We all know what will happen if you don’t back up your hard drive. The stock market will crash, Iceland will be overridden by frogs, and Kansas will slide into the ocean. And it won’t even wait for the year 2000.

But what’s the best way to back up a large hard drive? Tape? Recordable CD-ROM? Stone tablets? Here’s an overview of the six most popular methods of keeping your data safe. Because if the world blows up tomorrow, you’ll want to know that your files are safe.

Tape
Numerous companies sell tape drives whose sole purpose is to back up your hard drive. (Well, okay, they can also back up other people’s hard drives.) Getting one of these drives up and running is as easy as spending $200, plugging the drive into your parallel port, debugging your CMOS parallel port settings, finding a place on your surge protector for yet another AC adapter the size of Cleveland, installing the backup program that came with the drive, figuring out why the backup program won’t work, and running back to the store to buy tapes.

It’s important to know the capacity of a tape drive before you buy it. Luckily, the formula is simple: Take the advertised capacity of the drive and divide by two. It’s a little like the advertised mileage on your car.

How secure is the data you put on tape? As long as the tape doesn’t break or become demagnetized, and assuming the backup program has been actually copying files rather than just pretending to do its job, backing up to tape is as dependable as carving your data in canola oil.

Removable Cartridges
Removable cartridge drives have become increasingly popular in recent years, thanks largely to the fact that more people have bought them. These cartridges are an excellent medium for moving large files from one computer to another--for instance, to bring work home for the weekend. Since your home and work computers probably don't have compatible drives, these cartridges also make an excellent excuse for taking the weekend off.

But what about backup? Cartridges generally have a smaller capacity than tape, making them impractical for backing up an entire hard drive. You may therefore have to chose between protecting the report you’ve been working on all year or those compromising, scanned photos of your boss.

But cartridges are attractive because they serve so many purposes. For instance, you can easily take a large desktop publishing file with you by copying it over your last backup.

CD-R
CD-Recordable technology is finally becoming affordable, a fact that delights everyone not working for the music industry. Now you can store anything from scanned photos of Uncle Gilroy to the latest collaboration between the Beastie Boys and the Spice Girls on cheap, permanent disks that almost everyone can be forced to access.

As a backup technology, CD-R is much like removable cartridges. The big differences are that the discs are much cheaper, and that you have to keep buying them. Since data written to a CD-R disc can never be removed, users with sensitive data should probably consider investing in a skeet shooting range.

Online Solutions
The Internet is the answer to every question these days, from "Where do I spend my money?" to "Why won’t my significant other come to bed?" It can also protect your data by copying it from your unreliable hard drive to someone else’s.

Most ISPs offer 5MB or more of server storage space to each subscriber. If you’re not wasting this on a Web site, it makes for a free and convenient backup.

There are other online options for those with hard drives exceeding 5MB. Companies that offer online backup service take extra precautions to make sure the data you’ve entrusted to them is safe. For instance, as a precaution, many will print out your files for their employees to laugh at.

Backing up your entire hard drive over the Internet is an extremely simple task. You just start the backup, then take a three-week vacation.

Floppies
This is the traditional way to back up your hard drive. No need to buy a special drive or subscribe to an online storage service. You just launch a back up program and spend the rest of the night swapping floppies.

It’s best to keep a good book handy while you back up onto floppies. A typical procedure might involve launching the backup process, putting in the first floppy, opening Moby Dick, turning to the first chapter, reading "Call me Ishmael," hearing the ding to tell you that the floppy is full, putting down the book, changing disks, pressing Enter, opening the book, finding your place, reading "Call me Ishmael" again, remembering that you’ve already read that sentence, hearing the ding, and so on.

Crossed Fingers
This is by far the most popular method of backing up your data. You simply leave the data on your hard drive and trust everything to the competence of the professionals who designed your hardware and software.

There’s a caveat, however: Your data is slightly less secure with the crossed finger method than with the other techniques described here.

© Copyright 1998 by Lincoln Spector

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