Help to understand backups and where to save to.

immy1

Hi

I would be very grateful if anyone could tell me in as simple way as possible about backup options.  I just cannot get my head around them at all despite looking at all sorts of websites to try to get a grip on it.

For the past 10 years or so I have been backing up to external, portable hard drives but I am finding that they are start to fail after around 3 years and I am slowly amassing a collection of them and they are not cheap.  I also tried an external drive connected to my PC but this failed eventually as well.   I don't really fancy using CDs etc as these too can become corrupted.

I've also tried to get a grip on cloud storage but I am failing to understand how to use them and whether they are really enough. From what I have read these too are not completely safe.

I just want a simple a method as possible to make sure I can always get my data back if the worst should happen although I know it is best to make multiple backups.

What would be the best options for a novice to use?

Thanks

Neil_Jones

A backup is just defined as a copy of a file.  At a very basic level a USB pen stick will count as "backup" and all you do is copy the file(s) you want to back up on that.

Of course USB sticks are not designed for permanent backup (they're cheap for a reason) so the next best thing is an external hard drive.  These plug into a USB port on the computer and appear in (My) Computer as drive D/E/F/whatever and you can just right-click on what you want to save and send to -> drive D/E/F/<whatever>.  Or use copy & paste if that's what you prefer.

If you do keep backups, its probably not a good idea to keep your backup with your computer/laptop, because if the unit happens to get nicked and your backup is next to it, that'll get nicked too.  So keep it well away.

immy1

Hi Neil

Thanks for your response. Like you say, I have been using an external hard drive and copy and pasting to it but I only have them  a maximum of 3 years and they start to fail.   Is there no alternative but to keep buying them?

Neil_Jones

Depends how much you use them.  I've had one for best part of a decade still working. 

JJ_Egan

Cloud  really just a load of hard drives in an industrial unit with cooling .

Personally i find a lot of these files i backup i dont really need .

[Deleted User]

What sort of size of backup are you looking?

How precious is the data? 

What sort of files - photos, documents etc and do they change much or stay the same?

The above will help in getting the best backup options. 

The best backup types will have some or all of the following features:

1. Totally automatic so you don’t forget to do it. 

2. Regular if you are dealing with files you constantly edit - every 15 mins might suit some people, daily or weekly in other cases. 

3. Keeps versions of files so you can go back to an older version if the most recent is corrupt or mangled by a virus or ransomware. 

4. On a separate machine or device to the original data and if possible a different location. 

5. Three copies is considered better because when 1 copy fails you have no backup until you purchase another drive. 

Also what are these drives that have been failing after 3 years? Interesting because for backup use that isn’t a long life. 

flashg67

No method is 100% save I guess, but I use both external HDD and cloud storage. I use Google and work use Dropbox - both can be set to auto back up what you need, or you can just drag files yourself - very similar to using your hard drive. They both have a lerning curve like anything, but neither are too tricky to use.  Both Dropbox & Google have various plans - from free for, say, 5Gb. I pay £1.59 p/m for £100Gb which takes care of all my docs, music etc. - you may need more!

outtatune

If portable drives are failing with that regularity there's something very wrong going on. They should last way way longer than that. Where are they getting their power from?

For a simple, novice friendly approach have a look at getting an app like Ashampoo Backup Pro, they often do discounts and I managed to get the last version for free and it's pretty much identical to the current one. That'll allow you to password protect the backup so you don't have to worry about storing it in the cloud. If you set up the Google Drive or Dropbox or whatever app they'll allow you to automatically sync a folder on your computer to the cloud. So set your backup app to run automatically to a set schedule, with password protection, and to save the backup to your cloud app folder. You'll then be able to set it up once then leave it to do it's thing automatically.

CoastingHatbox

I can't really give any useful advice, without knowing how much data you are backing up.

I don't trust portable external hard disk drives for anything but transient/temporary storage of data. I'll use them very occasionally, for example, to take a hard disk image of a machine, and then drop that image on my file server (think NAS or Network Attached Storage) for longer term storage.

I have found portable external hard disk drives are too easily damaged and/or too unreliable.

I knocked one off a desk. Dead.
I knocked one off a coffee table, it fell about 30cms. Dead.
I had one plugged into the TV for occasionally used PVR functionality. It developed the tick of death after about 4 years.
I have had the USB/SATA controller stop working on one.

I switched to storing my important files on a NAS, instead of storing them on my PC. The NAS had two hard disk drives inside it, in a mirrored configuration, so it could tolerate one disk failing before losing any data.

I set-up a second NAS with two disk drives, and used the Web UI on the first NAS to configure a daily backup job that synchronised the files stored on the first NAS with the second NAS.

This was when NAS boxes were fairly new and cloud was only just getting started. These days I run a couple of file servers but that's way too involved to cover here.

