Get a Good computer backup !

[dennis thompson]

Having just suffered through a computer crash in which I lost all my data, I strongly suggest you get a good backup system. I thought I was protected by my Norton 360 backup system, I spent three hours on a chat line with Norton to restore one, yes one file (my 2007 taxes). Maybe if you're a technical person, it would work for you, for me it's too complicated, for all I know my files might be out there somewhere but what good are they if I can't find them? I bought a Maxtor One Touch 4 system, it installed easily, & I was able to back up my files pretty easily.
Dennis

[JohnT Fitzgerald]

I have one of the Maxtor one-touch systems, and it's great. Have not had to restore anything yet *knock on wood*, but at least I think I'm protected. we lost some stuff a few years back - got 99% of our files back, but lost some of the digital photos of the kids.

It amazes me how some people will run their business off their PC/laptop, and have absolutely ZERO backup or recovery plans....

[Steve knight]

backup is pretty easy. a external drive will do most of whats needed. but it is good to have some backup away from your house or business too. but it seems the more effort I put into backup the bigger the chance something went wrong and I can't find the file (G) where if I did not do any backup it would never get lost.
right now stuff is backed up on an external drive and mirrored on my computer at work and thats backed up on another drive.

[Curt Harms]

It amazes me how some people will run their business off their PC/laptop, and have absolutely ZERO backup or recovery plans....

The likelihood of losing important data is inversely proportional to the quality of the existing backup. I.E. Good backup, never have a computer problem. Don't have a backup at all....Roh Roh!!:eek::o

Curt

[Steve Clardy]

I have an external 160g hard drive with a 1 touch backup program.

It was a tad over a $100.00 I think.

I just have to remember to push the button once in a while:rolleyes:

[dennis thompson]

I found out that you can get unlimited offsite backup at Carbonite.com for $50 per year,(I imagine there are many sites that offer this). If you have a business (I don't) a second backup that's offsite is probably a good idea
Dennis

[Mike Henderson]

I found out that you can get unlimited offsite backup at Carbonite.com for $50 per year,(I imagine there are many sites that offer this). If you have a business (I don't) a second backup that's offsite is probably a good idea
Dennis
I use Carbonite also. I used to backup automatically every night to a USB connected disk but the problem is that if the house burns while I'm gone, I lose everything. The offsite of Carbonite was attractive.

You do need a high speed Internet connection to make it practical.

Mike

[David G Baker]

I don't know if what I do can be called a back-up because I tried using a back-up setup and couldn't access the items after a crash so I started using my external drive as a storage for important documents, photos and music. I do not leave the external drive attached to the computer, I only attach it when I have something I want to store. I had a hard drive that had a bad sector on it and the bad sector would not allow me to boot up my C drive.
At one time I used an off site company to store all of my photos but they disappeared and so did all of my photos.

Curt, your day is coming. Every hard drive or storage device will fail eventually.

[Curt Harms]

Curt, your day is coming. Every hard drive or storage device will fail eventually.

True, but a few different DVD's and at least 1 USB flash drive would have to fail at the same time. My biggest vulnerability is if the house burned. I don't worry about programs, mostly data files but I have a couple windows partition images as well. I had a problem with a notebook hard drive years ago. That was fun--I was away from home and the only way to get it to work was to take it out of the notebook, put it in a freezer for a couple hours, put it in the notebook and zip a few files via DOS until the drive got warm and quit, out of the computer and back in the freezer ad nauseum. I got what I needed off that drive but I also learned my lesson;).

[Eric Franklin]

A backup is only good if you can restore from it successfully.

If you have a backup which everybody should, you should periodically test doing a restore to verify it is working.

I remember a situation were a person with a Maxtor One Touch drive hit the button daily for a backup for a 1 1/2 years and then had a hard drive die. Found out the software wasn't configured correctly and they didn't have a backup. They lost everything.

[Chuck Wintle]

I am using an external USB drive but just using a program called Syncback to backup all my documents and other files. Works great. And to restore I only need to copy back the data to the correct place.

[dennis thompson]

Yesterday I told you about my "Maxtor" backup system. Today My computer guy came & suggested I add the "Acronis true image" system which will perform a much more complete backup (he didn't charge me since I had just spent $300 with him on my original crash). Anyway it normally costs about $50 for the Acronis software which apparently makes a complete copy of everything from my computer (an Image) to the Maxtor hard drive.
Dennis

[Chuck Wintle]

Yesterday I told you about my "Maxtor" backup system. Today My computer guy came & suggested I add the "Acronis true image" system which will perform a much more complete backup (he didn't charge me since I had just spent $300 with him on my original crash). Anyway it normally costs about $50 for the Acronis software which apparently makes a complete copy of everything from my computer (an Image) to the Maxtor hard drive.
Dennis

The trouble with doing that is you still need to a daily document backup. The Acronis is good becuase you can restore the complete hard drive in case of failure. However, everyday, new files and documents are added which, if not backed up, will be lost.

[Eric Franklin]

The trouble with doing that is you still need to a daily document backup. The Acronis is good becuase you can restore the complete hard drive in case of failure. However, everyday, new files and documents are added which, if not backed up, will be lost.

Acronis will do incremental daily backups which will get changed files.

[Chuck Wintle]

Acronis will do incremental daily backups which will get changed files.
I stand corrected on that point. :D

[Mike DeHart]

A backup is only good if you can restore from it successfully.

If you have a backup which everybody should, you should periodically test doing a restore to verify it is working.

I remember a situation were a person with a Maxtor One Touch drive hit the button daily for a backup for a 1 1/2 years and then had a hard drive die. Found out the software wasn't configured correctly and they didn't have a backup. They lost everything.

The sister company of a place I used to work had their unix box fail on them. When they restored the data the test data from when they were installing the system came right back up! Unfortunately their production data was never backed up.:eek: They went out of business about 3 months later.

[Dennis Peacock]

I use a floppy disk and a pad of paper and pen. :p :rolleyes: