How often do you back up?

4everonline

i have 3 computers and my laptop and i have to make sure i synchronise all the 3 computers in the morning and once again at night. so my files stay safe not on 1 but 4 computers and i believe i cannot be that unlucky that all my 4 computers will crash at the same time.

MPwannasavemoney

I've just bought Norton Ghost (£11 from ebay) and the new PC has a DVD writer - much easier to do backups now!

reddevilled

I only backup about once a month. Is that bad?

scheming_gypsy

ceciliag wrote:

I need to back up my personal files and so far have NEVER managed to do it... I have a PC with XP that supposedly reads and writes CDs DVDs. However, if I insert an empty CD the only two options it gives me are to burn music. What program should I download to copy documents, mostly text?

highlight all your files you want to backup, right click > send to > cd drive. Then go to the CD drive and i think it's file > burn files to CD

scheming_gypsy

reddevilled wrote:

I only backup about once a month. Is that bad?

that's once a month more often than me, i back up if and when i can be bothered.

seanparkin

As my home PC is my work and my life, I have to be quite careful!

I have two PC's, my work PC is used explicitly for work. I have a full image created with Norton Ghost, no other applications or anything else are installed or used other than those I need. I use a SCSI array for hard drive redundancy, and I use offline folders to automatically duplicate anything onto a NAS drive that is taken with me if I'm away for any length of time. Retrospect backup keeps up to four weeks of backups at any time also backed up to the NAS drive.

In practice, I can restore this computer to almost any time within the last month in about 8 minutes.

My other computer though just gets abused

FindMeInk

I backup all my work stuff daily onto a USB flash drive at work, and at home I have nothing of that much importance, although I have a network fileserver up in the loft that I keep a backup of all my music, films and other stuff on. It would take a hell of a long time to rip all of those CDs and DVDs again...

superscotsman

The easiest way to back up is to put any new stuff on a zip drive every week or so. If you have got a spare cable, you can buy yourself another hard drive and use that as a slave, then back up on that.

MPwannasavemoney

superscotsman wrote:

The easiest way to back up is to put any new stuff on a zip drive every week or so. If you have got a spare cable, you can buy yourself another hard drive and use that as a slave, then back up on that.

This is fine for documents, pictures, files, videos, etc etc however it won't work for backing up your windows and program files directory. Safest is to buy Norton Ghost (you can get it on ebay for less than £15) or similar backup / disk imaging software and store it on another drive (zip, hard drive, dual / double layer DVD etc) and read up on how to restore it if you need to.

Andy_Harris_2

I have an exchange server, just so I have back up on my calender, e.mails notes etc, I also sync it with my PDA so if anything does happen I know where to go and who to meet the next day, another very seriuos question is...

Where do you keep your back up ?

It may be OK to back up every night/week/month, and keep your backup CD in your desk drawer, but what happens if you have a fire and it destroys your office/home ?
Everything is lost, including your computer and back up discs, this was the main reason why I signed up to an exchange server, I could log onto anywhere in the world and still be functional.

As for the original question, my important data, spreadsheet, receeipts etc I back up everytime I add a new sheet, straight onto a CD that lives with my laptop :eek: So do as I say, not as I do !!

Andy