What backing up, etc do I need to do?

HUFCsteve

Another dumb question from me but... What backups, etc should I be doing and what's the most cost effective way? Probably have approx 10GB of photos and 12GB of music that I should be backing up. Also, as it's a Sony Vaio PC, whilst I do have original system discs - there are loads of them. Should I be making a Recovery disc just in case? And is there anything else I need to do?

Thanks!

superscaper

Pity there isn't something like a Sticky thread on the subject.
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=597170

[Deleted User]

HUFCsteve wrote: »

Another dumb question from me but... What backups, etc should I be doing and what's the most cost effective way? Probably have approx 10GB of photos and 12GB of music that I should be backing up. Also, as it's a Sony Vaio PC, whilst I do have original system discs - there are loads of them. Should I be making a Recovery disc just in case? And is there anything else I need to do?

Thanks!

I personally use an external hard disk drive to backup to. I also use robocopy.exe (guide here: http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/window-on-windows/?p=777) .

Regarding recovery disks - I don't bother to be honest - if I ever decide to wipe and start again I'll just use the discs supplied with the laptop, download all the windows updates, reinstall my dozen or so programs and run a robocopy command the other way, this time from the external HDD to my laptop.

Wookey

Bounce them onto an external hard drive as david says or burn em to cd/dvd rom, personal files/emails etc could be printed of or stored onto a usb memory stick. You only need to backup what you can't afford to lose or what isn't easily replaced. I use a 2nd hard drive in my pc, each drive has a copy of photos etc, just about everything else is replacable.

aliEnRIK

22 Gigs nothing
Backup to dvds

Wookey

loaner wrote: »

Backups to hard disks are a bit useless if you get a virus/worm.

Possible but very pessimistic and not likely to happen, i've yet to see a virus/worm/trojan take a hold of a system that has multiple HDD's and is properly protected and that cannot be removed/quarantined. Imagine the chaos if every server with redundant arrays had to have a cd/dvd backup.

Wookey

That may be true, how many however where totally unavoidable? properly updated, protected systems where the user shows commonsense reduces any risk to the absolute minimum. Done right, there would probably be more chance of a double HDD failure than a system being made totally corrupt. Usually PEBKAC.

Millionaire

Cd/Dvd backups can fail to. Either if you use poor quality discs or were unlucky enough to get a bad batch.

I have personally lost data backed up to Cd/Dvds, where data just over time became unrecoverable.

Millionaire

loaner wrote: »

Commonsense and patching doesn't protect against a new exploit.

To be honest I haven't had a virus/worm infect my pc since the late 90's and that was when I was transferring files via floppy disk.

Should I be worried? as I feel left out.

aliEnRIK

Millionaire wrote: »

Cd/Dvd backups can fail to. Either if you use poor quality discs or were unlucky enough to get a bad batch.

I have personally lost data backed up to Cd/Dvds, where data just over time became unrecoverable.

true, but if a user uses c*ap dvds, they only have themselves to blame
At least tick the 'verify' option when burning

I use DATAWARITE TITANIUM discs, and whilst ive had the odd 'coaster', ALL those that have burned have kept absolutely fine

mulldoonuk

aliEnRIK wrote: »

22 Gigs nothing
Backup to dvds

Yep....22Gb......my music folder alone is 86Gb!