How often do you back up?

joeypesci

ThriftyDave wrote: »

I'm a digital illustrator so it'd be pretty catastrophic if I lost all the files on my PC, I'd basically be waving goodbye to my entire portfolio of work!

I do most of my work on my main PC, but I make a copy of everything once a week on my laptop so I can always work on that if my PC explodes. As well as that I back everything up to a high capacity external hard drive every time I complete a project.

This is pretty handy If I decide to reformat or upgrade either of my machines, 'cause I know I'm safe to wipe them clean and restore everything from the external drive afterwards

Depending on the amount of data you may want to go to other forms as well, like Blu-Ray discs maybe. As HDDs have moving parts, they can fail as well. Perfect example is my Buffalo NAS drive. The backup drive. The NAS failed. The drive was OK but was a pain to try and recover it using Linux as I hate Linux. But still. I've been thinking of getting a Blu-Ray burner just for small amounts of important data.

But then nothing is perfect as even that could fail.

ThriftyDave_2

Eep, yeah I pretty much live in fear of losing all my data so the more forms of backup the better! I don't know much about blu-rays though, what's their capacity?

Spank

50GB atm, but 100 are on the way

ThriftyDave_2

Ah cool! Thanks Spank, that could be a good solution then, I've loads of old work that could go into a little blu-ray archive to make space on my hard drives. Plus, as a bonus I can use it to burn blu-ray movies to play on the old PS3! :P

Stewart_B

Try to back up my computer when I remember.

I have a (USB) datastick which has most of the stuff I use on a regular basis. I try to back this up weekly if I can, although admittedly this gets backed up on to my PC in case I lose the stick!

spikedouglas

But then I'm an IT professional who's seen that look on too many people's faces when they lose the 'unimportant' stuff.

It's all automated, so I don't have to do a thing.

With Mac OSX it's a doddle - no excuse.

davidm_uk

Continuously, while the PC is in use!

I use Genisoft Timeline which automatically runs in the background and looks for changed files (in areas that I define) and backs them up every four minutes. It keeps doing this until the specified disk starts to run out of space, I use a 500Gb external usb drive, located in a cupboard a little way away from my PC. Timeline does automatically consolidate backups as it goes, more progressivley for older ones, to conserve disk space. There is a free version available - just google.

Additionally, other important files (eg all my pictures) are backed up manually every month to a network attached 1Tb drive located at the other end of the house. Some things are also backed up to DVD every 6 months or so and kept away from the house.

Like Spike, I am (well, was) an IT professional, and have also "seen the look" on peoples faces.

NEVER think "it won't happen to me"!

isotonic_uk

I would recommend having either an external hard drive or if you can afford one a NAS Box and then you can use some software like quickshadow to do one full backup and then from then on whenever a change or a file is created on a PC or laptop with quickshadow installed it will automatically copy that file to an external drive.

Its effectively shadow copy for windows but the benefit is it backups to a remote drive.

jakswan

When i was working in IT often a customer would say 'I know I should back as if my hard drive crashed....' I always used to correct them 'not if when!'. Seemed to get the message across.

hostertlady

do you keep it plugged in all the time or just plug it in when you need to back up onto the external one

the reason i ask is i have just got a new desktop pc and i have put some of my stuff on it from my old desktop

but

do i need to back up stuff that came with this new one? the stuff thats preinstalled? it keeps asking me to insert a disk into the e drive but do i need a disk?? why cant i save it onto my external HD

i hope my question makes sense, i know what i am trying to say but its whether i am writing it properly