Do This or Risk Losing Everything: Strategy for Backing Up Your Computer

It could be family photos and correspondence, or marketing plans and accounting files, but if it has value and resides on your computer system – one PC, several or a whole company network – it needs to be backed up. Here is a solid introduction to backing up your computer that you can modify and customize to your particular needs.

Planning prevents poor performance
To clarify your plan, make it understandable to yourself and everyone else involved, and have a roadmap to follow now and in the future, you should develop a written backup plan. Whether it’s a one-person home office or a corporate hierarchy, a written plan will keep things under control.

You need to answer a few preliminary questions:

1. Exactly what needs to be backed up, from what computer(s) or device(s)?
2. Where will it be backed up to?
3. How often will backups occur?
4. Who's in charge of performing backups?
5. Who determines the success of these backups?

Before starting, remember that there are many things on your drives that do not need backing up. You do not have to back up the applications for which you have the installation discs, for example, and the same goes for your core OS (Operating System), whether Macintosh, Windows or Linux.

Some home and business users who use a “cloning” backup method (discussed below) do, in fact, backup applications and the OS. The advantage to this is that any special additions to the OS – application plug-ins, dictionaries, etc. – are saved right where they are. That is, they would not have to be restored from CDs or other installation files.

First things first
In business, of course, databases and accounting files are the most critical “data assets.” Since they should be backed up both before and after any sort of significant alteration or use, most companies are backing up these files every day. Databases should probably be backed up after any substantial data-entry session.

Both Mac OS X and the latest Windows OS’s create, by default, “Documents” folders, which are often the major (but not the only) location for important work. These should be backed up daily, as well as e-mails that are “mission critical.”

In addition to accessible on-site backups, businesses in particular should store a copy of its backups off-site. This will protect your critical data in the event of a fire, flood, theft or other such occurrence. You should consider storing backups in a safety-deposit box or a secure storage location, using the “2x2x2 rule” – two sets of backups stored by two different people or companies at two separate locations. If disaster does strike, this will not sound like a paranoid idea at all.

Don’t forget that there is data on your laptops and handheld devices that also contain valuable information. In your backup plan, you should specify how and when laptops and PDAs should be backed up, and whether those backups should be integrated into a particular computer’s backup schedule or just backed up independently.

Hardware overview
Any number of solutions can work for you, whether you are a simple home user or the IT manager of a large firm. The strategies are the same, but the scale is different. You need to figure out how much data you need to back up, from each individual computer as well as any networked, shared drives. Allow for “mission creep” and for the addition of new employees or systems through the upcoming year (or month, or quarter).

The backup device(s) you choose should have a storage capacity of double the amount of data you just calculated as needing to be backed up. This allows sufficient space for growth. Larger organizations find that tape drives are a good choice, bringing together reliability, reasonably fast read/write speeds and large capacities. In fact, in businesses with a solid IT infrastructure, tape drives have become the de facto standard for backups, and with definite, defined procedures in place they are both reliable and efficient.

Adding additional internal drives is a good solution for the home user and small businesses. All Macs and PCs have extra, built-in, internal drive connections, although there are now several standards. Older IDE drives have connections called PATA, for Parallel ATA, while the newer standard is SATA (Serial ATA). Make sure you determine compatibility when buying internal drives.

Ultra-wide SCSI is the fastest external standard, but it is expensive and not as popular now except for large firms that can afford it. Most external hard drives use the USB and IEEE 1394 (FireWire) connections, making them usable with all modern PCs, of all kinds. High-end server-class hardware, on the other hand, is outfitted with built-in SCSI or the newest standard SAS (Serial Attached SCSI).

Finally, there are CDs and DVDs, too. You can back up to these media, and store data for many years without any degradation. However, the storage capacities are low (650-700MB for CDs, 4.7-9BG for DVDs) unless you opt for the latest, more expensive BluRay technology. The BR discs hold 25-50GB of data, but the discs are still costly and the drives are, too. As prices come down, this option will be more viable for home offices and small businesses. However, the downside of disc storage is low volume (even 50GB is small compared to a low-cost 1TB hard drive) and the read/write times involved in backing up and restoring.

Backup software
Both Mac OS X and Windows (all modern flavors, particularly XP and Vista) have their own backup software. In Windows, you will find it under Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Backup, while the Mac OS has TimeMachine for automated use. These are more than adequate for individual users, and even small businesses.

There is also software that handles backups in an entirely different manner, by cloning (making a perfect, bit-by-bit copy of) your hard drive. The rationale for doing this is that it keeps a perfect, working copy of your current hard drive stored externally. The backups can even be used to boot up your computer if the current drive’s OS gets “scrambled” or you lose functionality for some physical reason (failed drive head or motor).

Finally, you can even perform backups with no software at all by simply copying your important files. Whatever approach you take, you need to be realistic and understand that, if you do not perform regular backups, you will regret it – maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but someday. Like buying insurance, backing up your data is not something you can wait to do until you need it.

