Breaking up is hard to do but backing up is easy

Join Jess as she untangles how to back up your computer, laptop, phone, and devices.

She'll talk in detail about the different types of hard drives, the different options you have to back up each device, how to back up to the cloud (and what that even means!). She'll even tell you how to navigate through the sea of purchasing options once you've settled on an actual method. 

Transcript

Welcome to Nerd Girl, Jess Untangles Tech. I'm Jess Stratton. The year is 2004 and Michael and Judy are getting ready to celebrate their wedding day. Everything is in place for tomorrow. The flowers are done. The venue looks gorgeous. Judy logs onto her computer to access and print the Microsoft Word document containing their wedding vows.

That they have both written for each other. They were in the document recently with no problems, but this time when Judy tries to open it, she's prompted to put in a password. Panicking. She runs to Michael, who assures her that he does not remember putting a password protection on that Word document.

Regardless of how the password protection got there, the number one priority now is how to remove it. Let's jump to 2014. Maria takes her music very seriously. Over the past 14 years or so, she's been migrating her existing CD collection to MP3 format between ripping her old CDs and purchasing them from Apple iTunes before streaming was an option.

She has thousands of songs each organized on her computer in folders by artist, and then album. This particular morning, Maria turns on her computer and hears an awful clicking sound. The computer does not start

In our final story. It's the present day and the Cillo family is in line at the store to get a family member's phone repaired. The phone was dropped. After the technician takes a look, he tells the family that the phone needs to be replaced with a new one. The phone contained photos taken during their once in a lifetime family vacation last year.

 The photos cannot be recovered. 

Michael and Judy Maria and the Cillo family may have different stories and backgrounds over the years, but they all share one thing in common. None of them had ever thought to back up their important files until it was too late. This episode, I'll be untangling how to back up your computer, laptop, phone, and devices.

I'll talk in detail about the different types of hard drives, the different options you have to back up each device, how to back up to the cloud and what that even means. And finally, how to navigate through the sea of purchasing options once you've settled on an actual method. My name is Jess Stratton, and welcome to Nerd Girl, Jess Untangles Tech.

 By the way, all of those stories were real scenarios I've helped my customers with or have experienced myself. I changed Michael and Judy's name because it was so long ago that I don't remember, but I did help them. This was Word 97. I can actually say this was software from the last century. I remember having to download password cracking software from a very shady website circa 2004.

It was a very different internet back then, but. They did get their vows in time.

And now. Onto the show. 

Jess: Backups are like insurance policies. It's so hard to justify the initial cost for something that might never happen, but when it does happen and you need it, you're so thankful that it's there and backing up your equipment always seems to end up as one of those low priority tasks, one that we'll get to one day and then it doesn't happen, and then something irreversible happens.

Well, today is that day. We're going to get to it. By the end of this episode, we're even going to come up with a plan together so that you have some action items to get this very important thing done.

 What are your choices when it comes to backup methods? Well, there's three main backup methods you can use and each have some sub methods. You can back up to an external drive that's physically attached to your computer with a cable, or you can use something called network attached storage or NAS for short, which is backing up over a local network that you have in your home or small office.

And finally, there's cloud storage backup like Dropbox, iDrive, Microsoft OneDrive, Google Drive, or Apple's iCloud. And of course you can and should do a combination of those things in the name of extra backups. Yes. This episode is brought to you by the Department of Redundancy Department. We're going to talk about external drives first, usually considered the traditional or gold star approach to backups.

You connect this external hard drive via USB directly to your computer, and then use your computer's backup software to back up your files. You can think of it like this. This is the same type of setup that's running your computer on the inside, except you're putting an addition on the outside for more space.

Now, the first choice in selecting an external drive. Is deciding which of the two main types to choose HDD or SSD. HDD stands for hard disc. drive.

 it's a mechanical magnetic spinning machine. The spinning head reads and writes the data. Though it's often referred to as hard disc, I'll just refer to it as hard drive from here on out.

Now, SSD stands for solid State Drive. There are no mechanical moving parts. Instead, solid state drives rely solely on electronics. Remember the Walkman, the portable Cass player? Remember when someone decided that a portable CD player was a good idea? Let's take something that spins and make it portable.

