You’re syncing, but are you backing up?

Failing to understand the difference between syncing and backing up your precious research could cost you years of work. Take a minute to wrap your mind around the two. Make it a priority.

Syncing and backing up are similar and often interconnected. They are both immensely valuable to the world of data. But they are not the same thing.

What is syncing?

You synchronize (“sync”) your data with a server in another location (aka “the cloud”), usually in a continual stream. As you change something on your computer, a copy of the new material streams to the remote location of your choice, forming a replica of your work there. If something changes on the other end, it syncs to your computer. If you gave it time to catch up with the last typing you did before you shut down your computer, your off-site copy is up to date. When all is going well, you now have two copies of your data. Usually, the one that you have synced out to the cloud can be accessed from anywhere you have an Internet connection. Great stuff!

What is a backup?

A backup is also a copy of your data that should be kept off-site, but it is created in a different way. A backup is not constantly streaming your work as you do it. It is a snapshot of your data at a moment in time. A backup is static, unchanging. It is usually not used unless there has been a data loss or a move of data to a new place—say a new computer.

Do I need both?

In hasty retrospect, syncing sounds like a better option—always dynamic and up to the minute—and you might be thinking you don’t need to back up. And that’s where things get tricky.

As long as your computer is syncing excellent data to another location, it can serve the purpose of a backup. If your computer crashes, you can buy a new one and pull the data back in from where you synced it.

But what happens if the data on your computer gets corrupted? It happens! The corrupted data will sync out and become your copy at the off-site location. Syncing keeps up with your computer, often letter by letter, as you type. Therefore, you might find yourself wishing you had a copy of your data from ten minutes earlier—before the corruption happened.

That’s where the backup comes in, being an earlier snapshot. Rarely are you lucky enough to have a data backup from ten minutes ago, unfortunately. If your sync goes bad, you are probably going to find yourself having to redo some of your work.

Double syncing

Syncing can be more sturdy than it sounds above if you have been smart about choosing your syncing program and setting it up. For example, I sync both my home and work computers to the same cloud site. If I suffered corruption at home, and it synced to the cloud, there is still a good copy of my data on my work computer. It is vitally important that I disconnect Internet service before I open the copy at work, or it will draw in the corrupted data, too. It’s not going to be completely up to date, since I was adding new material at home when the data corrupted. While this is double protection, it’s risky, if there’s any chance someone else might turn on my computer while I’m away—or if my computer connects to Wi-fi and syncs before I can disconnect it.

So a backup is still the smart thing to do, along with syncing.

Cloud versioning

If you are smart in choosing your cloud service, it might be backing up versions of your synced data. I am using Dropbox Plus, and it keeps a version history for 30 days. So everything I sync has a temporary backup.

Of course, we all know that research can sometimes experience a hiatus. We go on vacation or get drawn into another project. You might go longer than 30 days before you realize your data corrupted last month and synced that way.

So a backup is still the smart thing to do, along with syncing.

Our most-precious things

Protect what matters to you by thinking through what is on your computer, category by category. Are your treasures safe?

Ancestry.com

For the genealogists using Ancestry.com, I wouldn’t recommend that you simply trust Ancestry to have a backup of your data—though they are probably backing up their assets. You need to be downloading your trees to GEDCOMs now and then and backing them up. If you are syncing to Family Tree Maker or other software programs, you do have a backup of your data.

You will often find that the restoration of a tree that has corrupted on Ancestry.com (and I think most of us have been there) usually does not put it back quite like it was. The sources that were originally linked to Ancestry’s rich databases are still documented, but usually no longer linked to the images of the census records, etc. I do not know of a way to correct this but would love to hear from you if you know the secret. (Make sure you back up your Family Tree Maker files to a safe off-site place, too.)

Zotero or other research software

You may also be keeping research records in other places on your computer. As you all know very well, Zotero is my record keeper. Anyone using Zotero needs to be aware that its syncing feature syncs only a single copy to Zotero.com. It is for the convenience of remote access and was never intended to be a backup. But it’s also important to know that you should never store Zotero’s data on your hard-drive in a cloud syncing folder. The constant streaming of new data out to Zotero, while you continue to type, will inevitably corrupt your data. If you’re using Zotero, back up the files on a regular basis. You can let the backup sync to your own cloud—just not the live data while in use.

The number of “precious things” we all store online will be as varied as we are. Yours might be family photographs or novels you are writing. Ask the questions about syncing versus backups of any software providers you use for your treasures.

Backing up to the cloud

The cloud is a wondrous thing because it copies your data to a location hopefully far enough from your home or work NOT to be taken out in the same natural disaster. Getting your data to a distant location was tough to do before the cloud came along.

Now, if you have service from a quality cloud storage provider, you can back up specific data or your entire computer to a cloud folder on your computer, and it will be synced to the cloud—a static snapshot safe and sound.

Backup Software

One of the things I have loved about syncing is that it operates without depending upon my memory. (I have very little left.) So a faithful backup of the critical things on my laptop also requires software that I can schedule to do it for me.

I’ve been using a free version of AOMEI Backupper Standard, which lets you set a schedule to back up daily. I back up my full system now and then and back up critical things like my Zotero and Family Tree Maker files daily. I have only been using AOMEI for a short time, but I find it easy to use, and it is reviewed well.

It can be difficult to exercise the discipline of caring for your data. Many of us will never restore from a backup. Daily diligence for something that may never happen seems like a tedious overkill. But keep in mind what you have put into the material collected on your computer. Do you have another lifetime to reconstitute it? Can it even be reconstituted—that priceless clip of video you pulled from a phone that has long since gone to cell phone heaven?

This is a priority.

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