Weekend Open Forum: What's your backup strategy? You do have one, right?

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Jos

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In recent weeks we've shown you two very different hardware solutions for safeguarding and sharing computer data depending on the scale of your actual needs. The first device was a rugged, portable hard drive aimed at road warriors who need to take their storage on the harshest of environments. The second, an impressive 8-bay NAS station targeted at businesses that require nothing but the highest levels of performance and capacity.


Depending on your budget and requirements there's a host of other technologies you could opt for when planning your backup strategy, be it a secondary hard drive on your computer, flash drives, a home server, or even plain old CDs and DVDs. But of course, hardware is just one part of the equation -- you'll have to install some sort of software to handle backups automatically or train yourself into performing them manually on a regular basis.

Everyone's got their own approach for ensuring their personal files are kept safe from disaster, but is there truly a perfect backup solution? In this edition of our Weekend Open Forum we want you to share your backup strategy -- if you even have one. Mine is rather simple and admittedly not perfect. Media and any other large files go straight to a stationary external hard drive (which I'll have to replace soon), while smaller day-to-day personal and work-related stuff is automatically backed up online and available everywhere through my Dropbox account. How about yourself?

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I don't have a full backup strategy, since I'm too poor to afford a couple TB in extra harddrives. On the other hand, anything really important is stored in my dropbox, which if you don't have one and use multiple computers, GET ONE! www.dropbox.com
 
Windows Home Server -- backs up all three of our computers in full every day. By far the most useful component I have ever purchased.
 
I have a good (not great) backup system in place, which I setup right after the failure of my primary hard disk and also then my motherboard:
1: I keep all important critical documents on my 8GB Corsair Voyager, with 3 extra copies, one on my home PC, one on my MOZY(https://mozy.com/?code=EXM3G8) backup server and one on another computer(off-site)

2: All of my purchased software and games etc are backed up into my 1TB Pocket drive, which is kept off-site, did I mention there are 2 of those drives on different locations :)

3: Everything is synced by using SyncBack Pro, so that I always have the latest version of any required file, wherever I am...
 
My laptop only has a 60GB harddrive, so I make do with regular backups to a 500GB external harddrive. I work off my flash drive in regards to uni or personal work, even if i'm using my own computer. I also email particularly important documents to myself on my gmail account or burn them onto a CD or DVD.
 
I use a local, 64-bit Windows 7 machine as a file server for 50+ GB of DSLR photos and AVCHD formatted movies along with several other data files. The server does periodic backups using Acronis as well as sending files to Carbonite (constant backups being done). Critical data documents are put in password protected archives using Acronis before going up to Carbonite servers. Using differential backups really helps to keep storage use down and backup times short. I'm primarily a Mac user so local machines are backed up using my Time Capsule but I rarely keep any critical data locally on my Macs. If I need to travel, I sync my 500GB portable with my Win7 server (only necessary files, not all those photos/movies) and use TrueCrypt to protect critical data files.
 
My backup is..

Reinstall. I don't have anything important on my computer, besides game saves. But Steam helps with that =)

I guess I usually backup all my music and photos on my phone when I really think about it. (I don't have very much, less than 500mb!)
 
My solution is to keep things separate for the most part (so I don't lose everything at once):

I have an 80GB SSD with my OS/apps. I have a schedule weekly backup for this partition located on a separate 250GB hard drive. I also have a live OS on another partition located on the 250GB hard drive which was used previously before I had the 80GB SSD and I keep it just in case something goes wrong with the SSD.

I also have a 1TB hard drive which I use to store all my media/games. I don't have this stuff backed up though, but I do have a 500GB external hard drive as well which I store ISOs and install files in case I do need to reinstall my apps/games.

And lastly, I have 1TB accessible on my home network which I can store files as well. So while I don't have a full backup solution, the setup I have now works good enough -- if a hard drive or SSD does fail I won't lose everything and I can easily get most things back to normal, except for some media which I'm not too worried about.
 
hello ...

been working for a company specialized in DATA Protection & Recovery, i used to advise customers on backup plans, at that time DAT Tapes, External hard-disk racks were mostly used, yet i never did apply anything for myself until i had a HDD crash where i couldn't even put my knowledge in practice to recover more than 30% of my files.