It was all fine and dandy until you started jogging and it started skipping. Now think of those first pioneer MP3 players like the Diamond Rio in Creative Nomad, and then later Apple came out with the iPod. Those music players were purely electronic, no skipping because they were playing music files.

There were only circuits. Nothing to make it skip like a mechanical spinning part. So you can choose either of these types of drives for your backups. There are both current viable respectable options. Like most choices, let's weigh the options. An SSD, due to faster electronics will have much faster read right speeds to the drive itself.

A hard drive like a car is measured in RPMs rotations per minute. Remember mechanical spinny thing that will never be able to compete in speed with something electronic? Well, what does that mean? It means that if you work on a computer that has frequent changes that should be backed up, think video editing an SSD might be a better choice.

Get those files protected and backed up as quickly as you can to keep up with your rapid changes as they happen. But as we know with fancy electronic things, they cost more An SSD can be pricey. It will be more expensive than a hard drive and for less storage capacity than a hard drive.

Now, if you have a large archive of files to back up for long-term storage, a hard drive is a fantastic choice. You can get a very large capacity drive for a very reasonable price. Maybe you just wanna run a nightly backup while still keeping those files on your computer. As far as durability goes, think of what you already know about mechanical parts versus electronics drives work the same way.

Electronics sounds like it would be a more stable choice, and many times it is, but electronics fail all the time. It just depends on how well those connectors were. Soldered and a mechanical device can happily run forever if it's well built, but one good bump and all those moving parts get permanently rearranged so you can weigh your own options.

As you know, I love empowering you to do if you have the budget, knowing an SSD is going to be more expensive for more storage space. That's a great choice. If you would like to set it and forget it, meaning you have a dedicated spot on your desk for a hard drive and you know you're not going to move it a lot and you're okay with daily backups, then a hard drive is a great choice and you can get a lot of storage space for your buck.

Now, if you ever need to recover files from the drive, we've already talked about how a hard drive has slower mechanical spinny bits. That means both read and write. Backups take longer and so does recovery. So just be aware of that. But we'll talk more about speeds when we talk about actually purchasing an external drive, that's later.

Right now we're just going over the backup methods you have to choose from, and that's one external drives.

So there's another option for backups, and it's not the most traditional solution, but I need to mention it. This option is called network attached storage or NAS for short. It physically attaches to your router or computer and gets put on the network. It's also popular with small businesses to use as a file server as it's always on leaving the files always available now because it's on your local area network.

That is the localized network confined to the boundaries of your home and your personal router. That means that anyone on your network also, including anyone who connects to your home wifi, can use it to send files to it and retrieve files. So why is it non-traditional? Well, because it's commonly used for archiving and files storage, not backing up.

 Wait a minute. What's the difference between archiving and backing up, shouldn't they mean the same thing? Well, not necessarily Think of a physical photo. Think right now of a four by six photo or a five by seven depending on how you like your photos. But pick one that brings you great joy, so you've got your photo in your mind.

If you wanted to back up that photo, you'd ordered doubles of it when you got it printed, if it's a 35 millimeter film, you'd put the negatives somewhere else, or you can also scan a copy of the photo. The main point is you'd have another method of getting that photo again 

now, when you archive that photo, instead you printed it on special, long-lasting archival paper and you put it in a storage box and a cool dark place designed to keep it safer as long as you need it to, to be ready to access it. Whenever you feel like looking at that photo again. So that first method, we backed it up.

We had a second version of it. The second method is archiving it. We put it away in long-term storage, but there's still only one copy of it. My opening narrative contained an anecdote about Maria who had a 14 year collection of MP3 music files taking up lots of space on her computer. Maria would be best served to archive those files, get them off her main computer's drive and put them on a storage drive so she could access them when she needs to.

And then you're probably seeing where I'm going with this, backing up that archival drive also. So why am I mentioning network attached storage if it's not a good backup strategy? Because it can be, it can be a wonderful strategy, especially if you have multiple people in one household that would like to back up to it.

Also, as long as it's used for backup and not archiving, meaning the files are also on another location besides the network attached storage. In this case, Maria could certainly also keep those files on her computer and transfer them over. To the network attached storage to back them up. It's very easy to move all of your files off your computer onto a NAS and think they're being backed up.