When I was working as a photographer, I saved all the work I was getting paid for to the first NAS. I installed and setup Acronis Backup (or whatever it was called back then) to backup my personal photos from my computer, figuring that would in effect leave me with three copies of them. The inevitable happened and I had to retore the photos to my computer. I was using incremental backups so there was one initial backup file and then a subsequent backup file created each day with any new or changed files in. The initial backup file was corrupt and could not be restored. Thankfully, every six months or so I started a new backup set so I only lost the most recent 6 months worth of photos. The lesson here, is to always test your backups by checking you can restore files from them.

After that, I swore off using any proprietary backup solution that uses its own proprietary format for saving backed up data. The NAS boxes I had used rsync, an open source tool for synchronising the files between them and what I ended up with was the same file on NAS A and NAS B. No backup files in special formats. It took some time to setup, with user guides, on-line help and information gleaned from forums, but it was simple enough to understand.

There are some downsides with maintaining your own solutions like this.

1) It is not as cheap as buying a couple of external hard disk drives and rotating them.
2) It is more expensive, initially, then cloud options but can work out cheaper in the long-term
3)You still need to mitigate for the situation where you get cryptoware and the files on your computer get encrypted. And then the cryptoware hops from your computer to your two NASes.
4) You might have to think about getting a small uninterruptable power supply for the NAS(es) so a power cut cannot result in data corruption
5) Your backups are not geographically redundant - if your house burns down, you will lose your data

The alternative is then to look at cloud alternatives. There's a few things to consider here:

1) There is an ongoing cost. Some solutions are very cheap to upload and store your data, yet can charge quite a bit more if you need to download it. For the amount of data I want to backup, I've found it prohibitively expensive.
2) You need to have reasonable Internet bandwidth (upload) to ship your backups up to the cloud backup provider
3) You need to have reasonable bandwith (download) to restore you backups should the worst happen
4) You either (a) have to trust the third party with the data you are backing up, or encrypt your data before/as you back it up. Some cloud solutions do provide support for this
5) Features vary between different cloud providers, and when they use different terminology for the same thing or the same terminology for slightly different things, it is hard to compare them. Some do offer features like file versioning, which can be handy if a more recent version of a file became corrupt and geographic redundancy (they store your data in more than one disparate location)


I have rambled on, and there is probably a lot here to get your head around.

One option might be, to identify you data that is most valuable and then put in Google Drive/OneDrive/iCloud, if it amounts to less than you can store in each respective cloud for free. Then you might want to look at another option for a larger volume of important but less critically valuable data.

No backup solution, save for the very expensive and well tested ones, are perfect. If you consider what you want to backup, and why you are backing it up, that is a good starting point. When it comes to why you are backing it up, consider what you are protecting that data against?

* hardware failures
* corruption from malware/cryptoware

* theft

* flood/fire/natural disaster

immy1

Thanks so much for all your replies.  A lot to think about there.

At the minute I have 110gb on my C Drive and another 931 GB on my E drive.  The E drive consists of my documents, photos, music etc which I would hate to lose for any reason. The C Drive has just system files.

Some of the posts above suggest that the portable hard drives should last much longer than 3 years.  I looked up the lifespan of them on the web and the concensus seems to be that they only last 3-5 years.  I don't use mine constantly either. I just plug it in every month or so and copy and paste my stuff to it. 

I think I will have a look at the AShampoo Backup option.   I won't be using Google Backup & Sync though as I have just cancelled it due to it failing to back up all my photos for various reasons.

I'll look at the NAS drives as well but again surely they have only a limited lifespan as well?

CoastingHatbox

immy1 said:

I'll look at the NAS drives as well but again surely they have only a limited lifespan as well?

A NAS is an appliance with disks inside. You can buy them with disks and also sans disks. When they are supplied without disks, you buy your own and install them.

When a disk in a NAS dies, you can replace it. Usually, without losing any of your data as your data is duplicated on at least one more disk. I say usually, because it is possible for the second disk to die whilst the data is being re-duplicated after the first failed disk has died. It is a very rare event, but that is why you have to make sure data is stored in multiple places and why I mentioned having two NASes in my earlier post. Other people take different approaches, for example using a single NAS and cloud backups. Or a single NAS which they backup to an external hard disk drive.

The sad fact is, storing data has a cost whether you cough up the capital yourself for a mini-home IT infrastructure that is resilient to failure or whether you pay someone else to store the data for you (cloud), and even then it is never guaranteed. You can only reduce the odds of data loss. albeit dramatically.

There is a lot of anecdotal data on how long disk drives last. There is also data collated by large companies that use lots of drives. I think it is best to say there is a failure rate, and in general that failure rate increases with age.

I have had disks:

• arrive dead on arrival
• die within 6 months
• die after a decade of use

In general, I get >5 years out of most disks and some I've got in regular use, although demoted to storing data I care about a lot less, are over 10 years old.