Backing Up

zagubov

I use an 11-year-old mac (a powerpc running Tiger and leopard). Haven;'t used Time Machine but intentd to as TBH it must be about the only main advantage to using the Leopard OS (beause I've looked hard and I can't find anything else but disadvantages to Leopard).
I use dropbox (workds in Tiger) getting 2 free Gb and Adrive (works in anything) getting 50 Gb free.


May I suggest you might enjoy exploring this and make the most of the free storage of the sites behind this portal page which leads to over 100 storage areas.:D

bmewsd

zagubov wrote: »

I use an 11-year-old mac (a powerpc running Tiger and leopard). Haven;'t used Time Machine but intentd to as TBH it must be about the only main advantage to using the Leopard OS (beause I've looked hard and I can't find anything else but disadvantages to Leopard).
I use dropbox (workds in Tiger) getting 2 free Gb and Adrive (works in anything) getting 50 Gb free.


May I suggest you might enjoy exploring this and make the most of the free storage of the sites behind this portal page which leads to over 100 storage areas.:D

Zagubov, Not sure why you removed your post and then replace it again when the following comment was originally part of a response to your post. so. we'll try this again.

I know you think you're getting 'free' stuff. The reality is that there is no such thing. Somebody somewhere is paying for the infrastructure behind it.

Dropbox are making their paying customers pick up the tab for all the so called free accounts that they provide. So whilst you think you're getting something for nothing, some poor schmuck is picking up the bill for it.

A-Drive? yet another US company. and just check out their pricing? https://www.adrive.com/login/signup?package=3

I have a backup 8TB of data and I share 200GB and still have access to an additional 300GB capacity if I need it. I pay £95 per year. Looking at A-Drive's price just for the sync portion i'd have to pay approx. £401 for the same amount of space. NOTE: that DOES NOT include the 8TB of backup I have access to. and if I wanted 5TB of storage. A-Drive would charge me £3922. What would I pay? £350 so tell me how many free accounts you need for 5TB? and how much time will you need to manage them?

As for managing 10, 20, 30 different accounts just so you can get a bit of online space for 'free'? Really? you think that's worth doing? why not spend a little bit of money, get a shedload of space and just have ONE account to run. Keep it in the UK (if that's where you're based). Keep a UK company going, and doing the right thing for your own data which is after all the only unique thing on your computer.

If you're in the UK and you're using ANY US company for this stuff then you must be aware that these companies MUST comply with USA Patriot ACT (which wipes the floor with Safe Harbor). And if/when CISPA becomes a reality, these companies will willingly share information (some of which may be yours) with US Government agencies.

Whilst this isn't a problem you need to remember, that if you use these services to store ANY personally identifiable information, or other data which has compliance obligations attached that you CANNOT guarantee that said data will not leave the EU or the UK and therefore YOU may be in breach of EU and UK data protection laws.

it's quite a rats nest.

Your own personal stuff? it's all down to personal choice. But the so called 'FREE' argument, is just a loss leader.

We've become another "something for nothing" nation. Not realising that the something has to be paid for somewhere. If we start to consider value then we'll start to get service.

grumpycrab

I looked at the first page. Any free tools (apart from Microsoft) to do image backups (and restore) of DYNAMIC formatted (e.g. HP) disks.
(thanks. Macrium free doesn't include dynamic disk support)

tia86

Hi all

looking for some simple advice on back up - I bought an external hard drive last year but already seem to have broken it and it is beeping at me. This has got me thinking about online storage, and I see Amazon do free cloud storage - what do people think about this?
Obviously I am going to see whether the external drive can be fixed as it is still under warranty, but I doubt they would get the documents back off it.
I am not good with technology, so simple ideas would be appreciated!

closed

the masters should be kept on the internal hard disk, and backups on external, then you wouldn't lose anything (unless they happen to fail at the same time), and macrium reflect free can do the backup for you.

charlieheard

tia86 wrote: »

Hi all

looking for some simple advice on back up - I bought an external hard drive last year but already seem to have broken it and it is beeping at me. This has got me thinking about online storage, and I see Amazon do free cloud storage - what do people think about this?
Obviously I am going to see whether the external drive can be fixed as it is still under warranty, but I doubt they would get the documents back off it.
I am not good with technology, so simple ideas would be appreciated!

Amazon's cloud space always used to be "no frills", so you needed to know what you were doing at a fairly techie level yo use it. I haven't heard of anything new from Amazon, unless you can point me in the right direction. What you want is something easy to setup, that happens automatically. That way, it's always there in case you need it. I'd recommend both local and cloud backups.

Lots of external hard drives come with a backup suite included, or there's a free one included with Windows (called "Backup":D), which can do scheduled backups to an external disk, so you don't need to do anything but set it up following the "wizard" (or idiot's guide as my MiL called it)

You need to think how much data you actually want to backup, especially for cloud backups. Do you want essential files, or do you want to include photos, or music, or videos? The larger the size, the fewer your options. There are various free cloud services - the big ones are Dropbox (2Gb), Skydrive from Microsoft (7Gb) and Google Drive (?5Gb). If you want to backup more than that, you'll need to pay. The above services have various levels, and it can get quite expensive if you want to backup lots of data.

