Easy & Inexpensive way to Backup

Backup - Process of keeping data safe by storing it in a secondary storage area.

Its always been a problem here in India to have a proper backup solution. Its highly impossible that a hardisk these days stays without crashing after 2 years. What happens to all that data; outlook mail, favorites, your precious family pictures..all gone forever??? You could give your hardisk to a company which restores both but its quite costly around 2500Rs.

Getting wireless LAN setup, or an external hardisk is still too expensive and quite a complex solution for most PC home users. Even if you do get all those gadgets you might think its a horrible and cumbersome idea to actually collate what ever you might have added from the last time you backed-up and write data on to an external media once in while. So what can a middle class Indian do to have this luxury?

The good news is you can now automate the entire process

...all you need is a

1. CD/DVD writer - comes with most PCs vendors give these days assembled or branded
2. Nero 6- This software comes free with almost every CD/DVD writer
3. Rewritable CD/DVD - around 60Rs. for a CD(RW) and 120Rs. for a DVD(RW)

Nero version 6 has a separate software bundled along with its writing software called 'BackItUp'. This lets you

1. have a scheduled backup. You can let Nero do the back regularly without you having to initiate it, as long as you leave the PC on.
2. choose the folders or drives you would like to backup.
3. backup on a CD/DVD you can have 'Differential' or 'Incremental' backup setting only if it is re-writable, and I would definitely recommend it. These two settings are great features in Nero which do all the tedious work for you, like checking to see what has already been backed up and backing up all the new files or newer versions of the same file.
4. use external hardisk, which can also do the job. This is slightly expensive though... a hardisk for around 2500Rs. a USB IDE cable which is now commonly available for around 1500Rs. But this is definitely not for the normal user who only has about 700mb to 4GB in 6 months. This system very helpful for people who do not want to have different versions of the same file by using the 'UpdateBackup' setting.

For those who want to push the envelope you can always have an external hardisk on a wifi network.