How often do you back up?

theloft

LouBlue wrote: »

I have read the thread but am still confused. I have Windows XP.
I hadn't backed up before, but almost lost everything, so then copied all my Word documents and precious photos onto CDs. There isn't anything else that I want to save, apart from emails but don't know how to do that.
I don't understand how I do it another way.

I had the same problem, trouble is backing up on CD's takes ages. My son bought me a USB Flash Pen Drive, which has more storage and is so quick. Each time you want to back up you can wipe the pen drive and load it again with the current back-up. Storage life is 10 years.
Here is a link to EBay section that has 4 GB drives for around £10. That's equivalent to about 14 CD's!
http://search.ebay.co.uk/search/search.dll?GetResult&attrmomento=2145%3A14_25489%3A31646_31716%3A3801_-10%3A41399_45891%3A10244_10425%3A35_-6&itemid=290201896071&itemsiteid=3&itemstate=2&prid=-1&query=4GB+USB+2+MEMORY+FLASH+KEY+PEN+DISK+DRIVE+SAMSUNG+STICK&sibeleafcat=108982&sim=y&ssPageName=MERCOSI_TLSearch

superscaper

I'd take that storage time with a pinch of salt. It only refers to the retention time of the flash cell. Not how long the pen drive will last or how long the data will remain readable. That's why I never use a pen drive as a significant backup method. I've seen pen drive corruption and failure many many times.

Stumpy

LouBlue wrote: »

There isn't anything else that I want to save, apart from emails but don't know how to do that.

Is that ok?

I don't understand how I do it another way.

There are a few freeware programmes out there that will automatically create backup files for your e-mails/address books, etc.

I use Firefox/Thunderbird, and was recommended "MozBackup" which is an excellent utility.

I too recently had a close call with a failing hard drive and decided with my xmas pennies to splash out on an external hard drive for backup. I ended up getting an Iomega 320g Home Network Drive which seems very good so far, although the software included with it is rather basic and apparently the backup software not very reliable, so I also bought Genie Backup Manager which seemed to get excellent reviews, and as I managed to get it for less than £20, I was well chuffed.

Genie has a fairly easy-to-use interface that allows plug-ins for lots of popular programmes, and will automatically backup things like e-mails, settings, favourites from Outlook Express, Thunderbird ..., together with your usual "My documents" folder, your registry, etc.

I would say though, that unless you actually want to backup different computers from a network, it would be easier getting a normal USB external hard drive - you can get decent ones from around £50.

Pearl66

Personally I recently bought two new Seagate SataII 16mb Cache internal HDD's. Got them set up on RAID as a striped array. This way when ones writes data it instantly writes to the other drive as well. small delay in saving/reading but when a disk does go down, and beleive me one day it will, then the other drive takes over automatically and I never even realise!

I guess the nice thing about external drives is the convenience. Just plug in and off you go. I love messing with my pc though so don't mind opening up my box and performing digital surgery

With hard drives becoming almost consumable in price... it astounds me people dont back up more often.

superscaper

Pearl66 wrote: »

With hard drives becoming almost consumable in price... it astounds me people dont back up more often.

People treat it as a luxury, or something they may get around to doing one day as if it's a one of non essential chore (if it even crosses their mind at all). It's just one of those things people only take seriously after something serious happens. So many people have come on this board saying they don't have a clue where to start with backing up or need the most fundamentals explained (which is what lead me to writing the backing up post/thread/sticky). I admit I don't always practice what I preach, I don't backup to CD/DVD as often as I should but I still image my disk to an external drive daily and also backup my docs online daily.

weegie.geek

Pearl66 wrote: »

Personally I recently bought two new Seagate SataII 16mb Cache internal HDD's. Got them set up on RAID as a striped array. This way when ones writes data it instantly writes to the other drive as well. small delay in saving/reading but when a disk does go down, and beleive me one day it will, then the other drive takes over automatically and I never even realise!

oh, I hope that was just a typo.

Two drives striped is raid 0. No redundancy at all, just double the space of the smallest drive.

Two drives mirrored, raid 1 is what I hope you meant. :eek:

edit: and to answer the main point of the thread, I don't backup the full system drive. All the stuff that wouldn't be recovered by reinstalling the apps is on a second drive, which gets backed up periodically, but the actual windows install and program installs, I'd rather just reinstall if it needs it, because my hardware config changes so often anyway.

kaydee

Pearl66 wrote: »

Personally I recently bought two new Seagate SataII 16mb Cache internal HDD's. Got them set up on RAID as a striped array. This way when ones writes data it instantly writes to the other drive as well. small delay in saving/reading but when a disk does go down, and beleive me one day it will, then the other drive takes over automatically and I never even realise!

I guess the nice thing about external drives is the convenience. Just plug in and off you go. I love messing with my pc though so don't mind opening up my box and performing digital surgery

With hard drives becoming almost consumable in price... it astounds me people dont back up more often.

PLEASE PLEASE Don't just rely on a RAID set up. That is exactly what I had, and I was smug as anything.....
and then one disc corrupted and copied to the other - result two useless discs and no back up!!
When I followed up it was amazing how often I was told that two discs in one computer still run from the one power supply and when that goes faulty (which is apparently as fairly common reason for computer failure) it takes out both!!
A stand alone external disc which you physically disconnect from your computer and unplug from the mains after you have backed up is the only safe way to be sure!!

theloft

LouBlue wrote: »

I have read the thread but am still confused. I have Windows XP. I hadn't backed up before, but almost lost everything, so then copied all my Word documents and precious photos onto CDs. There isn't anything else that I want to save, apart from emails but don't know how to do that. I don't understand how I do it another way.

Well Lou Blue, you now have loads of advice from these super techies, but if you're like me and not sure what you are doing, backing up to a pen drive is better than not doing it at all and much quicker. My son has been using this method for about 3 years without problems. Obviously an external hard drive is the best solution, but cost etc. then come into it. Sorry I did not post the link on my first reply. Also saving emails, you can highlight the ones you want to save and click on Save As at the top, you will then have a choice of where to save them. With the Address Book if you want to copy that, go to Tools, open Address Book, then click on Edit, highlight all , Copy and then Paste to a Document Folder or direct to your save medium. this is probably an amateur way of doing it, but it works.

superscaper

theloft wrote: »

Well Lou Blue, you now have loads of advice from these super techies, but if you're like me and not sure what you are doing, backing up to a pen drive is better than not doing it at all and much quicker. My son has been using this method for about 3 years without problems. Obviously an external hard drive is the best solution, but cost etc. then come into it. Sorry I did not post the link on my first reply. Also saving emails, you can highlight the ones you want to save and click on Save As at the top, you will then have a choice of where to save them. With the Address Book if you want to copy that, go to Tools, open Address Book, then click on Edit, highlight all , Copy and then Paste to a Document Folder or direct to your save medium. this is probably an amateur way of doing it, but it works.

That's why there's an entire sticky on the subject http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=597170

weegie.geek

kaydee wrote: »

PLEASE PLEASE Don't just rely on a RAID set up. That is exactly what I had, and I was smug as anything.....
and then one disc corrupted and copied to the other - result two useless discs and no back up!!
When I followed up it was amazing how often I was told that two discs in one computer still run from the one power supply and when that goes faulty (which is apparently as fairly common reason for computer failure) it takes out both!!
A stand alone external disc which you physically disconnect from your computer and unplug from the mains after you have backed up is the only safe way to be sure!!

Any decent PSU shouldn't take any components with it.

Using a standalone disc requires manually backing things up, so your backup is never up to date.

Sounds like your raid 1 array wasn't set up properly tbh.