Backing up day to day computer activities?

[Tim Boger]

Greetings everyone .... I got to thinking about backing up my laptop before the inevitable happens and it fails to boot up someday. Most of what I'm saving will be pictures of inspirational woodworking stuff, tutorials and basic day to day items of interest.

What do you use to back up (if you do) and how often ?

Thanks !

Tim

[Glenn Clabo]

I've used Carbonite for a while. No brainer backup everynight...access to all files from anywhere...$50 a year.

[Lex Boegen]

Dropbox (https://www.dropbox.com/) is awesome. I've been using it for several years. I can access my files from any computer that has Internet access. For both my home and work computers, I have a folder for my dropbox files, so it's as simple as drag & drop. For privacy (text files containing personal information, such as bank account numbers and passwords) I encrypt those files with Truecrypt (http://www.truecrypt.org/) and then store the encrypted file on Dropbox.


Greetings everyone .... I got to thinking about backing up my laptop before the inevitable happens and it fails to boot up someday. Most of what I'm saving will be pictures of inspirational woodworking stuff, tutorials and basic day to day items of interest.

What do you use to back up (if you do) and how often ?

Thanks !

Tim

[Matt Meiser]

I don't have enough bandwidth to use a service so I took what eventually became a two-tiered approach. First, I got a Windows Home Server which stores all our files plus does a backup of each PC every night. To back up what is on the home server, I later bought a Network Attached Storage (NAS) unit which lives in my shop 80' from the house. I use a weekly batch file to back up each share on the WHS box. Some shares I just back up everything new (photos, music, etc.) and some (our personal folders) I zip and create a new copy each week in case we need to pull an old copy of a particular file.

When we get "real" internet (possibly later this year) I'll probably go with Carbonite.

[Kent A Bathurst]

I use acronis true-image - it was the strong recommendation of the propellor-heads at the company I used to work for, so that's my only reference. I have it set up to fire off at 7:00 am every friday.

First time out, it creates a complete boot-from copy of the drive [Ihave an outboard hard drive], then overlays updates only after that.

Works for me, and I like it, but I am far from an expert. Actually, I got the 2-license version so if there just so happened to be someone else in the house that never remembered to back up her laptop, this would handle that automatically.

[Brian Effinger]

Another vote for Carbonite. I signed up at the beginning of the year, and have been pleased with it. It automatically backs up certain files, and you can tell it to back up others. I got it, because I can back up all of my AutoCAD drawings - you never know when an old client will come back and want an addition or renovation. It is now more than 10 years worth of projects (459 projects, as of right now). All told, I have 33.7 GB of info backed up right now. In addition to my architectural projects, I have photos, music, pdf's, etc. backed up. And restoration is easy. A month or so ago, I screwed up a drawing, and was able to bring the previous day's version in a matter of minutes.

Because I am paranoid (sometimes :rolleyes: ) I also back-up my drawings to a couple usb thumb drives occasionally, and my photos, music and other non-work stuff is on an external drive, next to my computer.

[Bill Huber]

I am using Carbonite and really like it, do not have to remember to do it and it is off site.

Before I started with Carbonite I used Second Copy, great little program and it will do your backups with no hassle as long as you have something to back it up to, a server, external drive of a DVD or even a thumb drive. It will keep deleted files up to a number you set within the program.

http://www.centered.com/index.html

[Eric Franklin]

I use CrashPlan+ which is $50 a year for a computer or $120 for the family which includes all the computers in your house. I used to use another online backup service but I ran into problems that if I didn't constantly monitor it, it would stop backing up. CrashPlan+ sends me a weekly email with the backup status and I've never had a problem. You can also backup to a local drive and to there servers. So if you just need to restore a file, you can do it quickly but you still have an offsite backup incase of fire or theft. They have a Pro version that I have extensive experience with at work and it works great.

[Glenn Vaughn]

Being paranoid aabout having my data stored on sombody elses server and having 11 computers running, I opted for a product named Ghostfiles. It does realtime backups and can backup to multiple places - including over the network. Ghostfiles does not have to copy the entire file, it keeps the destination up-to-date with any changes as they occur.I have a "farm" of USB drives that are used for backups. I use the Western Digital MyBook drives and they work very well.

The down side is that, since I switched to Office 2010 and Outlook, the email files cannot be backed up while Outlook is open.

IMHO, while an on-line service may be secure, there is no way to be guaranteed that the data may not be compromised at sometime in the future. There are more and more companies offering on-line services for storing personal data - the most recent I have seen is a service for consolidating all of a persons financial records. Even though a company may have a privacy policy stating that your data is yours and is not made available to others, it is still possible that the data can be taken. It could be an employee or a change in policy.

Facebook is a case in point; they are making p-ersonal information available to 3rd party developers and require an opt-out from users to be excluded. There is also a lot of concern abou the ability to remove your personal data from Facebook's servers.

[Bill Huber]

Being paranoid aabout having my data stored on sombody elses server and having 11 computers running, I opted for a product named Ghostfiles. It does realtime backups and can backup to multiple places - including over the network. Ghostfiles does not have to copy the entire file, it keeps the destination up-to-date with any changes as they occur.I have a "farm" of USB drives that are used for backups. I use the Western Digital MyBook drives and they work very well.

The down side is that, since I switched to Office 2010 and Outlook, the email files cannot be backed up while Outlook is open.

IMHO, while an on-line service may be secure, there is no way to be guaranteed that the data may not be compromised at sometime in the future. There are more and more companies offering on-line services for storing personal data - the most recent I have seen is a service for consolidating all of a persons financial records. Even though a company may have a privacy policy stating that your data is yours and is not made available to others, it is still possible that the data can be taken. It could be an employee or a change in policy.

Facebook is a case in point; they are making p-ersonal information available to 3rd party developers and require an opt-out from users to be excluded. There is also a lot of concern abou the ability to remove your personal data from Facebook's servers.

I really hope it never ever happens but one big fire and all the data is gone or it will cost an arm and a leg to get it back.

[Chuck Wintle]

I use an external usb drive, in a vantec case, and it all works for me. I backup every couple of days with a freeware program called syncback. no fees to pay, no leaving data on a server somewhere that is vulnerable to being hacked. All my stuff is local.

[Mike Henderson]

I use Carbonite, also. Prior to that, I would only remember to take a backup every week or so. With Carbonite, the files are backed up as they are changed. Also, they do encrypt the data both for transport and storage. And if you want really strong protection, you can manage your encryption key - but if you lose your key, you won't be able to access your data. You can see their security procedures here (http://www.carbonite.com/en/terms-of-use/security).

My main reasons for going to Carbonite were:
1. Continuous backup.
2. Backup stored offsite so that if I have a fire, flood, earthquake, or other disaster, I still have my data.

Mike

[Tim Boger]

I want to take a second to thank you all for offering your opinions on a backing up procedure, I do have a Western Digital External Hard Drive that the wife gave me the other day which is what prompted my post .... I'm now wondering if it's smart to use a "back up program" in conjunction with the WDHD to get the job done or if it can simply be done manually.

Money is very tight now and paying for a service can't be my first choice.

Time to research for some free back up programs.

Thanks,
Tim

[Chuck Wintle]

Tim,
by all means find a "free" backup program that will do incremental backups...it will take the headache out of it. +1 for syncback free edition...used it for a while and it does a good job.

[M Toupin]

+1 for syncback free edition. Simple to use and flexible.
If you want to get a little geeky, rsync is at the top of the heap and it's open source too.