A lot of my recommendations have to do with protecting you from what will inevitably happen -- a hard drive failure or an accidental deletion of a really important file.  Trust me: the more you use technology, the more you're likely to get bit.  The more computers you have, the more disks you have, the more chance you have that one of them will fail.  That counts all of your ipods, your smart phones, etc.  (I put all my contacts in there and now they're gone!) Everyone I know has suffered some kind of data loss, which is why I started sticking my nose into their business and giving them backup advice -- I can't stand to see someone lose data! 

Things I think you must do

• Get automated, off-site backup
• Windows and MacOS users can get a completely automated off-site backup system by paying $50/year for mozy.com or carbonite.com and have automated, scheduled off-site backup of an unlimited amount of data.  That's right, less than $5/month and you have all the backup you could ever need.  The only thing that limits your backup is your upload speed. Your first backup will take forever (mine took two weeks), but after that it runs every day and backs up just the new stuff.  This is not an offsite storage service. (Read below why I don't like those.)  This is automated backup of the last 30 days of the data you store on your PC at home.  The support Windows and MacOS today.  (Linux is coming.)
• If you're a Linux user, it looks like jungledisk is your best option.  I haven't used it, and I'm not sure how it handles previous versions of files, but it's automated and relatively inexpensive until you start getting into the 100 GB+ category.  Jungledisk is a $20 piece of software that synchronizes folders of your choice to Amazon's S3 service, which costs $.15/mth per GB plus bandwidth charges.
• Sync your phone to your computer
  
• Ask your mobile phone company how to do this, so you you don't lose all that work you did to create all those contacts when you drop it in the water or leave it in a cab.  You can sync it to your computer so that all that data gets backed up too!
• Stay away from Windows Vista for the foreseeable future
  
• If you're like most of my friends, you've got a printer/scanner/other from several years ago that still works fine.  If you upgrade to Vista, you'll  most likely have to buy all new equipment.  The Mac commercials are right on this one.  In addition, your user experience will change dramatically -- and  you'll have new bugs to deal with.  Why bother any time soon?
• Pay for the software, music, books and movies you use
• Don't ask me to borrow my copy of Windows or Office or the latest album from Pink.  Go pay for it yourself.
  
• I do not support the illegal downloading of software, music, books, or movies.  Copying your own CDs & DVDs to make a backup copy of them, or to make them playable on your iPod (or whatever) is not stealing.  When your friend takes that copy and plays it on their player, it is stealing.  Copying your friends' MP3s or movies is stealing. Renting a DVD and ripping it so you can play it any time is stealing.  (The content provider was paid a rental royalty, not a purchase royalty.  They are very different amounts of money.  I should know, I receive both types of royalties.)  Downloading bootleg copies of software is stealing.  Given the small amount of money I make off of each backup book, it kills me to know that there are thousands of people who have bootlegged copies of it out there.  You don't shoplift, right? Then why are you doing this?  It's nothing more than virtual shoplifting.
• A friend read an earlier version of this post and said that it was incorrect to call this stealing, because to steal something from someone, they had to be in possession of it first.  Since I never received the royalties on those books, the people who have bootlegged copies of my book didn't steal from me.  Here's what I told him.
  
  First, I believe that my use of the word "stealing" fits right into the first definition of it as a transitive verb at Merriam-Webster's online dictionary (notice especially c & d): a: to take or appropriate without right or leave and with intent to keep or make use of wrongfully <stole a car> b: to take away by force or unjust means <they've stolen our liberty> c: to take surreptitiously or without permission <steal a kiss> d: to appropriate to oneself or beyond one's proper share  (See http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/steal ).
  
  The argument that it is stealing is also based on the idea that you were going to buy it anyway.  If you buy my book, I would get about $2.50 in my pocket.  If you were going to buy my book, but instead downloaded an illegal copy, you effectively stole $2.50 from my pocket.  You may argue that the $2.50 was never IN my pocket, so you can't steal it.  Pick whatever word you want, I'm out $2.50 and you're up a book.
  
