Protect your personal data before it is too late!

A couple of years ago I learnt the hard way about the value of digital data. Although I had always reguarly backed up all our data onto an external USB drive I never bothered to keep a copy anywhere else.

Then, one morning it happened.

My wife and I were about to leave for the day so I plugged my backup drive into my PC and started the backup software. It usually took 2-3 hours so I figured I would leave it on till I came home at lunchtime.

Unknown to us that morning we had been targeted by a professional team of theives.

Only minutes after we had left both our dead bolted doors and security screens had been smashed out of their frames. A truck was reversed into our driveway and virtually everything of any value loaded into it – and I mean everything! Computers, printers, TV’s stereo equipment, video camera, still camera, jewelery, clothes, coffee machine, DVD & CD collections etc.

Upon arriving home it took a while to consider all that we had lost. Upon walking into my office it suddenly struck me. My entire digital family history was gone. Everything was on our PC’s and the backup drive. From photos of family & friends, home video of my only son from baby till 6yrs old, scans of old irreplacable analogue photos from grandparents….all gone! Add to that all our business & tax records, email history etc and I realised that the physical losses were the least of my worries.

Needless to say, this could happen to you. Whether it is fire, flood or theft, a lifetime of precious digital memories can be destoryed in seconds. Here are a few of the things you might want to think about doing to protect your information:

So what is the easiest fastest & safest way to backup your data?

While there is no perfect solution here are a few ideas which may help you:

1, Burn, Burn, Burn

If you are not flush with cash DVD’s are the answer. As long as you have a DVD burner (they cost around $40 these days) you can backup 4.7GB data chunks for less than 50 cents each. Most thieves won’t steal them if you leave them lying around and they can easily be mailed to friends and family for safe keeping. In fact, you may find that friends or family will want to reciprocate asking you to store their precious information.

Personally, I put all our family videos & photos together every few months and send them off to my parents & inlaws who live interstate as a gift.

The Good:

• Cheap, simple and fairly reliable.

The Bad:

• You have to do it manually.
• It can be slow and time consuming.
• It costs money & time to send off a DVD every month.
• Your friends/family may not look after your memories as well as you had hoped.

2. Use some stealth

Laptops, desktop pcs, media centers, game consoles etc are all capable of storing your personal data, but there are two main problems:

1. They are easy to find & steal from your home.
2. They generally only have one hard drive which leaves your memories exposed to hardware failure.

Using a smart new product like the Apple Time Capsule is a great way to backup your data in a stealthy way. The Time capsule combines a Wireless Router with a 1TB backup device that works for both PC & MAC. It looks just like most other routers, however, it has a 1TB hard drive lurking inside. Being relatively small it can even be hidden under a desk or in a corner where theives are unlikely to look. Also, being “always on” backup is always easy and convenient.

If you don’t want to buy from Apple there are a plethora of NAS (Network Attached Storage) products on the market these days which work in a similar way and can easily hidden. They range in price from $300 – $2000 so you will need to do some research to find the right unit for you.

The Good:

• It is still fairly cheap,
• Your data is accesible 24/7, even remotely if configured correctly.
• It can be easily hidden from the bad guys.
• If you have a MAC it works beaifully with time machine

The Bad:

• The Apple Time capsule has only one hard drive so it is still possible to suffer a hardware failure. Some more expensive NAS systems have multiple drives for redundancy.
• Fires and flood can still destroy your data.

3. Move to the Cloud

You may or may not have heard of “the cloud” but it is all the buzz in Geektown. In simple terms a computing cloud is a whole bunch of computers joined together to share data. They could be in the same room or spread all over the world. When you choose to store your data in the cloud the theory is that it will be extremely safe due to the fact it is shared amongst many machines. The number of cloud services is growing everyday so which should you choose? As usual, there is no perfect solution. Here are my favourite cloud services:

1. Facebook

Facebook is one of the most successful clouds out there. As a place to store photo’s it is hard to beat. It’s free, you can choose your own level privacy and all your friends can share your life. On the downside, Facebook could choose to make you pay in the future, not to mention the many privacy concerns associated with the social network.

2. Google Picasa

Another free photo storage alternative is Googles Picasa software. Not only do you get a great photo manager, but also some free online storage for your photo albums (if you get a google account). I should note here that Google limits the amount of space you can use (2GB). At some point you will need to pay them to upgrade your webspace to allow more storage. If you want a more upmraket alternative to Google you could consider Adobe Photoshop Elements . The basic version costs AUD$137.50 and has 2GB onilne storage. The plus version offers 20GB.

3. Youtube

If face book & Picasa are for photo’s then Youtube is for movies. Once again it is free, you can control who sees your movies and possibly even make money from them!

4. Elephant Drive

If you are looking for just one place you can put everything than these guys might be for you. There are a lot of online storage services springing up in the cloud at the moment; Carbonite, Dropbox, Mozy and even Telstra Bigpond are offering a storage service at their usual ludicrously expensive rates! I had been using dropbox until I recently discovered ElephantDrive.

For US$49.95 per year I get unlimited storage!

For now, I just store everything here. The only gotcha you need to be aware of relates to your internet data usage. If you are unlucky enough to have a bigpond account which counts both inbound and outbound data usage, you will need to carefully monitor how much backing up is taking place to ensure you do not exceed your data limits.

For those of you including myself concerned about uploading private documents or other sensitive information I have a solution. I downloaded Axcrypt, a free open source encryption tool which I use to encode all my personal documents at home and online. In the event that Elepant Drive was compromised or my computer stolen the would be identity thief would need a lifetime to crack the content.

The Good:

• Your data is in the care of IT professionals who have a vested interest in keeping it safe.
• There are plenty of free options

The Bad:

• You need a fast internet connection with a good data policy.
• Privacy concerns may be an issue.
• Your information is slower to access over the internet than if it were stored on a local drive.

I hope some of you can find a use for this information and that it may prevent someone else losing some or all of their precious memories!