They aren't. They're just being accessed somewhere else. So as long as there's two copies of those files, you're all set.

Now while we're talking about external drives, You may be tempted to want to use a flash drive or SD card you have. Lying around is a backup method, A flash drive, also known as a USB thumb drive, is a small hardware device about the size of, you guessed it, your thumb that connects directly to a computer, laptop, or tablet via USB Port to transfer the files.

An SD card is commonly used in drones or digital cameras to store the captured footage. I say you might be tempted to use this as a backup method because while the technology was just developing in expensive in the eighties, nineties, and early two thousands, it's now common to have them around the house and sometimes even in large units, like 32 gigs, which can hold a lot of data and files.

But these drives were always designed for temporary use as a means of temporary storage until you can transfer it from that drive to its proper archival home. We know it's a great way to get a few files or a really large file from one computer or drive and move it to another, and as there are no moving parts, as we've learned, it's easy to transport and access quickly.

But that drive needs to be wiped and reformatted every so often To keep the data cells fresh, that data breaks down and the amount of times data on a flash drive can be written and rewritten is finite, believe it or not. In other words, the over the years, your digital data simply wears out.

Jess: It was back in 1971 when Dr. Fujio Masuoka was working at Toshiba and took an interest in working on non-volatile memory development. Non-volatile memory means the memory cells retains stored information for certain amount of time, even when not connected to any power. In contrast, your computer's ram is an example of volatile memory, which is why just restarting your computer fixes so many problems.

The memory is broken down when power to it is cut off. In fact, sometimes that's why they say, turn your computer off and leave it off for a few minutes, or you have to turn your router off. And turn that off for a few minutes before turning it on. That's letting that memory break down and be nice and empty.

Ready to start over again when you restart your computer. Now, Dr. Masuoka created the technology that kept data for a longer amounts of time before breaking down, but could be erased much faster. In 1980, he filed a patent for this technology. And a colleague mentioned that the erase procedure reminded him of the flash of a camera.

So the storage method was called flash memory. Now there are use cases for it as a short term backup method, and by short term, I mean a few years if our pre-wedding couple at the opening narrative had an old backup of their vows on a USB flash drive lying around somewhere. Yes, that would have been very helpful.

But if they wanted to keep a record of that file to show possible future kids, they might have had trouble accessing it off the flash drive

So, where does that leave us? Inigo?

Jess: In both the single external drive solution and the network attached storage solution is back up. You're still keeping the files on your computer and also putting them somewhere else. Where the backup will get periodically overwritten with any new version of that file. The last backup method I'm about to tell you about will allow you to keep the files on your computer.

Also have them somewhere else have the additional safety fallback of how having them not physically in your house, and as a bonus, will do all of that itself, so you don't have to be responsible for it. The last method is cloud storage. You've heard of it, your phone is probably already doing a little bit of it.

What is it?

The cloud is anything that you're accessing remotely over the internet. This means that the file is stored on someone else's computer or server outside of your local network. Why is it called the cloud? In traditional network diagrams, you'd see each computer or device shown as an icon. Attached to your networks, router, which also includes a firewall. 

That protects you from what's outside your local network. Now we have no way of knowing what's outside the network. So everything past that point is typically depicted with surprise a cloud icon. 

And finally, what are the popular cloud storage services? There's Dropbox, Microsoft OneDrive, Google Drive, and Apple's iCloud, and like external drives, there are two types of cloud services. Those that are treated like file storage and dedicated backup services like Backblaze and iDrive. Most of these file storage services come with some free storage and some you may have already and not realize.

Dropbox comes with two gigabytes free. Microsoft OneDrive also comes with some free space. And if you're a Microsoft 365 subscriber, which used to be called Office 365, it comes with one terabyte of space. Google Drive gives you 15 gigabytes for free, which you may have and not know it if you have a Gmail account already.

And Apple's iCloud also comes with two gigabytes free. But as we know, if you take any pictures with your phone at all, you probably have filled up that space a long time ago. Now, I'm still only talking about backup methods right now. I don't wanna lose track or get ahead of myself right now. So I will be talking about purchasing more storage space and how to know if you need to later.