I just don't rely on heavy capacity drives for makes me lazy to do backups & the new devices cost too much.

I made several backups on DVD-Rs, have clone copy of my system & most important files are also copied on multiple discs.

i'm sure i'll get one of those pro backup solution soon ...

cheers!
 
Guest said:
My backup is..

Reinstall. I don't have anything important on my computer, besides game saves. But Steam helps with that =)

I guess I usually backup all my music and photos on my phone when I really think about it. (I don't have very much, less than 500mb!)

Seconded. Good to live dangerously- tho disabling system restore has caused me headaches!
 
I don't really backup my drives, but i do burn a lot dvd's (not so much lately). When i reinstall windows i just move my stuff from C to D and format C, but i am thinking to buy an external drive in the future, but i have other things i want to buy first.
 
regular backups onto 2 USB drives, which I switch over so I am never writing a backup over my only copy, plus 2 USB thumb drives of the really important stuff, so I never leave the house without a copy.
 
I don't have a backup policy, but I do back up important files before I format my system drive.

In rest, I like to be careful as to not make my PC need a format too soon. :) I usually format my system drive whenever a new OS pops-up or I have to change my mobo or HDD.
 
Partitioned hard drive, just in case, 1- 2GB &1- 8GB flash drives for newest versions of all my programs and finally, I burn all pics, docs and multimedia to DVD.
 
Windows Home Server all the way, with all important media folders (like family pics) duplicated. Everything backed up every day, painlessly, for all three computers in the house. The system totally paid for itself about a month after buying it. I clicked through on a link from a normally safe site, and had pop-ups everywhere, and my virus warning started going off - things were being infected as fast as they were quarantined. After trying in vain to get the virus software to clean the system, I simply shut down, booted from the recovery CD, and told it to format the drives and make it like it was two days previously. I went away for a few hours, and came back and it was just fine. Just the way the thing is supposed to work. It also helped with drive upgrades - tell it to do a backup, shut down, pull the old drive, put in a new one, boot from the recovery CD, and tell it to format and make it like it was at the most recent backup. Poof! A bigger drive is installed.
 
I got a 320gb external hard drive were i stick all my files i want to back up and it really comes in handy! It saves money and time than having to go to a place to do it or use some program. I normally like to keep all the information together b/c splitting information up and losing it is just as bad if not worse than losing it bc of a virus on your computer. (regarding losing information)
 
I use Server 2007 on an old gaming rig I retired last year. I've got a 1tb, and 1 750gb drive in it, and an external 750gb connected via eSata.. It's used as a file server primarily, and I use Acronis Backup and Recovery 10 for weekly backups. It's always on and stays nice and cool in my garage.
 
1. Terabyte Hardrive + Macrium Reflect - once a month full image backup of all computers
2. 350 Gig Seagate External - copy new photos and videos after downloading using Teracopy
 
I use the built in windows backup tool to copy everything on both my internal dries to my external drive. I actually only started doing this a few months ago, when my 120 gig drive died and I lost 80 gigs of files, the vast majority of which were not backed up.
 
I have two external hard drive. I always backup my important data in external harddrive. However, if I keep the data for 6 months to 1 year; some file will delete without hesitate (by myself.) or buy DVD-R to store my important data.
 
Anyone looking for a Dropbox referral link (gives you & me free extra storage space), feel free to use mine here: https://www.dropbox.com/referrals/NTE4NjM0NDY5

Thanks!
 
I have an external harddrive that i back up to semi-regularly. I had to move some picture files off to DVD (2 copies each) as i ran out of space before i upgraded my computer. I am looking into a esata/usb raid 1 external enclosure for more regular storage/backup (yes i know people say raid 1 isn't a backup).
 
At work some data is located on a server which is backed up automatically daily but my allotment has a fairly small capacity (500MB) and I don't have immediate access to the backup. That and all the other data I have that needs backing up can fit on a DVD so I backup to a DVD+RW daily. Rewritable DVDs can fail so I have three copies, two I keep at work and one I take home.

For data at home I backup to rewritable CDs and DVDs and I make two copies.
 
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