  The argument FOR illegal downloading is "I never was going to buy it, therefore you were never going to get the $2.50, therefore I'm not stealing anything from you when I download this song/book/movie."   People argue, for example, that you can't take every illegally downloaded song, multiply it times $.99 and say that the industry is out $X.  I agree with that, as there are indeed a lot of songs downloaded that would never have been bought.  But there are also a lot of people I know that download movies the day they're released and watch them instead of going to the theatre and/or ever buying the DVD.  Same thing with music.
  
  If you want to create backup copies of your own music/videos/dvds, I'm fine with that.  In fact, I do my best to ONLY use the backup copies of CDs and store the originals away.  I'm working on ripping all my DVDs and storing them digitally just like my CDs.  If I bought a DVD/CD and I rip it to MPG/MP3 and DON'T share it with my friends, then I think I'm fine.  I have wondered whether two people in your family should be listening to the same album/song at the same time if you didn't pay for two copies.  (I translate it back to a regular CD where you couldn't do that unless you bought two of them.)  But itunes seems to think that's fair use, so I'm cool with it.
  
  If you have in your digital store house CDs/DVDs/books/etc that you are listening/watching that you did not pay to keep (i.e. you bought them, not rented them), then I believe you have stolen those songs/videos/books.
• Stamp out Digital Rights Management (DRM)
• This isn't on the same level as "get a backup system," but I feel almost as strongly about it.
  
• I believe in paying for the software, music, and books that I use, but DRM is just wrong.  It doesn't stop a single hacker who is looking to steal music, and it inconveniences the legal user.  (Have you ever been told "this computer is not authorized to play that" even though you know it is? Wouldn't you like to play your itunes songs on Linux?)  First, vote with your money.  In the future, buy only DRM-free songs.  Itunes has some, and Amazon.com has a lot.  For the itunes songs that you already bought, Hymn will strip them of that nasty DRM stuff, thus allowing you to use the songs you paid for -- even in your Linux system. 

Things to think about doing 

The next three recommendations are about better ways to add storage to your system.  They are in order by cost, where the first is the least expensive.  The last is the "if you really want to do it right" option, but it may not palatable for your budget.

• Get a second hard drive (single PC household)
• Now that you have your data backed up, buy a big honking disk drive and put your data there.  Don't store it on the same drive as your OS. Keep your current OS on your current drive, then buy a huge second disk drive.  (I recommend this for one big reason.  It's common to have to reinstall your OS.  Wouldn't it be nice to let the computer guy do that for you and KNOW that no matter what he/she does, it won't hurt your actual data?  It's a beautiful thing.) If you want cheaper and faster, buy a second internal drive.  If you're not into high performance and want to spend extra money for portability, then buy a USB drive.  That way, you can grab just it in case of fire.  The easiest thing to move to this is your "my documents" folder.  After you get the new drive up and running, just right click on "my documents" in "my computer," and tell it you want to move it.  Click the button that says to move all your files there and Voila!  Now anything you store in "my documents" will automatically be on your new hard drive.
• Get a server (multi-PC household)
• Even better than a separate hard drive is having a separate server for your data.  This is a little more advanced.  Dedicate one of the PCs/Macs in your house as the server, then create shares to all the PCs/Macs in the house.  Then go to each PC/Mac and map a drive to that share.  If you're running Windows, change the location of "my documents" to that mapped drive.  Now whenever you save anything to "my documents" on any PC, it will be stored on the server.  (I'm sure there's a way to do this in MacOS, but I'm not a Mac guy.)  In case of fire, all you have to grab is that.  (Also, you only need to buy the $50/year backup service for this one PC.)  I would prefer this PC be Linux-based, but since I'm now addicted to mozy, mine is currently Windows.  If you want a ready-built unit that all you have to put disk in, try the Netgear's ReadyNas product.  They also offer versions with disks already installed as well.
• Get a redundant disk system
• If you want to make sure you should never need your backup system,  get a redundant disk system.  It will cost more than just buying disks, but the ones I'd recommend for home users are really easy to use and allow you to add storage as you need it, thus allowing you to buy only the disk you need for today.  They're also redundant -- if one of your hard drives fails (and it will fail), the only thing you'll get is a warning to replace it -- your data will be fine.  If you want USB-accessible drives, then I'd recommend looking at Drobo.  If you want a file server, then I'd recommend the Netgear ReadyNas NV+.   The drobo is the cheaper of the two, costing $499 without hard drives; the ReadyNas NV+ without hard drives is $1049. (The difference in price is because the ReadyNas box is a server, where the Drobo is just a USB hard drive system.)