But like I said, if you take any pictures at all, you're probably already there. Your phone and devices can automatically back up to these services. You can also log into them via a web interface, which is nice to know that your data is securely accessible from anywhere you can use a web browser just as long as you don't forget to log out when you're done.

And as an added benefit, these services also come as an app you can install on your desktop or laptop. To access the files right through Windows Explorer or Finder. If you're on a Mac, you choose whether or not you want only shortcuts to the files online, or do you wanna sync the entire file down to your computer?

Now, I always recommend this option if you have the space, because if the files are on your computer, you can make your changes. They sync back up to the cloud. And now what does that mean for your backup strategy? Knowing those files are also on a folder on your computer pair. This combination using a cloud service with an external drive, and you've got a wonderful backup scenario of your files, not to mention long-term storage for those files that you're syncing.

Which means if you've made a change that you weren't happy with and it synced up to the cloud, you still have an older copy of that file that you can access in your backup scenario. Now, these files are stored on your computer, which gets backed up to an external drive, but they're also available in the cloud.

 Now, we don't like thinking about scenarios in which something could happen to both our computer and the backup external drive. Flooding theft fire. It's unthinkable and that's the very definition of the word, but like most unpleasant things, we really have to think about it to have a plan. So I'm asking you too today, an additional backup outside of our house is ideal, and it also makes for really fast restoration of our files if something were to happen.

So you have three methods of backups to choose from an external drive network attached storage and cloud service.

So what exactly should you be backing up if you have a large enough drive to cover all of the files on your C drive, if it's windows or your entire Mac? Great. Do that to find out in windows, in the search box type settings. And then on the left hand side, click storage, it will tell you how much used space you're using.

Now, if you're in the car, car right now, do me a favor and just try to remember, how many elapsed minutes we are in the podcast. Right? Just take a quick glance so that way you can come back and do this at home after you're done watching. So you went to settings. You're on the left hand side. You click storage.

It's going to tell you how much used space you're using, and that's the number you care about, not the total space of your drive on a Mac. Go to system settings in the general area. Click storage. You'll see how many gigabytes out of the total available you're using. And again, that's the important one, not the total available, how many you're using.

For example, on my Mac, I'm using 170 gigabytes out of a 500 gigabyte drive. And just for reference, one gigabyte is 1000 megabytes and a terabyte is 1000 gigabytes. So now we know that to back up my Mac a one terabyte external drive is more than enough. I do sink. My cloud service is down to my Mac also, so that drive will be plenty to even cover those backups. So that covers laptops and desktops, but what about mobile devices? And what about when I only care about the photos and videos on my device?

I'll let Zach Galifianakis' character Alan from the Hangover movies tell us how important it is. 

Jess: With cloud services, Dropbox and OneDrive, they have the great feature of the ability to only upload your photos and back them up on the cloud directly from your phone without you having to do anything.

 It's a setting in the apps themselves, on the device to back up your photos and videos. So think about this again. If you use the desktop apps and sync those services to your desktop, you'll get the ability to view your photos anywhere.

And if you back up to an external drive, they're going to be backed up also. And yes, I'm repeating this a lot on purpose. This episode is going to be like a commercial where if I repeat the one 800 number enough times it sticks. That's what I'm hoping for. So how can you find out how much space you're taking up on your mobile device?

 So on an iPhone, go to settings, general iPhone storage. Right at the top, it's going to tell you how many gigabytes you've used out of the available space on an Android device. Go to settings, storage. Now, if you wanna calculate this for a household, do this to every device, including tablets, and simply add up the gigabytes.

If you're using Android, the product that you're looking for is Google one. On an iPhone, if you add everybody to your family, which iCloud gives you the ability to do, you can then see collectively how much storage space your entire family is using. So soon I'll tell you how to purchase additional space.

 And finally, let's talk about how to back up for the external drives on a desktop or laptop. Once you have a drive attached to your computer on a Mac, you'll want to launch the Time Machine app, or if you're using Windows, run Windows backup.

Both apps are not only free, they come with the operating system, so there is nothing to download on your part. They're already there. Time machine, and Windows backup. All you have to do is connect the drive. The apps themselves will walk you through the setup process, which is easy. Now, you may be asked if you want to encrypt the backup.

