Best and easiest computer back up system

[dennis thompson]

I am not very computer savy. What is the best and easiest , emphasize EASIEST, computer back up system?
Thanks

[Dave Richards]

I like Cobian Backup (http://www.cobiansoft.com/cobianbackup.htm). it''s a lightweight freeware app. I have it set up to create backup of files on my main hard drive and store them on a secondary drive. It's easy to set up and you can pretty much ignore it after that. Mine creates a back up at midnight every night and keeps the last three back ups.

[Chuck Wintle]

I am not very computer savy. What is the best and easiest , emphasize EASIEST, computer back up system?
Thanks

It depends on what you decide to backup...the entire OS or just certain files like photos, personal documents, user settings etc. The way I have it setup for myself is with an external drive connected by USB to the computer and using a small backup program to incrementally backup the important stuff like photos, files, mp3 etc. And I run it every day. If you use windows 7 then it has a built in imaging program that actually works. So once you are setup then the backing up part is easy. There was another thread talking about a computer hit with an encryption virus. An image backup could help a lot in this case.

[Pat Barry]

I keep telling myself I need to get an external hard drive for backing up my files. Just putting them in a second location on the computer you are using is not really a great backup. Lets say your hard drive goes out = you're screwed.

[Jerry Thompson]

My external hard drive I used for backup went south. I now pay for a backup service and it is BU nightly.

[dennis thompson]

My external hard drive I used for backup went south. I now pay for a backup service and it is BU nightly.
Jerry
what backup service do you use?
thanks

[Grant Wilkinson]

There are many good third party back up applications. Since you want easy, if you are running windows 7, use the one that is built in. It is easy to set up, it works and you've already paid for it.

[Brian Hale]

I've been using Carbonite in 3 different computers for several years now and am very pleased with it......

[Tom Stenzel]

With the thread about cryptolocker this is appropriate.

I don't think there's a single answer for this. Depending on what is important to you a usb hard drive and thumb drives may enough. Cloud might be your answer. With a cloud backup the availability and speed might be a bit off but at least it's easy to carry around with you.:cool:

Build a network drive computer with multiple hard drives (RAID system) to back up to if you really need availability and speed where cost is no object.

Years ago I backed up my system with those tape cartridges (QIC-80 IIRC) and then found the backups just didn't work when I needed them. That was in those good old days of PC-DOS.

A question I have about the cloud backups: If you did get hit with a nasty like cryptolocker and then your backup service runs and copies the now garbage files to the cloud, is all lost? Or can you set it up to keep multiple generations of files?

It's times like this I wish i had a vaxstation at home!

Right now I'm using a combination of usb hard drive, thumb drives and some compact flash cards. So far so good until the day that it isn't. If I went to some type of cloud service I would want to set it up so that I would have to manually trigger the backup.

Right now I'm running linux so cryptolocker can't hit me. But I'm not going to gloat, it'll be my turn soon enough.

Hmm. What would happen if your cloud service got hit with cryptolocker and they didn't get the unlock info after THEY paid? With my luck if I signed up for that type of system that would be the one I picked!

-Tom

[Curt Harms]

For anyone with a home network, check your router. If it has a USB port and if that USB port is enabled - Verizon's Actiontec router USB ports for example aren't - that can provide a handy sharing/backup method. I can plug an external drive or USB flash drive into that port and move files I want to back up to that drive. That both backs up files on individual machines and enables sharing between machines without enabling file/print sharing which has been used by malware in past. Use a synchronizing program to keep folders backed up. This protects against machine failure and may help protect against malicious drive encryption. I don't know how the cryptolocker type malware works. Does it encrypt all drives including network, or just local drives? The 'poor man's NAS' wouldn't protect against something like a house fire but you could rotate backup devices keeping one off site.

[Jerome Stanek]

I would never use a web based backup I have a net disk and one in my house to back up to. That way if something happens I have a redundant drive.

[Eric DeSilva]

You need to also think about "backup" versus "redundancy." I use a RAID5 NAS device for redundancy, but it is not a "backup" in the sense that it does automatically provide prior versions, etc. A true "backup" would allow you to recover, for instance, accidentally deleted files, not just recover from a bad disk.

For something like cryptolocker to work, it has to run programs that are OS-specific. Cloud backup sites shouldn't be executing any of the files that you upload, so something like cryptolocker would have to attack the backup site directly to lock up the files--someone, for example, could simply steal your account and demand money to return control to you.

