How often do you back up?

The_JinJ

After I lost a few files I went with online backup - went with a company called Databug - https://www.databug.co.uk

superscaper

I've decided to give Mozy a try. Same price as Carbonite but seems more versatile.
My few niggles with Carbonite are:
Occasional noisy "checking" of my floppy drive
No web access to files independant from the pc I registered with
and my main one not very good at handling large outlook email files, eg get a new email and it has to save the entire pst file (even if it's 500 MiB, or some of you will have even larger) over again.

I'm hoping Mozy will be better at coping with the aforementioned issues.

jackbremer

superscaper wrote: »

I personally never saw the point in parititions, no different really than just having folders. If your hard drive fails then you lose everything and it doesn't matter if you have it partitioned.

True, BUT they are great for wiping Windows and starting again - if you store all your personal files and documents on a separate partition, you just format the C drive, reinstall Windows and Office etc and hey presto, you still have all your files on the D drive, without having to restore from backups...

Of course drive failure is a risk, so use an onine backup application such as Mozy - https://www.mozy.com (2GB free, 50GB @ $4.95/month)

Remember people, hard drives have 100% failure rate.

Marie103

to be honest i don't back up my computer ... is backing up necessary for non-professional computers?? (that is if you do not have very important infos on your laptop )

superscaper

Marie103 wrote: »

to be honest i don't back up my computer ... is backing up necessary for non-professional computers?? (that is if you do not have very important infos on your laptop )

It's important for home pcs as well. But if you've got nothing to lose then I don't suppose it matters. But many people have got email, photos, documents etc that they can't really afford to lose for either practical or sentimental reasons. Just a few months ago in the news there was a couple that had their laptop stolen, it had 100s if not 1000s of photos and videos (eg birthday party) of their terminally ill child on it. The files hadn't been backed up and I'm sure they wish they had now and it this has nothing to do with a "professional computer" or professional reasons. But it's something that's irreplaceable all the same.

If your hard disk got wiped tomorrow and you easily reinstalled the operating system and programs, and are perfectly happy that that is all you need and you don't feel like you've lost anything then maybe there is no need to backup but you're in a very small minority if that is the case.

Lakeotter

An excellent BRITISH programme is HyperOS - backs up a whole working drive. A bit technical but very good fast. Google HyperOS for details. Recently dropped their prices also works with Vista.

An excellent FREE incremental backup programme is Karens Replicator - again Google for it. You can set it to back up pretty much everything you want although I fand just Docs & Settings is fine. Once you run it first time it then adds anthing you change or add to Doc & Settings. You can set it to backup to a USB drive, second internal HDD etc.

Lakeotter

Infidel

I never back up.

The closest i come to backing up is probably burning films onto cdr once i have watched them.

I guess i should back-up though, as if my PC conked out i'd lose all my digi photos taken over the past 3 years.

Is there a better way of backing up than just burning onto cdr's?

MercilessKiller

My advice on backing up... Netgear have a fantastic Network Attached Storage Drive which is brand new.. around the £100 mark.

It has 2 SATA slots inside of it.

You can stick in 2 SATA drives and either use them for capacity, or raid them (raid 0 to 5 as normal)..

So my advice would be, buy a NAS, get to 160GB drives.. Raid1 them (mirroring so if one hard dirve breaks the other has the data).

As its network attached multiple pc's can backup. Stick an automatic schedule on your pc to backup once a week all changed files in certain directories...

Once you've done this you never have to worry about backups again! It all gets done automatically. You may want to check the drivers every now and then to ensure they're still working but even if 1 failes, ur fine!

The downside is the cost. Obviously its a lot cheaper using DVD-RW's but at the same time its a lot more work and a lot slower if you have large amounts of data to store.

External Hard drives are also a good idea, but once again its single point of failuer,.. THat's why I would recommend the Netgear. A great backup solution.

Not sure if this would be classed as moneysaving, but definitely time and worry saving so an opportunity cost

fayraz

isofa wrote: »

* I also have a laptop and a desktop and use Microsoft's free SyncToy software to keep them in sync.
Link: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/digitalphotography/prophoto/synctoy.mspx

Never even knew this SyncToy program existed, looks extremely useful.

alanisclairer

I always backup my files..