Backing up .....

johnnytee

I have just backed up my laptop for the first time. I started putting it on disks as instructed, but after i'd got through 4 disks with only 40% complete I decided to ditch that and put the back up on an external HD I had kicking around.

Anyway, after the back up was complete I was astonished to see that it had taken 53.64 GB of space on the HD :eek:

My question is: firstly is this correct, and secondly, how do other people manage to find such vast amounts free capacity to back up their commputers?
Cheers all

m5rcc

Depends what you have backed up exactly. I assume its the whole OS, including programs and personal files and folders, so yes, it would be right.

gonzo127

doesnt sound at all unreasonable for a back up, 53gb would not even cover my photos back up let alone music and movies etc - and back up storage online, portable hard drives and dvds

Mr_Toad

I have 4TB of NAS storage on my network at home to store backups of my photographs, music and various document types. I also have a couple of 500GB USB drives that I use.

I keep several backups of my photographs and documents on different devices as well as some files on DVD. I also maintain backups on a spare server at work, just in case.

I've seen too many people crying over lost files to take backups for granted.

fenlander_uk

I have two 1TB drives for video, music, photos, etc. - and a 2TB drive to back them up to.

You need to evolve a strategy for backups. Sensible partitioning of your hard disk helps: keep your OS and program installations in the C: partition and all data elsewhere. Backing up my C: drive (with Macrium Reflect) takes about 20GB. To back up the data on my other drives I use Syncback, which keeps a sychronised copy of everything I don't want to lose. Having your data sharing the system drive really makes life difficult.

ChiefGrasscutter

I have multiple external hard drives and by using them in sequence the backups are rotated around to guard against one of the disks suddenly becoming unuseable at the same time as my main hard drive failing.
One of my external hard drives is permenantly connected to act as an immediate backup facility, the others are only connected for the duration of the backup. This guards against a power surge/power supply failure sending a pulse through the system wiping out drives etc all at once.

robt_2

ChiefGrasscutter wrote: »

I have multiple external hard drives and by using them in sequence the backups are rotated around to guard against one of the disks suddenly becoming unuseable at the same time as my main hard drive failing.
One of my external hard drives is permenantly connected to act as an immediate backup facility, the others are only connected for the duration of the backup. This guards against a power surge/power supply failure sending a pulse through the system wiping out drives etc all at once.

Doesn't guard against fire/theft though. Consider an off-site backup too - keep one of them at a friends/relatives house

dsavvy83

I must agre with previous posts, i have about 3 500gb hard drives and two 1TB hard drives i tend to store my photos across most of them and i store them at my mums and at my place.

but if you only got 50+gb that is not alot really.

Always back up the things you dont want to lose.