existent. Gone with W95 was a ton of bookmarks, photos, documents and what have you.
So, make sure you have decent anti-virus software installed. When I say decent, I mean anything that is not Mcafee. We had this so called anti-virus software installed and all it would do is to constantly access the HD - even when auto scan or whatever was disabled. Stopping the services from Task Manager was useless too. Mcafee is actually a virus itself - a virus which constantly accesses your HD so that you cant do work. But behold - as there is a prevention for this Mcafee virus - prevention is "don't buy".

Once you have decent anti-virus software installed, the next step is to separate your system from your data, which means to keep your data (photos, movies, documents etc) on a partition different to your system (where your OS is installed). On Windows, I recommend that you use Partition Magic to partition, set your primary and logical drives and also to set the primary partition to boot from. I think there is a review in my tools section. Looks like Symantec acquired Powerquest.
On a Mac, you don't have to purchase third party software as you can use Disk Utility which comes with OSX to partition your drive.

The reason why I recommend this is because the system disk is at the most risk of throwing a fit and going kapoop - along with your precious files. if you had your files on a separate partition, then if your system disk did go kapoop, you could just restore an image made from your clean system partition and you will be up and running in no time - with your data files safe and sound on a different partition.

On a Windows machine, I recommend 10GB for your system and the remainder for your other files. On a Mac however, I recommend that you have about 25 GB's for your system disk. I installed Tiger on top of Panther (no problems so far) but the system is already taking up 12.5GB's. I think its because I installed a ton of binaries and Xcode dev tools.

Once you have your system on one partition and data on another partition, it time to point your home directory, favorites etc to the non-system partition.
You can do this on a Windows machine using ITweakU (cheesy name but it works well). Here, you want to set your Favorites, Start Menu etc to point to a folder on your data partition.

On a Mac, you can point your home directory to your data partition by using the NetInfo Manager that comes with OSX. Just click on 'users' and then your username, then in the properties window, change the home path to /Volumes/store/usernamehere - don't forget to restart your machine.

OK, now that you have your system setup, you want to make an image of your system disk so that when it becomes does throw that fit, you can restore your system from the image and be up and running, climbing, skiing, bathing in quick sand etc in no time.

On a Windows machine, I used Drive Image. Drive Image was fast and worked well for me - apart from the fact that you cant restore an image from an NTFS formatted drive. This was fine as I worked out that restoring from a FAT32 partition worked but it would have been nice for PowerQuest to mention it in the documentation.

On OSX, you can use Carbon Copy Cloner (Donationware). Does not run normally with Tiger at this moment but if you start CCC as sudo from the terminal then it runs with no problem. With CCC, you can create a bootable clone of your hard disk to a firewire enabled portable disk. In an Emergency, you can either restore your system from the image or boot your mac from it - just hold down the option key when booting up and choose your firewire drive.

Well what happens next? Well, there is no point in going through all this if you only intend to have one hard disk - you need at least two. Even though your data is now separated from the system, your HD can go hyuuu-kaboink splat anytime. You HD will eventually die as they are only designed to last only X number of hours - well a few years if the HD is spinning constantly nonstop - god knows that I would die if I was spinning on the spot non-stop for few years - who wouldn't?

Ideally, data should be backed up regularly. I also recommend multiple copies of the data too. The Backup utility that comes with Windows is great - backs up at incredible speed but has a major drawback - they did not include an option to encrypt the images - which means using another piece of software to do the encryption such as ED .
CCC can create an image of your data files and encrypt at the same time too.

Above: Here is what most of my backup array looks like. Stuck in my Motorola V3 because it looked erm cool with all the silver stuff. The card type object is a PCMCIA 5GB drive - useful for having large amounts of data handy in yer back pocket or scraping away snow from your car bonnet (or something brown from under your shoe). Mingled in here is also a 1GB USB thumb drive - also useful for erm picking your nose.
The plant does not hold data of any sort whatsoever but is a nice desk companion. Guncannon does not want to know anything about data but is interested in looking cool - and succeeds.

Above: USB 2.0 Speedster Little. These came out a while ago - I use them to store my encrypted data off-site (away from my house). Small and compact, I can take them around and scatter the copies around my friends house when they are not looking.

Above: This is the Speedster 2 - Firewire 400,800 (also known as IEEE 1394 a/b ) and USB2.0. The case alone was about 20,000 yen but after experiencing the speed - I stopped kicking myself as it was well worth the investment (kicking yourself is also quite painful and difficult to do)

The above chart is a comparison between Firewire and USB. You can see that Firewire 800 delivers a whopping gargantuan payload of 800mbps per minute (about 79MB per second). Its not just the speed - Firewire also provides up to 45 watts, with a maximum of 1.5 amps and 30 volts. Compare it to USB which only provides 2.5 watts with a maximum of 0.5 amps at 5 volts - USB is like a crippled dung beetle. Also, imagine that you want to electrocute your best friend - would you choose USB or Firewire? Unfortunately, many users don't have the option of Firewire but what I suggest is that you try to get yourself portable drives which are at least USB 2.0 and have Firewire - you will definitely need it when you upgrade your computing machine.

Above: These lovely ladies (actually only one of these drives is a lady - one is called Faye and the other Spike), are the AKB35FW8U2 available exclusively at Akibakan .These are a bit different than the other similar looking ones on the market because Akibakan modified these to be Firewire 800 enabled! (god bless their souls). Each houses 300GBs (drives not included).

Above: The back of the AKB35FW8U2. Its also got Firewire 400 which is useful for me because the Mac Mini does not have a Firewire 800 port (can anybody tell me why?)

Above: Inside the AKB35FW8U2 - maybe there is enough extra room for a Rich tea biscuit in there.

Above: This is Century's Kore Doh Dai - USB 2.0 and Firewire 400 - allows you to attach bare naked 3.5 and 2.5 inch Drives to your machine. It can also copy one drive to another, combine two drives into one and do cartwheels. Its small but as with most cool appliances, the adaptor is about as large as 3 pumpkins.

So above is just an idea of what you could be looking for. Now that you know a little about partitioning and backing up your data to different types of drive, what else should you know?

Well, if you live in a hazard-hap area with natural disasters cropping up here and there, I recommend that you keep your data off-country (as opposed to off-site) too. Tokyo so far has not suffered any major earthquake damage for a while now and Mt Fuji has been quiet too but you never know. In the event that I manage to use my ninja abilities to deflect the hurling lava rocks, swim through a river of lava unscathed and leap over the crevasses from the earth quake aftermath and make it out alive, then the first thing I obviously want is piece of mind that my data is safe in the UK, US etc.

But why stop there - I have not done it yet but keeping your data off-planet would be a good idea too. In the event that I manage to survive a meteor shower, after the most of the planet has been decimated, the first thing I obviously want is piece of mind that my data is safe on Mars.

No seriously, its always a good idea to keep some of your files on DVD where the data is stored optically - this is so that you will still have your data in the event that a magnetic pulse from outer space zaps all the hard drives on Earth. Again, remember to encrypt your files before burning to disc.

Anyway, don't wait for your data to disappear - back it up now. Just think to yourself what would you do if you lost your baby photos, movies, passwords, CVS files etc etc.

Well I suppose you could cry and then go and bury yourself under 50 tons of dried armadillo poo.