Automate and Forget
by Brian Underdahl
When was the last time you backed up your files? You don’t quite remember, do you? Sure, everyone knows they should make backups on a regular basis, but almost no one ever does. In a way, backing up your files is a lot like preparing an emergency kit so you’ll be able to grab the important stuff and run when a disaster hits–it’s just too much trouble and besides, it will never happen to you, right?
A friend of ours recently lost the use of his PC when the sprinkler guys accidently shorted their equipment and sent a surge through the wiring in his house. Did he have a backup? Of course not! How much work was potentially lost? Well, his best estimate was that it would put his company back at least six months. I’m not sure how many small businesses could survive that kind of loss (especially in today’s tough economy). Things didn’t look very good, but fortunately I was able to recover most of his data by moving his hard drive to another computer and applying some brute force techniques. The PC was toast, but the business survived.
I did, however, insist on setting up a system to automatically protect the data on his new PC. We added an external hard drive and GoodSync Pro, an application that makes sure there’s always a copy of the data safely stored on the external drive. In fact, GoodSync Pro runs silently in the background and every two hours looks for changes. If you’ve saved a new file, GoodSync Pro automatically makes the backup without bothering you.
If all GoodSync Pro did was to save your bacon when your PC goes belly up, it would be worth the price. But this is a flexible program which offers a whole lot more. For example, if you like to work on a couple different PCs (say your desktop and laptop), GoodSync Pro can make sure that whatever work you do on one machine is automatically reflected on the other. No more wondering if you remembered to copy the latest revisions from your other system.
If you hate to do backups, work on more than one PC, or simply think that you shouldn’t have to worry about little details all the time, you’ll want to give this a try. They even have a free trial version you can check out to see how much better it is to not even think about backups. And you’ll be able to say “of course I have current backups, doesn’t everyone?”