When is a backup drive not a backup drive?

When is a backup drive not a backup drive?

Question: What is this?

backup1

If you answered “Why, Mr. oic TechCare blog author, that is clearly a Seagate Backup Plus Slim Portable External Hard Drive with USB 3.0,” you are correct, technically. Depending on how you use it, it may not be a backup drive at all. The following definition explains why.

A back up is a copy of data made in case the original files are lost or damaged.

The underlined word is critical as you will read below.

Here's a scenario that plays out very often for us:

A client walks in with a machine that contains a failing or failed hard drive and we ask about the state of his or her backup.

Possible replies:

  • What’s a backup?
  • I think so.
  • Yes, but I haven‘t plugged it in for months.
  • Of course, and here it is!

The last answer means that recovery of the client’s data will likely be worlds easier (and cheaper) than the alternative (attempting to recover data from the damaged drive). Since a backup apparently exists, we ask if the client was using Time Machine.

Possible replies:

  • What’s a time machine?
  • I don’t know.
  • Yes!
  • I don’t know what that is but I copied the files to the drive myself.

The last answer worries us and prompts us to ask if the files on the ‘backup’ drive are also somewhere else, such as on the failing drive or in the cloud. The answer is often “No! That’s why I have a backup drive.”

This is where we have the critical failure point in understanding what a backup is.

Basically, it doesn’t matter what method you use to make copies of your files as long as—if you are expecting to be making a backup—you are making a COPY of those files which results in them existing in two separate locations. If you copy a file to another location and then delete it from the original source, it's no longer a copy. It's the only existing version of that file and it is then by any definition, NOT a backup, and is therefore equally at risk of being lost in the event of failure.

Think of it this way: Your family has one car. It works perfectly except when it breaks down leaving everyone stranded (hopefully not on the highway). You only need one car for the family but, to avoid potential down time, you purchase a second vehicle. Now, imagine that you decide the second car is super reliable, because, it's new and all, and you sell the old one. Now, that second car is no longer a backup or emergency recovery vehicle. It's merely become a different single point of failure.

So what does this all mean?

For starters, you need to have a reliable backup in place or, preferably, more than one.

And . . . that's all there is to it.

That was almost 500 words to say, please backup your data because you never know when you might need to recover precious photos, documents, and home videos from a horribly crashed machine.

And, please make sure it's a true backup.


If you have questions about backing up your data manually or by using Time Machine, contact us. If you want affordable and reliable cloud storage as a secondary (or primary) means of backing up your data, click here.