• Consider business-class firewall and site protection
• After seeing too many popups for sites I just don't want my kids to see, and thinking about what they might find if they actually went looking, I wanted something to protect them from all of that.  But since I switched to Linux (Kubuntu) for my desktops, the usual software options weren't available.  I searched and found the SonicWall TZ150 TotalSecure wireless. It's got everthing.  Network-wide content filtering (block those porn sites from any PC), spam filtering, spyware filtering, virus filtering -- everything I want.  Yes, it's more expensive than a typical SOHO router, but buying net-nanny type software for every PC (if they had been windows) is actually more expensive in a multi-PC household.  Search a lot for pricing.  The pricing I eventually paid was almost $200 less than what the list price was.
• Why not just switch off of Windows completely?
• I run Windows on my work computer, because that's what my company uses, but I'm moving off it everywhere else I can.  I'm tired of the stability issues, viruses & spyware and the software I have to pay for so I don't get them (and I still get them anyway), and new versions of the operating system that don't support old hardware.
• If you're not a computer geek and/or aren't living with one, then consider MacOS.  MacOS is easily the best computing experience today  -- especially for those who aren't computer geeks. The ads are not only funny, they're mostly true.  (There's a bit of hyperbole in there, of course.)  So if you want a computer that just works, won't get infected with viruses, and can do all the cool multimedia stuff out of the box (video camera, digital camera, ipod, etc), then buy a Mac.  Yes, you'll have to replace your PC with a Mac, it will cost more, and it will initially seem weird to you, but their hardware and software support is great.  Unless you've got a particular application that will only run on Windows, I think you'll be a lot happier with a Mac.  (You can Windows software on a Mac with Parallels, so look into that, too.)
• If you are a computer geek or are living with a computer geek, then consider migrating to Linux.  Linux is still for the somewhat dedicated, and is not for non-computer-savvy folks, but it has come a long way in just the last year or so. 
• The Good: based on my experience, Linux has come a long way in the last few years, and even within the past year. Almost everything I wanted was already in Kubuntu 7.10, and most everything else could be installed relatively easily.  I've now used firewire to suck in all my home videos (even the old 8mm/VHS/DVDs I had).  I'm syncing my iPod, and my wife is pretty happy now that she figured out where everything is.  It didn't cost me a dime other than my time, and I don't have to worry about viruses.
• The Bad: Not everything works in Linux. The recent trend of TV stations making their shows available via the web is often only possible when you use the Windows-only video plugin to IE.  My daughter's not too happy about that one.  I also bought a new scanner and it comes with cool software to make the scanner experience smoother (such as turning a strip of negatives into five different photos automatically).  That software, of course, doesn't run on my Linux box.  Same with my digital camera, video camera, etc.  I'm not saying I can't store photos, videos, etc.  I'm just saying it's not as seamless as the Windows software would be.  And the cheap digital writing tablet I bought isn't supported at all in Linux.  I need to buy the more expensive version if I want to use it in Linux.  So depending on what you have, and how much new stuff you like to buy, you may find a really cool gadget that only runs on Windows.  Linux is also not hack-proof, but it is more hack-proof than Windows.  I'd also say that a default installation of Kubuntu is pretty secure, as it turns off things like httpd/sshd, etc.  Turning on sshd or serving up web pages with php can open up security holes, but the same would be true if I installed ssh on a Windows or MacOS system.  It's just that it's safe from the all those Windows viruses running around.    
• I do think you have to be "converted" first.  You might want to vote with your money and show Microsoft that you aren't a slave to their software, but you don't want to spend the money you'd need to spend to buy Macs.  You want to leverage all those not-so-new equipment PCs lying around the house that would be worthless to Vista or MacOS.  You want to support free software, etc.  There needs to be something more than just the computing experience.  If you want a truly better computing experience, just go buy a Mac.
• Here's what I did: I talked to my spouse & kids about all the viruses and how much we're spending to protect from them, then mentioned how Linux has none of those problems.  I talked to my kids about how I believe in paying for software that we use, and that upgrading our 3 PC household to the most recent OSs and apps -- and virus/spyware software -- will cost the equivalent of four-five Wiis, PS3s or Xbox360s!  (That got em!) I told them that Linux had similar apps that can do just about everything they need, but they will be different -- so they will need to be flexible.  I give them a dual-boot system so they could boot back into Windows whenever they want, with a common FAT32 partition so they have access to their files no matter what OS they're in.  When they boot into Windows, I asked why to see if you can do it in Linux.  There was lots of handholding and some remote desktop support in the early stages. (To help prod the kids along, we gave them a user account in Linux, but not one in Windows.)  I'm using Kubuntu 7.10 , and it does almost everything I need.  (One really nice feature of Kubuntu is you can put it on a CD and boot from that CD and try out Kubuntu/Linux without touching your hard drive.  If you don't like what you see, pull out the CD and reboot.)  If you have Windows apps that you just can't do without, they're supported on Linux using Crossover Linux.  They have a list of supported apps.  I'm using Office 2003, Quicken 2005, and Internet Explorer 6.0 no problem.  I'm using Amarok to sync my ipod, Mozilla to browse the web, I'm playing with Kopete & Instantbird for online chatting, Skype for voip, OpenOffice for documents, presentations, etc (daughter's using MS Office), Kino for video editing, and NOTHING for virus software!
• My "backup": I left one PC running Windows to act as my file server & Mozy backup server (see above), and for those very few apps or devices that I just can't run on Linux.  (I haven't de-windowfied my scanner yet.)
• Get a digital camera
• Film sucks.  Move on.
  