It's up to you. Personally, I would say don't. The exception to the rules are unless you're holding the nuclear codes or you've got sensitive customer information like names and credit cards, or your tax returns, and even then, those should already be encrypted on your computer anyway, which is one reason why I say don't do it for backups.

For me and for what I found with a lot of my customers. It's one more variable that may make future recovery that much more difficult.

So to back up a computer or laptop time machine, or windows backup. Now for a mobile device, this is where you come to a crossroad. You can choose a cloud service and pay a monthly subscription fee for the storage. Your photos, videos, apps, and files will transfer behind the scenes over wifi happily every night.

Now, remember earlier I said that you do get some free storage, but most of you, I'm willing to bet have already hit that limit. So this is why I'm telling you that most likely you will have to pay a monthly subscription fee if you want to back them up. Now, apple devices use iCloud. Android users will use Google backup for Android.

Which will back up your phone to your Google account, specifically the cloud service, Google Drive, with both brands. You get some free storage so that your phone can back up. This means photos, videos, email, et cetera. I just talked about that. It's really easy to run outta space though, and you probably already have, right?

You may have seen that message iCloud storage full now, especially if you have multiple people on your iCloud family. So remember when I told you how to check the storage space on your phone? I'm way over that free limit. So for a fee, you can increase your iCloud storage and back up your entire family's devices on that plan.

Now, I told you how to check each member's device in your family or household and add up the storage. Now I have an iPad and an iPhone, and that's two different sets of storage. At the moment, I believe I'm currently spending $10 a month for two terabytes of additional iCloud storage, and as I have my entire family linked to my iCloud account, we can all share that storage.

It's enough storage to back up all of our phones and tablets, completely extra storage on Google Drive for Android users works in a similar fashion, and I believe it's much cheaper actually. Now this means that if one of us upgrades our phones or we swap, or a device gets broken and needs to be replaced, we're back up and running within the hour like it never happened.

Now, Cloud services require that monthly subscription, which makes them a pricier option, but you can access them anywhere. 

You don't need it physically on you or attached to your computer in any way to back up or restore the device. Subscription fees can be expensive. It's turning into a model where we seemingly have to pay a monthly subscription fee for everything. What if you wanna back up your device and not pay the subscription fee?

$10 a month is a lot of money. Alternatively, you absolutely do not have to pay a subscription fee to back up your device, but you do need access to a desktop computer or a laptop. You can physically connect your phone via USB cable. iPhone users can back up by clicking on your phone's icon in Finder, or if it's an older Mac, the iTunes app and Android users can use Android file transfer.

This will back up your files to your computer and if you're using an external drive on that computer for backups, you'll have excellent redundancy. So, no, you absolutely do not need to pay for additional cloud storage space to back up a device.

The only thing is there is a lot of friction points in this process. It's always worth a quick discussion to yourself about price versus convenience versus friction points. A friction point is the concept that any obstacle in your way will make a task harder or make it less desirable for you to do.

In other words, it makes it a pain in the ass. Now, sometimes you'll wanna add friction points to a process. For example, if you wanna curb your spending habits, you can freeze your credit literally. Put that credit card in a block of ice, so you can't use it. If you wanna snack less, you can put the potato chips in a closed Tupperware in a box underneath heavy items in the pantry, guarded by the dragons of evermore over the river of yesteryear.

You see where I'm going when I'm talking about backups. I want to reduce friction points. You need to connect the phone. You need a cable. You need to make sure the laptop or computer is on and you need to make sure you remember it happens, right? It's so easy just to say, I'm tired. I'll do it tomorrow, and next thing you know, it's a year later and the worst has happened.

So this is why personally bite the bullet and pay for additional iCloud backup for the family. It's like living somewhere with additional storage space, like a shed or an attic or basement. Where are you putting all those old physical photo albums, if you don't have space in your house or apartment, you might be paying for an additional storage room at a facility, and if you have a shed or a basement, you're paying property tax on it.

So you're already paying for physical, tangible item storage. It's 2023. You have to start thinking about treating your digital data the same way, and then you don't have to think about backups. It's all happening behind the scenes.

 So now it's time to make a plan. And if people request it, I could put a downloadable worksheet in the show notes. So if you're driving while you listen to this, just make a plan in your head. Write down or think of every desktop, laptop, and mobile device in your household. That includes phones, tablets, everything.

