Backing up Files, Music, Photos etc

stonecoldsteveaustin

Hello everyone.
After almost losing all my photos and music and paying someone to restore them all (not cheap!) I was told to get a usb hard disk drive to backup everything.
Does anyone know if this is a good idea or is there an alternative to it that doesn't cost the earth.
I know nothing about backing up, I was told there is also something you can do online as well, I would appreciate it if anyone could advise.
Thank you.

pistonbroke

External Hard drives are a good idea, but can be pricey. But you can pick up a 500GB external USB hard drive for under £100, so it isn't that bad. You could back them up to DVD's but depending on how much you have, it could take a while.

To be safe, I would get a USB Hard drive, AND back them up to DVD-ROM or CD. I know I would be gutted if I lost my music and pictures.


There are services online, try searching Google for "online Storage" it brings up a LOT of links, some are free to try, some are free to a limit. The only downside is that it can take a long time to upload lots of data depending on your connection. BUT it can be accessed from anywhere. Depends on what you are after.

Lexis200

to carry on from what pistonbroke said, for online storage try https://www.mozy.com. They have 2 gigs of storage for free and it's nice and easy to set up. They also helpfully have a comparison table of other providers, and looking at that you'll see that xDrive have 5 gigs free too. The control panel is horrible (it's a service from AOL so what do you expect?) but 5 gigs is 5 gigs! 2 PCs and 2 different addresses makes that 14 gigs of storage... not too shabby! It will take a while to copy everything across though so do it overnight.

Definitely get a USB external drive too (try https://www.misco.co.uk, https://www.ebuyer.com or https://www.novatech.co.uk). Copy all your precious files to it, and then disconnect it and put it somewhere away from the PC. The best thing is to give it to a close relative who lives in a different house. That way if your house is burgled or goes up in flames, you have an offline backup that isn't affected.

HTH

sevlow

I use an external USB which holdss disc images plus back ups of my photo's, music and files. Maplin currently have a 400 GB maxtor device for £74.99. I always do full back ups and keep the last three on the external drive.

For my music/pics and docs I use Genie Pro 7 very reliable and you can select options so you can restore to any PC without the back up software loaded.

Should the house burn down or someone steals the PC and related hardware I have a second set of back up's which I keep in my car. I have a 60GB and 80GB interrnal Hard Drives from old PC's and I have a canle I use to connect to USB. OK it's not pretty but it works and it's cheap.

If I'm doing any upgrades to my PC or I have any hint of a problem or I'm upgrading to a new machine I always run new back ups and make a third copy on DVD.

JonnyThunder

Depending on the volume of what you have, you could also consider a 4gb datastick too. More portable than a harddisk, pocket sized - and (if you choose the right one) can be plugged in anywhere without drivers.

Really depends how much you have to backup. I've got about 400gb of data which I move around, but to secure mine - I use RAID (mirroring) of a 500Gb drive. To clarify, I have 2 x 500gb drive and 1 x 200gb drive. The 500 gb drives are 'mirrored' so that if one fails, I can replace the disk and the data will be rebuilt over them both. The 200gb drive I use for the system, which I don't really care about damaging that much.

Also, just as a side note - Vista has a brilliant backup tool built in which allows image backups of entire drives. So if you have a config similar to the above, you can take a copy of the system drive and store it on your data drive (and can restore with a bootdisk). Sorry - off on a tangent there.

stonecoldsteveaustin

Thank you all for your quick responses.
I think I have a better idea of what to do now.