Backups

Any data you own that you haven’t backed up is data that could be gone at any moment, forever. Here we will cover some good backup basics and the pitfalls of some approaches.1

Keeping offsite backups of computer systems is a great idea. Even if your computer is completely destroyed (or you just get a blue screen of death), it should be survivable since all your data is backed up in some other location.

  • What items should you backup?
    • Files you cannot replace
    • School assignments, e-mails, address book, music, pictures, internet bookmarks and other personal settings, etc.
  • How often should you backup?
    • Regularly (bi-weekly, monthly, etc.)
  • What methods can I use to backup?

3-2-1 Rule

The 3-2-1 rule is a general recommended strategy for backing up your data. You should have:

  • at least 3 copies of your data
  • 2 different mediums (e.g., two devices)
  • 1 of the copies being offsite (in a different location)

The main idea behind this recommendation is not to put all your eggs in one basket. Having 2 different devices/disks ensures that a single hardware failure doesn’t take away all your data. Similarly, if you store your only backup at home and the house burns down or gets robbed you lose everything, that’s what the offsite copy is there for. Onsite backups give you availability and speed, offsite backups give you the resiliency should a disaster happen.

Testing your backups

A common pitfall when performing backups is blindly trusting whatever the system says it’s doing and not verifying that the data can be properly recovered. Toy Story 2 was almost lost and their backups were not working, luck ended up saving them.

Versioning

Simply syncing your files somewhere will not help in several scenarios, such as:

  • Data corruption
  • Malicious software
  • Deleting files by mistake

If the changes on your data propagate to the backup then you won’t be able to recover in these scenarios. Note that this is the case for a lot of cloud storage solutions like Dropbox, Google Drive, One Drive, etc. Some of them do keep deleted data around for short amounts of time but usually the interface to recover is not something you want to be using to recover large amounts of files.

A proper backup system should be versioned in order to prevent this failure mode. By providing different snapshots in time one can easily navigate them to restore whatever was lost. The most widely known software of this kind is macOS Time Machine.

How do I save my files?

1. Cloud Storage (Off-Site Backup):

  • Google Drive: With your NCSU account, you get 15 GB of free storage. It’s accessible from any device and automatically saves your work.
  • Dropbox: Offers 2 GB of free storage, with easy file sharing and syncing capabilities. You can pay for more storage.

2. External Hard Drives (Local Backup):

  • Portable Drives: External hard drives can store large amounts of data. Regularly copy your important files to this drive.
  • USB: You can save data on USB sticks that you can plug into various computers.

3. NCSU Resources:

  • NCSU B: Drive: Also known as ncsudrive. A network drive provided by the university, backed up nightly. It’s only accessible on NCSU computer or via a file transfer system, and some information can get wiped at the end of the semester. The school B: drive is backed up nightly by the University’s system. If a file was saved yesterday and is deleted today, it can still be retrieved.

*Note: Remember to label everything with the contents and dates especially any disks that are used.

No matter what method you use, make sure that you backup your computer or select files on a regular basis. Remember, none of the methods above are effective unless you use them regularly; files cannot be retrieved if they aren’t backed up.

Exercises

  1. Consider how you are (not) backing up your data and look into fixing/improving that.
  2. Figure out how to backup your email accounts.
  3. Ask yourself: If I spilled coffee on my laptop tomorrow, what would I lose?
  4. Choose a webservice you use often (Spotify, Google Music, etc.) and figure out what options for backing up your data are.
  5. Think of a website you have visited repeatedly over the years and look it up in archive.org, how many versions does it have?
  6. What are the pros and cons of a cloud service like Dropbox or Velocity to back up your homework assignments?
  1. Reference: Missing Semester, MIT. https://missing.csail.mit.edu/2019/backups/. ↩︎