Backing Up

[Deleted User]

Beware of relying on Cds for backing up. I used to use Cds but fell foul of CD degradation and lost hundreds of photos in spite of backing photos up on two separate CDs each month.
The subject was dealt with by the BBC's technical man Rory Cellan Jones and the problem occurs on even well known makes where there is printing or logos on the upper face of the CD.
If you use CDs try to pick the ones that are plain on the upper surface and don't mark any details on them.
Since my problem occurred I have taken to backing everything up on two external hard drives. I've been lucky I suppose but I've never had a hard drive fail and with two of them it's unlikely that they will both fail at the same time.
With back ups I guess it's a good idea to use belt and braces rather than lose valuable data.

charlieheard

I've had the same issue with DVDs, despite buying ones which are supposedly more resistant to degradation. They've been kept in a dark cupboard, and I've still lost part or all of the data on many of them from 4 years ago!

Depending on how critical the data is, the recommendation now is "2 in 2" or "3 in 2" - 2 or 3 backups in 2 different locations

murphydavid

j.smith1981 wrote: »

I find if I keep paying by card and keeping the receipts insisting that I have them from the shop, then itemising them when I get home on excel makes my life a whooole lot easier! .

Msmoney is better than excell for this purpose and is free from Microsoft
Saying that there is a bit of a learning curve but worth the effort
see
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=20738
Sorry to move off thread subject but saw it here.

supermonkey

Does anyone use Karen's replicator for their backups?

I've used it several times & it works well.

But last night I used it with the "replicate deletions" turned on & "move deleted files to recycle bin" also on.

But the files weren't moved to the recycle bin.

The data I was working on was a test anyway, so not a problem, but being as paranoid as I am, I'd like to verify the deleted files before they are permanently deleted!

nickj_2

i have an external hard drive for back up all my stuff , which is mainly just documents , photos and accounts , the ex HD is 250gb is showing as only 26 gbs left and yet my c drive shows that i have only used 124gbs which inlude everything , the documents folder is around 500mb in size and the photos folder is 12 gbs , the accounts back can't be that much
i'm just using windows back up , so how does it save so much more than the size of the folders ,

murphydavid

nickj wrote: »

i have an external hard drive for back up all my stuff , which is mainly just documents , photos and accounts , the ex HD is 250gb is showing as only 26 gbs left and yet my c drive shows that i have only used 124gbs which inlude everything , the documents folder is around 500mb in size and the photos folder is 12 gbs , the accounts back can't be that much
i'm just using windows back up , so how does it save so much more than the size of the folders ,

I would recomend a free program called cobian backup for documents etc and macrium for system stuff (google if you want them) Anyway I can't be specific about windows backup. However before you settle on a particular backup system you need to make sure you can restore what you have backed up. Part of that is finding what you want to restore and in doing this you will find out what is on your hard disc and how big it is and thus what is using up the space. I suggest you do a test restore of a few files (if you can find the same file under more than one date then you have your answer you are backing things up more than once). If you can't easily restore individual files then you need to use something else. As it is I can only think of two possibilities and they are 1. you are backing up the same thing over and over under different dates. 2 your hard disc has a partition you are not aware of.
Hope that helps.

hannoja

nickj wrote: »

i have an external hard drive for back up all my stuff , which is mainly just documents , photos and accounts , the ex HD is 250gb is showing as only 26 gbs left and yet my c drive shows that i have only used 124gbs which inlude everything , the documents folder is around 500mb in size and the photos folder is 12 gbs , the accounts back can't be that much
i'm just using windows back up , so how does it save so much more than the size of the folders ,

I've been trying to improve my poor backing up technique lately and have come across a couple of terms: 'incremental' and 'differential' backups. I could be barking up the wrong tree, but they're what sprang to mind upon reading your post.