How often do you back up?

stuart07970

i back-up every hour automatically via my operating systems Time Machine function wirelessly to my Time Capsule. Easy!

I have my music library on a Western Digital mybook pro 500gb,
which i manually backup to an identical drive about twice a month.

Back your photos and docs to optical media, but its just not practical for everything!

stuart07970

yes!

all drives fail !

but the chances of your both your internal and backup dsrive failing at the same time are too small to worry about.

However do disconnect any back-up drive that you are not using.
Some people take a backup to work incase they get burgled at home!

haverhillhammer

skyrider007 wrote: »

once every 1 hour! i have a Mac with OS10.5 leopard so i use "time machine" to automatically back up my laptop to the external HD.

Me too! Good, innit?:T

mentat72

An external USB drive is a fine backup solution, but no backup solution is foolproof - using any form of media is open to failure. But never use floppies.

As for how often...

C Drive - apps & operating system - once a week
D Drive - Games & Data files - once a week
E Drive - Data & Downloads - once a week
My Documents & Settings - once a day/as required.

This is because I am on my PC at least once a day.

Use Norton Ghost 12 although I would happily use a freeware solution that could provide with a one click restore solution, but haven't found one yet. They all seem to require a basic OS or the app reinstalled prior to restore - to me that isn't a recovery, that's a rebuild.

Aiadi

Started using this recently:
http://allwaysync.com/
and what a fantastic tool I found it to be. Even comes with a portable version. Lots of options and profiles can be created for immediate backups.

Hope it helps somebody.:beer:

20000RPM

Personally, I use SyncBack to 'snapshot' my email and work files to an external hard drive once a day. I then use Windows' built in Backup utility to back up to am internal drive once a week ('normal' for the first one then 'incremental' for the next few weeks). I periodically encrypt the Windows backup file and burn it to a few DVDs.

To get the file to span the DVDs I split the file using 7zip.

SyncBack: http://www.2brightsparks.com/syncback/
7zip: http://www.7-zip.org/
Both are free.

wolfman

Syncback is a great app, well worth paying the tenner or so for the full version.

I don't use Windows anymore, but when I did it was great. Plenty of features.

techno12

I've been a PC user for 20 years and never backed up, and have never had a drive catastrophically fail.. I always upgrade every 4 or 5 years and transfer the entire drive to my new system, so I guess the MTBF never kicks in for the old drives..

Completely overblown threat/risk if you ask me (just like viruses - I laugh my head off sometimes at the insane media blurb on them "they can hack your bank account blah blah" - NO THEY CANT!). A lot of companies prey on the thick/ignorant/misinformed general public who are scared of 'viruses'

PS Of course, I can live without my PC data, I guess if you're running a business of something where data-retention is vital then it's a different story, but for the average punter there's no need whatsoever to backup, as drives fail once in a blue moon!

wolfman

Are you serious?

Is this guy serious? I think he's serious.

Hard drives do fail. I've owned dozens over the years, and had a few fail. It's not necessarily that common, but it does happen.

I would count yourself lucky more than anything else. and would consider your comments rather foolish and naive. Especially regarding viruses.

Data IS important to the "average punter". I for example have bought around £1k's worth of music, and have endless amounts of photos from all my travels. I have finance related data, address book/contact details, code/development work I do, plenty of stuff.

And yes I could lose it all. But I'd rather not. Especially the photos and other items that a price can't be put on.

The cost and time of losing it would be quite high.
The cost of buying a second hard drive for £50 and scheduling backup is fractional in comparison.

It's like not carrying a spare tyre in your car. Ok you may never get a flat. But when you do you'll get stuck at the side roads for ages, probably incurring a lot of cost. I'll simply whack on the spare and continue on my way.

Always backup. Given the risk, it's worth it.

superscaper

wolfman wrote: »

Are you serious?

Is this guy serious? I think he's serious.

Hard drives do fail. I've owned dozens over the years, and had a few fail. It's not necessarily that common, but it does happen.

I would count yourself lucky more than anything else. and would consider your comments rather foolish and naive. Especially regarding viruses.

Data IS important to the "average punter". I for example have bought around £1k's worth of music, and have endless amounts of photos from all my travels. I have finance related data, address book/contact details, code/development work I do, plenty of stuff.

And yes I could lose it all. But I'd rather not. Especially the photos and other items that a price can't be put on.

The cost and time of losing it would be quite high.
The cost of buying a second hard drive for £50 and scheduling backup is fractional in comparison.

It's like not carrying a spare tyre in your car. Ok you may never get a flat. But when you do you'll get stuck at the side roads for ages, probably incurring a lot of cost. I'll simply whack on the spare and continue on my way.

Always backup. Given the risk, it's worth it.

I've lost count the number of times people have come onto this board wanting to recover their lost data. And it's been personal data, not business stuff. I honestly don't personally know anyone that could afford to lose everything on their pc. Almost everything for me is about the personal stuff I'd lose. But the sweeping generalisation that "for the average punter" there's no need to backup has certainly not been my experience and one of the most shocking pieces of "advice" I've ever seen on this board.