Finally, the right backup solution for your personal PC

Thinking about backing up your home computer?  Here’s my story and the stages I went through.  I share it in case it’s familiar or can help anyone else…

Stage 1 – Desire
For a long time, I kept thinking about how I needed to back up my pictures and/or music on my home computer to something or somewhere.  It just seems to be something that’s easy to put off or procrastinate doing.  I would occasionally copy things to something (CD or DVD?), but I  wasn’t regularly backing things up by any means.   I just “hoped” my computer would not die before I had backed everything up, or that maybe I would have enough warning to back it up before something bad actually happened.

Stage 2 – Awareness
Then last year, a friend of mine had his computer crash and he lost everything.  EVERYTHING.  His family photos, music, documents, and everything else that you know you want to save.  It took weeks or months for him to realize all the valuable things that were now lost and gone forever.  It was actually quite depressing to talk to him about it.  I thought about all my family vacation photos, wedding photos, etc that I always wanted to keep.  I also considered the money I had spent on music (like iTunes) that I did not want to go to waste ever.

Stage 3 – Comforted
So motivated by his unfortunate circumstances, I went out and bought a portable hard drive at the store.  I hooked it up to my computer and configured Windows backup to run a couple times a week.  Windows backup was free so that was nice.  At some point I decided to even do more than that and so I also built a script to copy all the files to the hard drive as well.  Now I had 2 backup copies on the same hard drive.  It was comforting.

Stage 4 – Confusion
But then again… somewhere along the way I was not fully comforted.   The hard drive could still die at any time.  What if that happened?   I considered an even worse scenario… what if there was a fire or tornado at my house that took out my home computer AND my portable hard drive.  Ack!   I could lose everything I ever wanted to keep and my backup would be useless.  There’s got to be another solution.

Stage 5 – Probing
To find the solution, I asked around.  I happen to work with a bunch of technical people so I had enough resources in one building to gather a lot of information on the topic.   I knew the only real solution was to back up my personal data offsite.   It’s the only thing that really made sense to ensure that in 20 years I could view the pictures from that Disney vacation I took with the kids.   Ultimately, I would keep the pictures on my home computer AND in some data center somewhere safely stored away.

Stage 6 – Bliss
So I finally reached bliss and I’ve been here for a few months now.  I found something that would upload all my files to the internet (securely of course) and store a copy for me online.  But to add to the fun, it would also allow me to synchronize those file to another PC or multiple PCs.  So all my files are backed up online, but I have some files that are synchronized between computers as well.  So if I take a picture and download it on my home computer…  it’s automatically synchronized to my work computer as well.  Very nice!

Without belaboring this any longer, the solution I settled on was Sugar Sync (http://www.sugarsync.com).  I tested out other solutions also (like Dropbox), but Sugar Sync had more options that I think most people would want.   I installed the demo and backed up 2 GB of data for a couple weeks.  I liked it so I purchased a plan and then backed up all my pictures, all my songs, and all my data.  If I ever need a file on multiple computers, I can get to it either by (1) visiting my sugarsync website and downloading it, or (2) I ensure the file is in one of the synchronized folders so I can get it there.  I’ve tested this many times and it works very well.  Sugar Sync has many other advantages also when it comes to sharing photos or files, but it’s a lot to list.   So finally I found the right backup solution and maybe it can help you.

DISCLAIMER… The first point is that I don’t have any vested interest in Sugar sync.  I just found it to be the perfect solution for me and then some.  Second is that I’m only referring to a solution for my personal home computer.  At Xcentric, we have an online backup product that I highly recommend for any firm that may worry about their corporate data.