If you wipe an infected computer and then re-install a backup from the cloud, you may or may not be able to fully recover. If the backdoor allowing the infection was already installed, it could be attacked again. But if you have regular backups, you may be able to restore from an earlier backup that is not infected. If you can identify the files that caused the infection, you may also be able to download other data files from later backups without any issues.

In my case, I use a ReadyNAS Pro 6 drive device that sits on my network and mapped as a network drives to the various machines in the house. Any individual drive in the array can fail and be hot swapped out without affecting the integrity of the data that is stored on the machine. That takes care of redundancy for me.

For backups, I am less concerned about full backups of the machines--with my data files on the NAS, I'd rather wipe the machines and do a clean re-install of the OS and software if something happens. But, I do need to back up the files on my NAS. Amazon Prime subscribers get free unlimited photo storage, so I back up a *lot* of personal photos to Amazon. Since I'm using Amazon anyway, I'll periodically encrypt the living hell out of records I need to keep and pay a small amount to Amazon to store those--those types of files are typically pretty small in comparison to media files. The music files and my wife's commercial photographs get incrementally backed up onto M-discs. This doesn't provide a true backup in case of file deletions for those files, but the music files are largely static and the way my wife's photo workflow works provides some protection--she'll download from the camera to her iMac, duplicate the original RAW files to the RAID, and edit in a non-destructive way so the source files are always pristine (flagged files for client proofs get copied to a second subdirectory). She might lose an editing session through an accidental deletion, but that's it.

So you need to really think about what's important to you and what inconvenience you are willing to tolerate for different files of different importance.

[Larry Frank]

Why not a web based...Carbonite for photos and files $59 a year.

Then a pair of 2 TB hard drives to hold a file backup at $100 each. One drive on my network and a copy in a safety deposit box?

I often wonder what happens now and in the future to the billions of pictures being taken with phones and all sorts of things. Will the next generation have access to important photos taken on you phone? Will it be like finding a stash of 80 year old photos found at your grandma's?

[Anthony Whitesell]

It depends on what you decide to backup...the entire OS or just certain files like photos, personal documents, user settings etc. The way I have it setup for myself is with an external drive connected by USB to the computer and using a small backup program to incrementally backup the important stuff like photos, files, mp3 etc. And I run it every day. If you use windows 7 then it has a built in imaging program that actually works. So once you are setup then the backing up part is easy. There was another thread talking about a computer hit with an encryption virus. An image backup could help a lot in this case.

I have heard of the Windows 7 image backup being available. Any docs on what is called, how to run and use it?

[Jerome Stanek]

Why not a web based...Carbonite for photos and files $59 a year.

Then a pair of 2 TB hard drives to hold a file backup at $100 each. One drive on my network and a copy in a safety deposit box?

I often wonder what happens now and in the future to the billions of pictures being taken with phones and all sorts of things. Will the next generation have access to important photos taken on you phone? Will it be like finding a stash of 80 year old photos found at your grandma's?

What makes you think that a cloud based backup can't be hacked or crash.

[Steve Rozmiarek]

I'd argue that what data you want backed up probably matters the most. Most stuff on my computers is somewhat disposable, but some is mission critical. Might be surprising how little stuff you really want to pay a never ending fee to keep. I think of office documents that become rapidly outdated like this, but photos are different.

[Eric DeSilva]

What makes you think that a cloud based backup can't be hacked or crash.

Anyone who claims they can't be hacked or crash is a fool. That said, reputable cloud based backup services should have a lot of advantages over your home backup in terms of crashing. For example, they typically do run RAID networks with a lot of redundancy, which most homeowners do not. The drives are typically in secure, environmentally controlled facilities with inert gas fire protection and backup power. So, their drives probably fail less and it is far less catastrophic when they do.

As for hacking, I've never heard of a place like Amazon S3 being "hacked"--individual user accounts may occasionally be hijacked, but that is typically because of a pilot error, not the service provider. You can also protect yourself by encrypting your files before you store them, a feature of a lot of back up systems and something you can do separately as well.

[Jerry Thompson]

I use "MyPcBackup." I have sent an email to them asking them about crypoblocker. I will post their reply once I get it. I have also asked Malwarebytes if they can prevent cryptoblocker from doing its evil. I will also report on their reply.

