The first of the month is Backup Day

It’s that time of the month again folks, it’s backup day. That’s right today is your regular prod that all your important files should be backed up – either to another hard disk or to a removable medium like CDROM or DVD.

On Windows you’re looking at taking a backup of My Documents folder for every user account on the PC.
On Apple OS X, Linux and other UNIX variants you need to backup the home folder for each user account on the PC.

‘OK, I give in to your nagging,’ I hear you say, ‘so how do I do it?’ How long is a piece of string? Almost as many backup solutions exist as PCs to run them on. I’m only going to show you the most basic solutions that anyone can use.

After the jump is a solution for Windows and OS X. I don’t know Linux well enough to offer advice on it and I’m hoping someone will provide a Linux solution that I can add into here.

External or Second Hard Disk

A free solution exists for both Windows and OS X that’s pretty user friendly and is a good enough solution if you have more that one hard disk. I really recommend that you purchase an external USB hard disk for backing up you most important documents, photos, music and other important files.

Lacie backup, www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?pid=10312, is provided for free by the drive manufacturer Lacie. Show your support for Lacie giving this software away for free by dropping them an email or buying one of there external hard drives. s i l v e r k e e p e r @ l a c i e . c o m, say CreationRobot.com sent you. Do the same for all free software you use, it’s only polite.

If you want a slightly more configurable backup solution then I think you should buy your software. Fro Windows see the removable media section, for OS X I suggest you spend 28 dollars or about 18 pounds on Super Duper!
www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html

Removable Media

If you don’t have a second hard disk but do have a CD or DVD burner the solution is to buy a good piece of backup software. For windows go with either Novastor NovaBackup or Roxio BackUp MyPC. Both cost around 35 pounds or 50 dollars.
www.novastor.com/pcbackup/backup/n_backup.html
www.roxio.co.uk/products/backupmypc/

On OS X I recommend BackityMac at 10 dollars or 7 pounds it is cheap and works well. It is also insanely simple to use as it has tick boxes to select what you wish to back up like iTunes or iPhoto.
www.whimsplucky.com/whimsplucky/Software/FCE42CDC-64CD-4A4D-93BD-F5999A31046F.html

Add improvements to the monthly nag below and I’ll incorporate them ASAP.

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