• Use a photo digitization service
• Take all those old photos and/or negatives and give them to a service that will digitize them for you.  I like scancafe.com.  500 photos is only $100 if you send them negatives.  Compare that to mother that spent four months doing the same thing with a scanner.  Yuck.  Their photos have a higher resolution (3000 dpi!) and are automatically and manually corrected (scratches, red-eye, colors, etc).  You can send them all your photos and they put them up on a website for you to view and you select the ones you want -- and you only pay for those!  (You have to pay for at least half of what you sent them)
• Get a digital video camera
• It can still be tape (minidv), but get a digital camera that stores things digitally and can output to fiirewire.  Trust me -- it's better.
• Import all your old videos
• Get an analog-to-digital conversion box and import all those old videos on your computer.  Now you can edit them and make them into DVDs for you and your friends.  For me, what worked better than the conversion box (for my old 8mm tapes) was an Hi-8 camera with firewire out.  (I"m also using Kubuntu 7.10 with Kino to do the work.)

Ideas I don't like

• Offsite storage services as your primary storage device
  
• I don't like the ONLY copy of my data being on someone else's servers.  I'm ok with services that help you share your photos, for example, but I don't think the only copy of your photos should be there.  I think it should be on that big hard drive (or server) I mentioned earlier, and then backed up to an offsite company.
• CDs/DVDs as your only backup
• I'm ok with them a a long time archive medium.  Once you've digitized all your old photos & videos, copying them to a few DVDs/CDs makes a lot of sense.  But due to the manual nature of using them for ongoing backup, I don't think they should be your only copy.  It would be really great if you got those things offsite somewhere, like your desk at work, so they don't die in a fire.
• Second hard drive as your only backup
• Automating backups to that hard drive will be a challenge more most people. And in a fire, it's just as dead.  Besides, you could get several years of backup services for what some of these hard drives cost.

Comments

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prwood - Mozy/EMC?     | 4.17.160.xxx | 2008-01-14 07:24:51 I noticed that in October of last year, Mozy was acquired by EMC. Do you have any thoughts as to how this will affect the long-term viability of Mozy as an offsite backup option, specifically with regards to pricing, capacity, and availability? I'd love to have a great offsite backup solution, and Mozy seems pretty cheap; I just wouldn't want to sign up with them if it seemed like EMC would be significantly changing the service.

cpreston - No problems yet   | Super Administrator | 2008-01-14 16:26:18 They bought Mozy to go after the home and really-SMB market. Since there's a competitor hot on their heels with the same pricing (carbonite), I doubt they would be so dumb as to change it. They'd lose most of their customers in a heartbeat. If you're concerned about that happening, give them $100 for two years service and fugetaboutit.

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Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved.