How often do you back up?

free4440273

popparei wrote: »

hmmm, i dont really do much backup, maybe once or twice a year

:eek: bad idea

Capyboppy

@popparei I take it you have nothing of importance to worry about then:D

free4440273

Capyboppy wrote: »

@popparei I take it you have nothing of importance to worry about then:D

:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

Pitchshifter

Every decade, on the dot, without fail.

Evren

Once every couple months, generally I have a partition that is separate, so even if the windows section does completely mess up, it's still safe.

closed

not if the hard disk fails, or you get infected with a data corrupting worm

Evren

Well, then it's my own fault, though I've never had a data corrupting worm, and most stuff very important to me is put on a DVD anyway, like Photo's, things that are irreplaceable.

Choppit

In IT support circles, the life of a hard drive is expected to be somewhere around 5 years but in my experience you can expect a bottom to mid range drive (such as those fitted in most pre-built PCs) to last about 3 years. This means that for most users the likelihood of losing your data during the working lifetime of your PC is very high.
When my primary computer was a desktop PC I always had 3 *physical* hard drives containing OS, data and backups. I had scheduled full backups to disk daily and weekly then once a month I'd compress the last weekly backup onto an external disk and keep until I needed to free up space. Now my main device is a laptop I save all data to a mirrored NAS which I back up to external disk monthly and I also sync a few small, important and regularly used files between devices using dropbox.

Backup plans should be based on the importance and frequency of change frequency of your data, but the most important part is not the backup itself but the recovery of your data.

andyt999

Last time I backed up was this afternoon because we live on a narrow street and cars were coming down and I was courteous but they did not wave thank you.

Craftyscholar

marcosdjcm wrote: »

1. Absolutely definitely much more cost effective and time saving to back up to a portable external drive nowadays. DVD-Rs have had their day now that big drives are cheap. Pay about ~£35-£40 for a 500GB drive (make sure its portable, its more practical than the ones that plug into the wall for power, you'll thanks yourself in the long run)

2. Use backup software that manages it all for you, Apple Macs use a program called Time Machine that handles it all beautifully and i'm sure there are PC equivalents. You dont need to do any manual drag-and-drop file copying when you have one of these programs managing it for you.

3. Using the backup programs, all the important stuff will be dealt with for you

4. Get a program that does incremental backup, and then you dont have to worry about it, the program will do whats right.

5. Possibly, but having a backup is important either way.

Yes, I know I should back-up, but a lot of the advice on here sounded really complicated (non-techie 'bear of very little brain')

So is it really as simple as you say?
Does the external drive just 'plug and play'
Any recommendations for a reliable one?

Any other advice will be gratefully received.