[Dave huber]

I have used carbonite and crashplan.
Carbonite is fine if your dataset is under 10gb
i switched to crashplan and have been thrilled.
will back up to cloud, other machine local or other machine on Internet.

slick, fast and easy

reatore of whole set or individual files is easy and fast.

can be done from phone or tablet app, too.

no excuse for not using it or similar

[Brian Ashton]

I am not very computer savy. What is the best and easiest , emphasize EASIEST, computer back up system?
Thanks

For me the best backup system is one that can be read from any computer without needing any restore software. With Mac it's time machine but I'm sure there's a win variant.

[roger wiegand]

I really like Crashplan. I use the home version at home, and we use the pro version for my company. With it you can very easily back up to multiple places simultaneously, so it will back up to another computer, to an attached drive, to a network drive, and to "the cloud" providing both on-site backups for rapid recovery and off-site backup for disasters (like when the house burns down taking all your computers and backup drives with it.

I back up all the computers in the house to a NAS unit with RAID 5, separately back each computer up to Crashplan's cloud server, and then also back the NAS up to the cloud server. With their family plan you can have unlimited backup for any number of computers. For me this totals about 700 Gb of backed up material for now. I don't back up disk images, or system files. Setup is very easy for regular computers, configuring the NAS was something of a PITA, but now works flawlessly.

I have done a full recovery from the cloud server (prior to the NAS), and have recovered individual files many times, so it has worked successfully. (nothing worse than a write-only backup!)

I've found that backup only really works if it's real time and automatic. Depending on myself -- or other family members-- to do any manual process every time an important file is changed just doesn't happen.

[Matt Meiser]

I do a multi-tier backup at home. PCs back up to Windows Home Server, which backs up to a NAS drive to cover any hardware failures. Unfortunately Windows Home Server is discontinued. Windows Small Business Server is the replacement but is expensive. I can replace the hard drive in a laptop with 15 minutes of work and 2-3 hours of waiting and when its done its at the exact state as yesterday (or whatever date I choose from the available backups.

Crashplan backs up the Windows Home Server files to the cloud for disaster recovery. I bought a 4 years worth of service during a sale and it was fairly cheap for what you get. If I was doing it again, I'd pay the extra $125 to do a seeded backup where you use a hard drive to get everything started. Even with super-fast internet, it takes a looonnggg time to back up many gigs of data.

[Larry Browning]

Let's keep in mind that Dennis has said he is not very computer savoy, and he wants something easy. But, what to some of us is "easy", may be incredibly difficult to impossible for others.
My perception is that setting up a home server or even an NAS may be off the table for Dennis.
Dennis,
I think it would be incredibility helpful if you would answer a few questions for starters.
1) How many computers do you want to backup, and what operating systems do they run?
2) If more than one, are they networked?
3) Are you opposed to backing up to the cloud (online)? Are you wanting to do local (in house) backup?

[Jerome Stanek]

For me the best backup system is one that can be read from any computer without needing any restore software. With Mac it's time machine but I'm sure there's a win variant.

What happens when your hard drive crashes

[Jerome Stanek]

Let's keep in mind that Dennis has said he is not very computer savoy, and he wants something easy. But, what to some of us is "easy", may be incredibly difficult to impossible for others.
My perception is that setting up a home server or even an NAS may be off the table for Dennis.
Dennis,
I think it would be incredibility helpful if you would answer a few questions for starters.
1) How many computers do you want to backup, and what operating systems do they run?
2) If more than one, are they networked?
3) Are you opposed to backing up to the cloud (online)? Are you wanting to do local (in house) backup?


My NASwas as simple as it gets. You just plug it into a router and run the setup cd then it is just drag and drop for moving files. you can load a backup program and point it to the drive and hit backup

[Eric DeSilva]

also back the NAS up to the cloud server.

My understanding is that Crashplan will only back up a NAS if it is a mounted drive on Mac/Linux/Solaris computer because of the way mounted drives are handled as user devices in Windows.

