Backing Up Laptop

AngelEyes81

I have read around lots of older threads on this but thought I'd say my piece.

Lately I've become really paranoid about my pictures/files/word documents etc vanishing forever and knowing that you should always back things up - I haven't - it's making me need to do it.

I have a Del Inspiron 1525 and it's on it's last legs for space.......

Now at the moment I'm not techie at all (though would really love to be like all you clever people) but I know enough to get by usually.

** My space problem at the moment is my OS(C: ) bit, it's in the red so I know it ain't good ha.... it's got 1.09GB free of 136GB ....... is that really bad?

I do disk clean up, disk Defrag....... But ......I have a lot of pictures and files word documents on my laptop which I really need and want to keep but need to get off this laptop (I've already un-installed all the programmes I had on that I didn't really use and now have no PC games on this laptop)

Soo.......... What is the best way to keep all my pictures/files forever?

*Emailing them to a email account just for backing things up?

*Opening a facebook account just for private pictures?

*Photobucket or such like?

*CDs - I've tried the cheaper kind and they don't hold enough, besides I know that not all CDs/DVDs last forever.

*External hard drive?

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Thank you for reading

Hammyman

If you've got that much stuff, you're going to be paying for online storage unless you're splitting it over several sites. External hard drive can die. In short, you're facing the problem many people are. The only real sure way is to firstly get rid of the detritous, keep what you actually do want and back it up over DVD, ext HDD and online and then if one goes down, you've got duplicates.

I continue to find it incredible that people get so much stuff stored which is apparently invaluable but don't back it up. You'd be stuffed if your hard drive went titsup tonight and at £400+ for 20GB recovery, getting it back wouldn't be cheap.

bat999

Hi
I'm sure that other people will be able to advise you about backing up.

In the meantime why not try and find out what's using up your 136GB of disk space.
That's a lot of data.:eek:
Probably some of it is junk that should have been deleted long ago.

There's a program called ccleaner that will help you clean up.
From here:-http://www.piriform.com/

Then afterwards find out what's using your disk space with this program TreeSize.
From here:-http://www.jam-software.com/freeware/index.shtml

scottishblondie

Start with an external hard drive, then a program of backing up to DVD. I backup photos to DVD every 6 months (I don't take many photos tho). Every month I also create 2 separate backups of my important documents (if I lost my thesis that would be very, very bad!!)

So I have:
- Main copy
- Backup hard drive copy
- Backup DVD copy

I feel fairly secure in my backup process. It'll seem tough to begin with since you need to backup all of your data, but after that it'll be pretty easy to keep up with. It's also a good time to sort through everything, organise it properly and dispose of anything that isn't actually needed.

[Deleted User]

As with everything IT related, protection in layers. Do whatever makes sense for you but take notes of the above suggestions. Backup to DVD, memory stick, HDD, free online storage etc etc.

Avoriaz

AngelEyes81 wrote: »

…Lately I've become really paranoid about my pictures/files/word documents etc vanishing forever and knowing that you should always back things up - I haven't - it's making me need to do it.

I have a Del Inspiron 1525 and it's on it's last legs for space.......

It isn’t the lack of remaining space on your laptop that is creating the need for backups.

An almost empty disk can fail just as easily and terminally as an almost full disk.

If the data is important to you back it up properly, no matter how much free space you have on the laptop.

Listen to your paranoid feelings and get into the habit of regular and frequent backups.

Have an absolute minimum of 2 copies of anything important and preferably more copies.

Larnsky

If I was you I would definitely look into some form of backup. I've been to fix many peoples PCs where they have had a hard drive failure and it's the loss of the irreplaceable items which is always the worst..... I myself have lost information before and afterwards regretted taking a simple backup.

The good news is storage is pretty cheap.

Personally I have my information backed up on numerous devices around my house and certain content on 'the cloud'.

You can get external hard drives pretty cheap now, especially if they are a simple USB one, I would have thought you could get around 1TB for around £60 easily. You could then backup your entire PC using something like windows backup, or I use a program called allwaysync with my NAS drive which syncs my PC with my NAS drive whenever I leave it unattended for longer then 15 minutes.

For cloud storage you could use photobucket or Flickr for photos, Google Docs or drop box for documents and files. The downside to cloud storage is it all depends on your internet connection, if you don't have a superfast broadband service it's going to take a long time to get your information online.

fuzzball172

i use carbonite, you pay around £45 for unlimited online backup. Been using it for 3 years now, cant fault it

closed

120GB of photos and docs and programs is unlikely, they are tiny compared to music and video, look where your space is going.

Backups - disk image (maxblast/macrium reflect etc) to usb hard disk, plus a secondary backup of important photo's and docs to dvd, which hold 4.7GB each (1000's of photos), don't put all your eggs in one basket.

JasX

USB hard disk.... and if anythign is really critical burn it to DVD (typically hold up to 4GB ish per disk)