Your district laptop is very similar to a house or apartment. With time it starts to show age and needs to be repainted or reshingled to maintain the house/apartment. Your district laptop is very similar in that that at times the technology department needs to update your laptop with new software or just give you a new laptop because your old one is too old. Since your laptop is provided to you to assist you in performing your job it is very important that you maintain backups of your data. The technology staff is not responsible for your data. It is your responsibility to implement a backup strategy. The technology staff will help you in this process.

This guide will go over various strategies for maintaining a good backup of your data. 

Why backup? 

Your laptop is much like a house. It stores all of your digital "stuff". Imagine all of the items in your home, books, movies, clothes, etc. Your laptop is full of your "stuff" or data. Documents, spreadsheets, presentations, images, music, etc all lives in your laptop. If your laptop happened to be damaged, you could lose all of these valuable documents. Every year we have a dozen staff members who do not backup their data and end up losing all of their data because their laptop malfunctioned or was dropped. To keep your documents safe, you must backup on a regular basis. You do not want to risk losing all of your files. 

Additionally, you may be given a new laptop to replace your old laptop. In this case, you would be required to backup all of your data and return your old laptop to the tech staff. Then you would need to download your data to your new laptop. Having a good backup strategy is important for a successful laptop swap. 

What files do I want to keep?

The time to think about "what do I want to keep when my laptop gets replaced?" is well before it is reimaged of replaced. 

At the basic level you would want to backup anything that you created and saved on your laptop. But as we all know we also create many documents that might be out of date or duplicates of other files. Before you backup, it would be a good time to do some spring cleaning and delete out files you no longer need. This makes your life easier and makes backups quicker. 

Things to keep: 

Documents: (Appleworks, iWork, Pages, Word, Numbers, Office, Noteshare, etc). To make the backup process easier teachers should store their documens in their Document folder. (Harddrive > Users > Teacher > Documents). This is a folder designed to hold all of your documents. In reality many teachers store their documents in their desktop. Having an organized file structure (documents organized by folders) will make it easier to backup your data. 

Photos: The best place to keep your photos is in iPhoto. By default, iPhoto stores all of your photos in a folder called "Pictures". This folder is located: Harddrive > Users > Teacher > Pictures. This would be a good time to delete any unwanted or duplicate pictures. 

Movies: YOur iMovie projects are save in the Movies folder. This folder is lcoated: Harddrive > Users > Teacher > Movies.   If you are finished , Movies should be exported with QuickTime or iDVD or published to YouTube or iTunes depending on the version of iMovie you are using.  Save the iMovie project itself only if you intend to edit it some more.  These projects are very large and will consume a lot of space on whatever device you use for backup.

Music: If you use iTunes for your music player, most likely all of your music is stored in the Music folder. This folder is located:  Harddrive > Users > Teacher > Music. When you create music and audio files in Garageband, the projects are stored in a Garageband folder in your Music folder until they are exported.  If your projects are complete, export the songs to iTunes and delete the projects from your GarageBand folder.

Browser Bookmarks-Safari and Firefox: If you have saved favorite web sites as bookmarks in Safari or Firefox, you will have to export those bookmarks if you want to keep them. An alternative is to use a web-based bookmark collection tool (portaportal) for all your bookmarks so they are available to you from any machine that has internet access and you never have to worry about losing them. 

iCal Calendar: If you use iCal for your calendars, you will need to back them up also.

Where will I back up my stuff? 

Where you save your backup files will depend on many factors.  All schools have a file server to use for backing up your data. If you do not have a password for your local file server, please contact your building technology integration specialist.

Below are things that you can backup to the school file server: 

Wordprocessing documents (Appleworks/Pages/Word)

Presentation documents (Powerpoint/Keynote)

Spreadsheets (Numbers/Excel)

Web Bookmarks (Safari/Firefox)

PDF files

Limited number of school related music (Nothing over 200mbs)

Files that should NOT be backed up to the file server include: 

Movies

Music

Pictures

Applications

Other places to backup my stuff? 

CD's: Small backup needs under 700 MBs. (All of the staff Macbooks can burn a data CD) Click here to learn how to burn data to a CD. 

Pen Drive (Flash Drive): Medium Back-up needs. A pen drive is a small USB hard drive. You can purchase a Pen Drive at Bestbuy or Walmart and range in prices: $15-$70.

External Hard Drives: High capacity needs. An external hard drive is a hard drive that hooks into your laptop. It can be either firewire or USB. You can purchase an external hard drive at Best Buy or Walmart. Prices range from $50-$100. 

Teacher Backup Checklist: 

1. Have I decided where to back my data up to?

• CD/Pen Drive/External Hard Drive/File Server

2. Have I backed up my documents?

• Have I checked my documents folder for things I need to keep and deleted the documents I no longer need? (Hard Drive > Users > Teacher > Documents)
• Have I checked for folders on the desktop or elsewhere that contain files I want to keep?

3. Have I backed up my photos?

• Have I copied my Pictures folder which includes my iPhoto library. (Hard Drive > Users > Teacher > Pictures)

4.  Have I backed up my music? 

•  Have I copied my Music folder. This folder includes my iTunes music and Garageband projects. (Hard Drive > Users > Teacher > Pictures)

5. Have I backed up my calendars in iCa?

•  Have I exported my iCal calendars? Click here to learn how to do this. 

6. Have I backup my Movies?

• Copy the Movies folder.  ((Hard Drive > Users > Teacher >Movies)

7. Have I copied my bookmarks from Firefox and Safari?

• Safari: From Safari > File > Export Bookmarks. To restore the Safari bookmarks: File > Import bookmarks.
• Firefox: From Firefox > Bookmarks > Organize Bookmarks > Click Import and Backup.

How do I restore my files when I get my new laptop?

• Desktop: you can just drag and drop the desktop folder into the teacher home folder. (Hard Drive > Users > Teacher > Desktop)
• Documents: you can just drag and drop the documents folder into the teacher home folder. (Hard Drive > Users > Teacher > Documents)
• Music: Open the Music folder in the teacher home folder. (Hard Drive > Users > Teacher > Music) Open the Music folder and copy your backup iTunes folder into this folder.
• Photos: Open the pictures folder. (Hard Drive > Users > Teacher > Music) Copy your backup iPhoto LIbrary into this folder.
• Movies: you can just drag and drop the Movies folder into the teacher home folder. (Hard Drive > Users > Teacher > Movies)
• iCal: Click here to learn how to do this. 
• Safari Bookmarks:  From Safari > File > Import Bookmarks.
• Firefox Bookmarks: From Firefox > Bookmarks > Organize Bookmarks > Click Import and Backup.

How often should I backup?

This all depends on you and how often you create and change your files. The technology department recommends you backup at least once every 1-2 weeks. You should never go more than a month without backing up your data. Ideally, to be safe, it is wise to backup your data on a weekly basis. 

Software to help backup:

Time Machine: All laptops that are running version 10.5 (Leopard) have Time Machine.Time Machine is an application that allows you to backup your files to an external hard drive. You should never use Time Machine with the file server. Time Machine is designed to work with external hard drives and not file servers. 

Click here to watch a video demonstrating how to use TimeMachine

SilverKeeper: SilverKeeper a release of LaCie's free backup application. This software allows you to backup your data to your file server account or to an external hard drive.

To download SilverKeeper: Click here

Click here to watch a video demonstrating how to use SilverKeeper with an external hard drive.  

Big thanks to Barbard Greenstone with creating this document. To view Barbara's backup guide, click here.