[dennis thompson]

Let's keep in mind that Dennis has said he is not very computer savoy, and he wants something easy. But, what to some of us is "easy", may be incredibly difficult to impossible for others.
My perception is that setting up a home server or even an NAS may be off the table for Dennis.
Dennis,
I think it would be incredibility helpful if you would answer a few questions for starters.
1) How many computers do you want to backup, and what operating systems do they run?
2) If more than one, are they networked?
3) Are you opposed to backing up to the cloud (online)? Are you wanting to do local (in house) backup?
Larry
Thanks, while all suggestions look interesting, many do not look easy to me
1-just one computer
2-windows 7 home premium
3-I don't know enough to answer the cloud/in house question but intuitively lean to in house

[roger wiegand]

My understanding is that Crashplan will only back up a NAS if it is a mounted drive on Mac/Linux/Solaris computer because of the way mounted drives are handled as user devices in Windows.

It's something of a hack to get it to work, not a supported solution, but the NAS is a linux computer and you can configure it to run Crashplan headless. You can find the instructions for doing it on a Synology NAS here https://miketabor.com/install-crashplan-synology/ I haven't had occasion to see if there are solutions for other NAS makers. This is not for users looking for something easy, even with the instructions it took several hours of troubleshooting to get everything to work (getting Java to work correctly was the hardest part for me). You don't need to do anything remotely like this for routine use of Crashplan, the basic setup to back up to a drive, another computer and to the cloud is drop dead easy.

[Chuck Wintle]

I am thinking I must be old fashioned as I really prefer a standalone local backup for all of my computer stuff and its free unlike many online services that charge. My question mark about online backup is what if the company goes belly up? Your files are on a server somewhere on planet earth. Also someone may be snooping around looking for something in your files. So that entirely dissuades me from online backups regardless of how easy it is. I always back up to an external hard drive and do this every day incrementally.

[Larry Browning]

Larry
Thanks, while all suggestions look interesting, many do not look easy to me
1-just one computer
2-windows 7 home premium
3-I don't know enough to answer the cloud/in house question but intuitively lean to in house

Backup to the cloud has several advantages and some dis-advantages
Advantages:
1) Very simple to setup for the not so computer savoy
2) Your data is stored off site, so if your house burns down, you will still have access to your data.
3) You can have access to your data from most any computer connected to the internet. This means when you are at a friend or relative's house you can show them all those great pictures you took on you last vacation when the subjects come up and you didn't bring your photo album with you.
4) It is pretty much set it up once and forget it. It just works. Then when you need to get to it, it is pretty easy.
5) I am sure there are more

Disadvantages
1) You have to pay a monthly fee
2) All you valuable data is out there in the cloud
3) If the company you are paying the monthly fee to goes under, your have to start over, or worst case, you loose you data(I don't think that's ever happened)
4) You have to put up with all the paranoids telling you how crazy you are to put all your valuable data on the internet.
5)I am sure there are more

Personally, I can't get past dis-advantage #1. So I do all sorts of computer geeky stuff to backup my valuable pictures of the grand kids.

[Dave Richards]

I agree with Chuck. I prefer a local backup which is why I find Cobian Backup perfect for my needs.

[dennis thompson]

Well,I fumbled my way through a backup to a USB flash drive. I hope:
-I never need to use it (but realize some day I probably will)
-If I need it I hope I can figure out how to use it (I'll probably be back here asking how to get the backup off the USB drive):)
Thanks for all the advice

[Brian Hale]

Years ago I did the tape backup thing and then dvds and finally a nas/raid in a separate computer but when I looked at the cost of equipment and electric to maintain that system, the $60 per year i pay Carbonite looks cheap. A few weeks ago my computer bricked, power supply took out the motherboard. I built a new system with the same number of drives and had Carbonite restore my files. It took 12 days for a total 862gb of data to be restored but everything is there just like before and the whole process involved reinstalling their ssoftware and clicking restore. For me, that's money well spent.

YMMV

Brian

[Curt Harms]

Well,I fumbled my way through a backup to a USB flash drive. I hope:
-I never need to use it (but realize some day I probably will)
-If I need it I hope I can figure out how to use it (I'll probably be back here asking how to get the backup off the USB drive):)
Thanks for all the advice

For the stuff that really matters, i.e. financial, health and legal stuff, I don't use any sort of compression or other special backup software. Just copy the native files to backup media. I was using syncback (http://www.2brightsparks.com/freeware/freeware-hub.html) to automate the process. That leaves one less point of failure (data compression/decompression) If my machine dies, I can simply copy the files back to a rebuilt machine. I have O.S. and program reinstall media so don't really worry about backing up 90% of the machine. My O.S. and applications can be pretty easily replaced. Data files cannot.