How often do you back up?

HC_2

I learned the hard way. Lost everything in the summer because of a particularly vicious virus.

I'm not very techie and didn't want to spend a lot of money, so I bought a tiny 40GB portable hard disk drive for about £50 and use the XP Home back-up utility. I back up everyone's documents and settings about once a week. I'm not too worried about software - it's either on CD or I can redownload it (as long as you print out the paperwork with activation keys etc.). You can back up direct to a hard drive - or to a CD (I did this a few times, but my files very quickly ended up too big for a CD).

I think the XP back-up tool is excellent. It proved its worth just a couple of weeks ago when Norton GoBack threw a wobbler (I had to reactivate Windows XP again, and lost all my software and preferences, although I still had all my documents - it was v weird).

Ganyam

Got 3 200gb hdd so backing up is either a pain, or non existant.. each one full or should i say was, one drive failed last wk loosing the majority of what was on it..

Least i had backed up the most important such as the money files, emails, documents and spread sheets.

Just spending the last 3 days trying to recover anything i can. :rolleyes:

tigermatt

Not sure if I have posted in this thread before (think I may have voted) but I use Norton Ghost 2002 to create an image of one of my machines here. The other machines I don't worry about, because everything like User Profiles is stored on the other machine.

The only trouble with using Norton Ghost is that it is a 120GB drive, and I can't take the system out of service for too long due to the distruption to the other PCs.

MUDGUTS

Everything that I would need if my PC went missing / blew up is stored in folders (that contain documents, addresses, pictures, etc.) on the desktop, including the pst file that is a backup of all the Outlook data.

I save all of my these folders onto a CD (by dragging them into the Nero Smartstart box thing and burning a new disc). I do this about once or twice a month or if I have something new that I have added.

My thinking is that I need to be able to stick it all onto a new PC / Laptop should the worst happen. I know I will lose favorites, settings, etc. but can live with that. The whole lot comes to about 400MB so I can easily fit it onto one CD.

Assuming the whole PC went belly up I know that if it can't be fixed I just have to start again.

Am I missing something? If you have more than one CD of data can't you just use more than one? Why do you need anything more?

tigermatt

Hi, Different versions of backup are OK for different people. I only take such care over my machine that stores everything because everything is on it. The Client PCs don't matter because they basically get all of their information from the main computer.

Your backup method is fine, providing you don't mind losing things like settings and favourites etc. if your computer did break down. Personally, I wouldn't want to lose such information, but everything is different.

It is probably also possible to span over 2 CDs should you exceed a CDs file size limit. Have a play around with Nero and try it. It might just be that during the burning process it asks you to put in another CD when it fills up the one it was just writing to.

Hope this helps. Thanks, tigermatt

$17mma

I have a IBM thinkpad and a desk top

eels_2

I use SyncBack (freeware) to back up to a 2nd internal hard drive (cannibalised from another machine) every single day. I then backup occaisionally onto an 80GB portable hard drive. If I go away for the night I always take the portable drive with me (would fit in the back pocket of your jeans). However, if the house burns down when I'm in the pub it'll all go!

wonderfullife_2

If you can call it back up, I just use my usb mp3 player, (40gbs) to take stuff off this pc, like pictures, videos etc and put it on my old pc, which is just used for this purpose.
Is that what you would call making a back up? Not very good am I, I have a 250gb hd, and it just seems to much like hard work, so if anything goes wrong I'll just do a clean install of xp again,
Just to lazy



Merry Christmas
:xmastree:

salli9

Could anyone recommend a free download that I could use to backup my Acer computer with pre installed windows XP, no cd.
Thanks.

nim_2

Andy_Harris wrote:

I have an exchange server, just so I have back up on 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 ?
Andy

My backups are around 25 miles from here. Not sufficient to handle Nuclear Explosions, but I probably wouldn't be worried about them in this case.

Working for a data storage company has its advantages. However in theory it should be possible for anyone to be able to do on-line backups over an ADSL line (ie if they have broadband). I am suprised that more companies do not offer this service to the general public (our services are to business customers only).

There are a couple of companies that do offer end user services of this type. I can certainly see a few by googling for "online backup" although I can't recommend any having never tried any of their services.