Law Office Computing

February 2006

Winton Woods

 

Backing Up Is Hard To Do-Part II

Every computer user is aware of the importance of regular backups and daily flossing of teeth. Both are easy to do and easy to avoid. Every lawyer is sensitive to the critical importance of regular securing of client information and data. That is easy to do and it cannot be avoided without terrible risk. The hard part is the creation of a system that insures regular and complete backup of your critical information. As we move toward a world in which almost all of the information in our law offices is contained only in electronic form, regular and careful electronic backup becomes both an ethical mandate and a potential malpractice concern. If there is one rule that is always true it is that all hard drives will fail--sometime. Whether that “sometime” is one year or five makes no difference because failure means catastrophic loss of data and if there is no proper backup that data is gone forever.

At the outset, we need to distinguish between two basic backup goals. The first, which I will talk about in more detail later, deals with the preservation of data. The second deals with the preservation of your computer system and the ability to restore it to a functioning state in the event of disaster. Disaster may be a physical crash of your hard drive occasioned by uncontrolled power surge or simple component failure. However, disaster may also be caused by a virus or by hacker who has broken into your computer system for fun. Disaster occurs on a regular basis with all computers and unless you are prepared, it can be devastating. One thing is sure: if you use computers you will some day experience a hard drive crash. If you have a very simple computer system, it may be enough to simply plan to re-install Windows and your basic applications that are necessary to access your data files. Few of us have such a simple system however. Even if you have all of your original software disks easily available, it may take hours or even days to rebuild your system from a big time crash. A much simple solution is to create what is called an image of your system using a product such as Symantec's Ghost 9 imaging software or my personal favorite Casper XP (http://www.fssdev.com). Both of these imaging programs will create an exact bootable duplicate of each of your hard drives that can be transferred to a new hard drive or simply installed in your computer as replacement. Both of these products are relatively inexpensive and easy to use and they are the first critical line of defense against computer disaster. You cannot afford to not have this as minimum.

An image of your drive or drives, however, simply freezes your system at a particular point in time. If you take the image every Monday you'll be up-to-date as of the last Monday. If your office was acting during the preceding week relying on a weekly image as your only backup solution means that you will lose a week's worth of work. That is an intolerable risk for most of us and therefore you must supplement the drive image process with what is called incremental data backups.

Here the choices are not so easy. After trying many of the so-called “backup” programs I cannot find one that I recommend more highly than the one that comes as a part of Windows XP Pro. It has it faults, but it does the job. Recently, based on advice of several magazine columnists (See, http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1749336,00.asp and http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1911153,00.asp) I bought a Maxtor OneTouch external hard drive that is supposed have software so easy to use that my dog could do it. I didn’t ask Remington to try, but I found it very difficult to set up and use though once working it is easy to use but very, very slow. Oddly, most of the trouble occurred with the Maxtor drive itself and when I used the Dantz Retrospect software on one of my Western Digital drives it worked fine. Several of the other programs are reviewed at http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/article/0,aid,117255,pg,2,00.aspand you can take your pick. All I know is that the Microsoft product works reliably and when coupled with image software such as Ghost 9 or Casper XP you pretty much have all the bases covered. Microsoft has just come out with a beta version of a virus scan and automatic backup software called OneCare. Because it is in beta it is free and it appears to me to be very easy to use and reasonably fast. I am using it right now and you might want to try it. http://www.windowsonecare.com will get you to the download site.

The next matter of concern is the hardware side of the backup process. You must back up to someplace other than your computer itself. Small backups of individual computers can be done on DVD disks or even CDROM. If you have larger amounts of information to back up you can choose a variety of solutions based upon recording tape. Tape is cheap but the drives are expensive and slow. But it has the advantage of being able to be easily taken off-site every night so that there is no possibility of backup destruction by way of fire or theft. It is easy to establish a routine that provides for daily tape exchange and off-site storage. There are even companies that will come every day and pickup your tape and take it away to a secure spot. The other alternative is to backup to a removable hard drive which is also taken off-site every night. Very large hard drives are now available at far less than the cost of a high-quality tape backup system. Installing a removable hard drive is not complicated and because of its speed, I think it is an ideal solution for local backup. There are some open questions about the life span of CDROM and DVD disks and you run some risk if you depend on discs that are more than 2-5 years old. Higher quality discs will last longer and the method of storing the discs has a big impact. Moreover, as we store more photographs and other large files the use of discs that are limited to just a few gigabytes makes complete backup a chore. And, because it is a chore you may be inclined to put it off much to your future regret when the inevitable crash happens.

By far the best and easiest procedure is to back up directly to another physical hard drive. It is much faster and the physical drive can be taken away from the office or locked in a safe for extra security. Western Digital 300 GB Firewire and USB2 external hard drives have dropped below $200 (www.westerndigital.com) and provide a perfect vehicle for regular backup. They are very reliable and easy to install and use. The other alternative, which is the one I use, is to backup to a removable internal hard drive which is also taken off-site every night. Western Digital 200 GB internal hard drives are now available for around $100. A removable drive tray costs $15 and is easy to install and use. You can use the external or removable hard drive with Ghost 9 or Casper XP and you have a bootable complete hard drive copy of your system in case of a total system failure. A third option is to purchase an external drive enclosure for about $30 and swap the drives in and out of the enclosure. If you leave the case open the switch is quick and easy. Whichever method you choose, however, you must discipline yourself to establish a routine and the do it. JUST DO IT!!