How often do you back up?

mrchagle

CrashPlan for offsite and timemachine for local - works for me

Katarina187

I think a good rule of thumb should be. Back up at least once a month. Although you can get certain software that does it for you.

stinky_daddy

mrchagle wrote: »

CrashPlan for offsite and timemachine for local - works for me

I know this thread appears to have been reurrected, however I cannot find anything specifically referencing Macrium.

Therefore:

I downloaded and took an image using Macrium over the week-end (on a lap-top - not the machine I am writing this on as I am at work) and saved it to an external HDD.

Does anyone have any experience of Macrium, is it any good or should I be looking at some other (ideally free) software to utilise backing up / taking a snapshot of the lap-top's HDD?

TIA

s_d

RealGem

I use SyncBack SE. I started with the free version and even I could understand how to do all the types of backups I needed.

I paid a small amount for SE the pro version and would not be without it. I have an internal 1TB hard drive and two external ones, which all have the exact same stuff on.

All multimedia files go straight on the 2nd internal hard drive, so the large files are not slowing my main 250gb hard drive down and I can keep plenty of space.

I also recommend Dropbox for backing up online, and syncing to all your devices. I know people swear by Google docs or Google drive, but I like to stick with MS Office as I'm used to it and I can still keep them all up to date in realtime with Dropbox.

jenniemiller177

I have just got software from Proven Backup http://www.provenbackup.co.uk/desktop-backup-software.html

I installed it on my laptop. The software backups up your files and is then scheduled to take incremental images every 15 minutes. I would be distraught if I lost my stuff, so for me this is great. Once its set up I don't need to do anything other than have my external hard drive plugged in to my laptop. For me it's great. Its not massively expensive, think its was about £50 - £60.

galapogos33

As well as fortnightly Time Machine backups, all my important files live in Dropbox anyway so effectively I've got an up-to-date offsite copy (if not a proper backup) at all times.

I recommend setting up Dropbox for family members who don't know or (think they) care about backups. Set up a symbolic link between their documents folder and Dropbox...and they'll thank you when the inevitable catastrophe happens!

(I can't post a link, but look for a Lifehacker article called "Sync Files and Folders Outside Your My Dropbox Folder" for instructions on how to do this).

EarnItFast

every 2 weeks or so....Most of the time Microsoft does auto backups after updates so if i miss out its alright.

HiMyNameIsLauren

Never backed up in the past and learnt from it... not by taking a copy of my HD, but I store things that I wouldn't want to go missing on a secure cloud server that automatically keeps a constant upload of current records from folders of importance, or even my Gmail account for some items.

I think many of us in the past just, for a better expressions, couldn't be arsed to take the time out at a regular interval to do this, but these days, I don't think there's any excuse.

J.M.S

HiMyNameIsLauren wrote: »

Never backed up in the past and learnt from it... not by taking a copy of my HD, but I store things that I wouldn't want to go missing on a secure cloud server that automatically keeps a constant upload of current records from folders of importance, or even my Gmail account for some items.

I think many of us in the past just, for a better expressions, couldn't be arsed to take the time out at a regular interval to do this, but these days, I don't think there's any excuse.

I completely agree, no excuse now-a-days with automatic back up services like Dropbox and Google Drive!

Has anyone had experience with the cloud backup services that they would strongly recommend one over the others?

j.smith1981

I voted for once in a blue moon a few months ago, but now because I have both amanda (tape backup service working as a virtual tape drive in Linux) working to compress my already gun zipped backups from BackupPC ( I think it's called with the capital letters for that service) every week now, on a Sunday night at approximately 3am, as long as I leave my computers on (not logged in) then they all can be backed up it's set to when I first did a backup if those files have been in anyway modified they get backup up inclemently by date order for me so I don't have to remember, then their back up on my separate router machines hard drive on a virtual machine working along side that on a separate IP address.

I then upload the critical stuff I need to Comodo's COSService for their online secured/encrypted storage, along with backing up the same critical stuff on CD's, but still have to use a client of amanda to read the data back off (which is proving to be a pain, but works).

J.M.S wrote: »

I completely agree, no excuse now-a-days with automatic back up services like Dropbox and Google Drive!

Has anyone had experience with the cloud backup services that they would strongly recommend one over the others?

I don't know if drop box is encrypted for sending data to their servers for your own storage (never checked what port you're connecting to when you upload data to them or what the client of DropBox is to work out what it's listening to, to allow you to upload data, so I can't vouch for it's security), but if you are willing to pay for Comodo's storage their pretty good, have (after me requesting they do this) improve their speed of upload because it was taking 10-20mins to upload just 20k of a file I needed for something, their pretty good!

I have heard though you could open several DropBox accounts and people have developed applications to allow you to save to several accounts allowing you a greater level of storage capacity than just one account, but I haven't looked into that yet.