I personally run Carbonite, which backs up unlimited data to the cloud for a fixed price. I've also got it backing up my primary disk to an external drive as well. I've lots of data backed up to it (currently 120Gb), but that includes irreplaceable family pictures and videos (as well as being backed up to an external hard drive). It costs from around £35 a year, but that's much less than it would cost on the list in the previous paragraph.

So you just need to work out how much your data is worth to you if you lost it, how much you actually want to backup, and then look at the costings. If you've only a few Gb, one of the free services would be fine. If it's more than that, they end up being quite expensive - for me, they'd be £80 on Google, £120 on Dropbox and Skydrive wouldn't do that much. Then you need to go for a proprietary solution. There are loads out there, but you need to think how much you trust them. Go for a known name with a history and recommendations - you don't want some fly-by-night going bust and losing your data!

Hope this helps!

bmewsd

tia86 wrote: »

Hi all

looking for some simple advice on back up - I bought an external hard drive last year but already seem to have broken it and it is beeping at me. This has got me thinking about online storage, and I see Amazon do free cloud storage - what do people think about this?
Obviously I am going to see whether the external drive can be fixed as it is still under warranty, but I doubt they would get the documents back off it.
I am not good with technology, so simple ideas would be appreciated!

Sorry to hear about your disk troubles. If your drive is still under warranty then you can obviously try to get it repaired. Remember, that whoever does that may NOT be able to get back the data.

That kind of leads to the question of how do you backup a backup? Do you even need to?

Regarding cloud storage? There's no such thing as free. You might get a couple of GB of online space which they are banking on you using. How big was your external hard drive? 7GB? 10GB? You need to check out how much it is likely to cost you if you exceed the free storage space.

try this comparison. At least you're doing the research, which is a good thing.

if you still have any access to your seemingly failing external drive. Try and get that stuff backed up asap.

hope this helps

bmewsd

charlieheard wrote: »

Amazon's cloud space always used to be "no frills", so you needed to know what you were doing at a fairly techie level yo use it. I haven't heard of anything new from Amazon, unless you can point me in the right direction. What you want is something easy to setup, that happens automatically. That way, it's always there in case you need it. I'd recommend both local and cloud backups.

Lots of external hard drives come with a backup suite included, or there's a free one included with Windows (called "Backup":D), which can do scheduled backups to an external disk, so you don't need to do anything but set it up following the "wizard" (or idiot's guide as my MiL called it)

You need to think how much data you actually want to backup, especially for cloud backups. Do you want essential files, or do you want to include photos, or music, or videos? The larger the size, the fewer your options. There are various free cloud services - the big ones are Dropbox (2Gb), Skydrive from Microsoft (7Gb) and Google Drive (?5Gb). If you want to backup more than that, you'll need to pay. The above services have various levels, and it can get quite expensive if you want to backup lots of data.

I personally run Carbonite, which backs up unlimited data to the cloud for a fixed price. I've also got it backing up my primary disk to an external drive as well. I've lots of data backed up to it (currently 120Gb), but that includes irreplaceable family pictures and videos (as well as being backed up to an external hard drive). It costs from around £35 a year, but that's much less than it would cost on the list in the previous paragraph.

So you just need to work out how much your data is worth to you if you lost it, how much you actually want to backup, and then look at the costings. If you've only a few Gb, one of the free services would be fine. If it's more than that, they end up being quite expensive - for me, they'd be £80 on Google, £120 on Dropbox and Skydrive wouldn't do that much. Then you need to go for a proprietary solution. There are loads out there, but you need to think how much you trust them. Go for a known name with a history and recommendations - you don't want some fly-by-night going bust and losing your data!

Hope this helps!

nice to see that you've actually used the rarely thought phrase of how much is my data worth. refreshing :T

for me? I have TB of stuff now online. It can take an age to upload but that's the same no matter which service you use unless they provide a seeding service. I personally use Excipere this provides me with more than enough space and the security that I can get to my stuff from any internet connected device as well as share it should I choose to do so.

For me? I have photos which are irreplaceable so it's worth the money just for those.

I see so many external drive solutions trying to push the personal cloud aspect. The problem with that is the effective download speed will be the upload speed from your system via your ISP and as we know generally across the UK that's pretty woeful.

Only protect the unique data (the stuff I create and use) not system files which will be replaced doing a system rebuild/restore and applications which are now more often than not just downloaded.

Typical human behaviour is to expand to available space so we tend not to undertake any housekeeping and just buy more space. If we put some value on our data then we can decide how much to spend to protect it.

just my humble thoughts.

Yolina

I use a combination of SpiderOak (not the cheapest at $100/year for 100GB but it's Zero Knowledge/TNO - there are discount codes floating on the net though) and Box (got 50GB free for life with a firesale HP TouchPad) for my online backup. I tend to use Box for stuff that would be a PITA to lose but that aren't really personal and SpiderOak for the rest. I am glad that I am a bookworm rather than a film buff as the storage requirement of ebooks is minimal :rotfl:
Obviously I have local backups too

bmewsd

grumpycrab wrote: »

I looked at the first page. Any free tools (apart from Microsoft) to do image backups (and restore) of DYNAMIC formatted (e.g. HP) disks.
(thanks. Macrium free doesn't include dynamic disk support)

have a look at Drivesnapshot might be worth a look see

hope this helps