Don’t let it be “too late” for you and your important data. Set up a good backup plan today, institute it now, follow the plan assiduously and allow yourself no excuses. With all of the help available, online and off, there is no reason you cannot get yourself properly set up. Now would be a good time to start.


Reference: http://www.1888articles.com/do-this-or-risk-losing-everything-strategy-for-backing-up-your-computer-074203.html

Choosing data gathering techniques(document review,interviewing,questionnaires,observation)

Among the data gathering techniques mentioned, I would prefer document review. I'm not really good at interacting especially interviewing because it burdens me of choosing the right word to express especially when considering the language that must be used. My English is not very accurate. I'm most comfortable in document review because by reading, i can gather more relevant information and data. An analyst may collect the information/data from written documents available from manual-files of an organization. This method of data gathering is normally used if you want to computerize the existing manual system or upgrade the existing computer based system. The written documents may be reports, forms, memos, business plans, policy statements, organizational charts and many others. The written documents provide valuable information about the existing system and is complete. This is much comfortable knowing that i am not wasting their time of answering a student's questions. But i still believe that all the gathering techniques mentioned are very important and effective in gathering information, its just have to be used based or suited on my own personality. For me, these techniques are much more effective when using it as a step-by-step method. First must be the document review. Second is by observing the working of the existing system. Third is by using Questionnaires that will not serve only as a data gathering tool but also as a survey for statistical basis that could be used in future development. When the system was carefully studied and watched already, all topics, questions and issues that had risen may be finally asked personally in an interview with the person in charge in a limited time for clarifications and more information gathering.

SAD: Assignment 2

When we talk about Software Development i prefer the predictive approach, but when talking about my personal objectives in life i prefer the adaptive approach. Relating to the quote "practice makes perfect" experience is more necessary than just knowledge and thinking about what will happen in the future.

Based on the model's activities, i created my own version of the model relating it to my objectives in life.

1. Establishing path

Knowing what my needs and wants in the future will give me an idea of what to do and where to go. Planning a right perspective for my goals in life would set the path to achieve my goals.

2. Past learning

Talking about the experiences from others will also give an idea to what my goals would be and its consequences. Learning from their past experiences and listening to their advices is very useful.

3. Trial and error

This phase is to test my skills and knowledge of what i've learned from others and my own experiences. Every stage in life and events are unique so learning and experiencing it is mandatory to grow and finally qualify for achieving my goals in life.

5. Testing

Once the paths are already established and experience are already sufficient, its time to apply it in the real scenario of life and do my best. In this phase, i've already learned everything so there must be no reasons to doubt and quit.

6. Maintenance

After attaining the desired result of testing and achieving my objectives and goals in life, maintaining will take place. It is not necessarily difficult to maintain since it was already tested and proven.

SAD: Assignment 1

At first, i don't really have knowledge about computers and technology but as time goes by, i've learned that studying about technology is necessary. For the past 3 years i've learned about programming, designing, testing, and also maintaining. Creating systems are not new to me and doing these task needs a lot of effort and time, thus considering our limitations and skills is also important. Speaking of effort and time, these includes in-depth study and practice thus making the task more challenging. But in doing systems we considered a more simple system that suits our skills so that the risks are not that difficult.

The company that we considered for making a system is the ESLA Cooperative which is a multipurpose cooperative that is presently into micro-finance project extending capital assistance to the ambulant food vendors of Davao City by way of short-term loans. Since the cooperative is using a manual recording of datas like written reports and hard copy of profiles, they needed a much easier and much efficient way of doing their recording. And also since the task of the micro-finance project is very complex and risky because it involves money and record issues like the releasing of loans, collection of daily loan amortizations, daily disbursements, recording of loan receivables and interest income and most specially in the preparation of financial statements then the cooperative needed a system that will take care of this issues in a much efficient way.

Our group came to this idea of a Recording System that will address their problem of manually recording the daily transactions and also decrease this recording issues. The purpose of this Recording System is to record, update and compute data like identification of beneficiaries, payments of loan amortizations, daily disbursements, recording of loan receivables and interest income.

This Recording System would create and update a client's profile as well as the client's information. It also has a search engine that will cater the user to immediately view and update the client's profiles and current status.

Reflection ( SAD1 Session )

The discussions we had last thursday and friday went well. Although, honestly, i didn't liked the idea of having a class in a supposed to be "christmas vacation" and intramurals, it did gave me a few realizations. 1st - i am a computer science student and learning about my field must be prioritized. 2nd - i must pass the subject and learn.
The reporters did well and discussing it with their experiences is more interesting than just discussing the book. From the past subjects, i only thought of being a programmer in the future but now it turned out to be something more. Studying System Analysis and Design makes the course more interesting and exciting. I've learned alot about the need of a company or what is happening within the development team. The reporters delivered their reports well, although sometimes there are boring intervals but still we learned alot. It was a miracle that i didn't sleep at discussions, i guess the vitamins did great for me or the discussions just went well and was very interesting.

About Me

I'm interested in complicated situations.
Experiencing it makes me feel tough and dangerous.
Joke lang..