Back Up Everything?

We at Warm and Fuzzy Logic cringe when we hear some back-up proponents who advise users to back-up all of their files, no matter how unimportant each file may seem. We cringe because a large number of files on every user's hard drive are temporary (read: junk) files that application programs create for their convenience. For instance, by default Internet Explorer is set to use hundreds of megabytes of the host computer's hard drive for its 'cache'. This cache contains files to speed the display of web pages, temporarily storing everything that you view on the web.

The biggest problem with files like these is that they usually change constantly. As a result, they disproportionately fill up incremental backups, dramatically increasing backup disc sizes. And these files aren't even important or necessary for a computer's operation! Chances are if someone walked over to a random user's computer and deleted their Internet Explorer cache the user wouldn't even notice the difference, and a week or two later the cache would be full again regardless. When moving from one house to another, you wouldn't bring the trash in your trash cans, and so when backing up your computer, you shouldn't bring along the temporary trash files in your cache - it's a waste of time and energy.

We propose a more intelligent method for backup. First, let the backup program have intelligence so it knows what files can be safely ignored. Second, have the user decide how much work they're willing to spend on backups, and, as a consequence, how much trouble a system restore will be. For instance, if a ShadowBack user selects, "Back-up my work", all the unique personal data that the user created will be backed up. This option will save media, as files one can get from installation CDs will be ignored, and time as less data will be backed up. The trade-off is that, when a restore has to be done, the user will have to re-install all of their applications by hand. This can be a good exchange, since much more time is spent backing up than restoring. The user that doesn't want to re-install their entire system by hand would pick the option to back-up their entire computer.

Personally, I don't think that a Windows install is stable enough to be trusted for more than a year at a time. So I'm more concerned about the unique data I've produced on my computer than any OS or program installations I've done - after a year, I'm probably going to update the OS and software anyway. But I would recommend that individual users think about what is really important to them about their computer, and decide how much work they want to do for their backups now versus potentially doing the work later on their restores.