So if you have a desktop computer, you've already decided by this point if you're going to use an external hard drive, or SSD, and how much space you need. So on your to-do list is to get that drive. Plug it in and put it somewhere on your desk where it's non-intrusive and safe, and you can set it, forget it, and hope you never need to use it.

If you have a laptop, you can choose what option makes the best sense for you if you plug it into a docking station when you're using it, plug the external drive into that and leave it there. If you'll be using a small light external USB drive. Make sure you schedule at the very minimum, a weekly or monthly time to plug in the drive and back it up.

In fact, if you're at your desk listening to this right now, pause it and put in a repeating calendar appointment to do it. If you listen to the last episode, you can even have your digital voice assistant do it. Let's try it out. Remind me every month on Thursdays at 3:00 PM to back up my laptop. Okay. I added it. 

 For mobile devices. This is the time to go through everyone's devices to see how much storage they all need. So you should already know at this point how much additional cloud storage you're going to need to purchase if you don't wanna purchase anything extra. You'll need to make sure you're periodically connecting each device to a computer via a cable or wirelessly and backing it up that way.

 See, that wasn't so bad. Excellent. You have a plan. I told you today is the day it was going to happen. Now I always like to end the episode with gear. So the last step to your plan should be an exciting date night dinner, dancing movies, followed by a small detour to Best Buy or staples for an external drive.

Now, when choosing a drive, whether it's a hard drive or an SSD, you need to look at the protection level of the drive. You may have seen the very popular LaCie drives bright orange covered in a thick case. Think of where you're going to be using the drive. And when you see these external drives with a tough protection on them, don't just think of nature photographers at old faithful waiting with a camera, an external drive to be covered with water, 

Think about where you're going to put it on your desk versus you or your child's propensity for spilling drinks. Or, and if you like science, I can build you a chart of how happy your dog is versus the strength of his tail versus his height.

So we've talked about SSD versus HDD or hard drive. You know the difference now between a solid state drive and hard drive, you've chosen which one you're going to use, but regardless of which one you purchase. You have one more choice to make. That is the USB Port type and speed to connect it to your computer or laptop.

And I know it's a lot to take in, but I did wanna bring this up and I wanted to talk about it because when you're at Staples or Best Buy, or your local shop browsing the aisles, you're going to have a sea of choices, and I want you to be able to know how to pick one. Currently, and if you look at the release date of this episode, and if all goes well, it should be around July, 2023.

There's three different types of USB ports, USB A, B, and C. And if it wasn't confusing enough, there's two speeds. USB 2.0 and 3.0 USb C is newer. Faster and physically different than the older USB ports having a small thin port. So you would need to investigate to see whether your computer or laptop has a USB C port.

If you're at the store and you know what kind of computer or laptop it is, just Google it right there. Why not? And it's not the end of the world if you get the wrong one, right? You can always get an adapter. Although you may have to have an additional plug into a power socket versus just being able to plug it into a computer with one cable.

So if you don't get the right port, it's not the end of the world. This all comes down to budget. That's it. There's no right or wrong here. I did wanna let you know if you get the wrong port, buy an adapter. It's always good to have USB C adapters, and if you ever upgrade your computer or laptop, you'll have new matching hardware if you have to get an older or slower drive.

It's also okay. It may take a little longer to restore the files as it's reading and writing from the drive slower and transferring the data slower over an older cable with older technology, but like the tortoise and the hair, we all get to the same place in the end. Slow backups versus no backups. I know what I'd pick, right?

What do I say on this show? There's no right or wrong. There is only the best choice for your situation, and your choice may not match another listener's, and that's fine. So regardless, you should congratulate yourself for taking that step, completing a project to ownership of your data, and giving yourself peace of mind, knowing it's done, and if the unthinkable happens, you're covered.

For me, it's worth it for that. What a good feeling to get a major project out of your head and off your to-do list and you know it's done. That's like the best feeling in the world for me. So I hope I've given you that today. That's my plan. So thanks for listening to Nerd Girl Jess Untangles Tech. Once again, my name is Jess Stratton.

 If you have a question you'd like me to answer or a topic you'd like me to cover, you can send an email to podcast@nerdgirljess.com. Have a great week everyone.