do you backup your computer?

[silv]

Hey :)

what is everyone using as backup system for their computer setup and/or personal files?

Are you using a software backup tool?
Over Wifi or cable?

Cheers Annette

[silv]

I'm on a Mac and am very bad with regular backups :o

On a USB drive I have a clone of my Operating System partition, done with Carbon Copy Cloner. It's 6 months old, now :o
CCC is great because it lets me start the computer from that USB drive and actually "fix" things on the internal installation in case anything goes wrong.

I keep important media files on a separate hard drive which is connected to my WiFi router.
Because I am always low on disk space and for now, can't afford more space or better solutions, I keep as many of the most important files as will fit on a second hard drive, as well.

That's it.

I admit I am a very bad girl in this respect.
More so because I used to work in IT for 15 years.

[AstralTraveller]

I don't worry about system files or software. Installing Linux is so easy it's not worth the bother. All personal files are backed up to the NAS using rsync. My wife also keeps a backup of her work on USB sticks, which live in her handbag. I'm supposed to keep off-site backups using external HDDs but I'm afraid that is somewhat out of date :sadeyes:.

[sheeny]

I use a 2TB external HDD and SecondCopy software. I used to back up changed files on every shut down, but on upgrading to Windows 10 that became unreliable for some reason, so not back up changed files at 1 and 2 pm each arvo. I backup as a simple copy BTW so I can copy individual files back if I stupidly delete something I shouldn't, or if I have to replace the PC. Easy and simple.

I only backup data files.

Also because astro data tends to take up such a lot of space, each year I burn my raw data to DVD and remove it from the HDD leaving just the finished images.

I also a SATA cloning dock that I bought to increased the size of my C: drive, and I had every intention of doing periodic system clones o symplify re installation of thr system and software, but as yet I haven't found the motivation to match the intention...:P

Al.

[multiweb]

I mirror my drives once every two weeks on external drives of similar capacities or bigger and shelf them. I use Acronis true image. When my drives fail, and they always do eventually, out of the blue, no amount of monitoring will prevent it, I'm always in the position to do a bare metal restore.

So I go and buy a blank drive, stick it in the machine, boot from a CD then restore the image from the backup in a base connected via an eSata port. Takes about 15min, then unplug the dock and reboot. Done.

Online, for all my servers, I don't have the luxury of downtime, so all boxes have two drives that mirror in realtime. If one fails it takes 5min to boot again from the second drive as a master then do a hot swap for the bad drive and resync on the fly.

I don't believe in file by file backup. It is useless. Cloning or imaging sector by sector is the only reliable way.

[Wavytone]

Hi Annette,

I'm old enough to have seen friends and relatives in tears after a HDD failed - and they had no backup. It's bad enough when it's the night before a school assignment is due. It's worse when it's your PhD thesis. Or entire collection of rare vinyl albums and CDs that will never appear digitally are gone. Worst of all are the wedding album, family pics and videos which are irreplaceable.

A mac household here. We have an iMac with external HDD attached via USB with time machine backing up everything on that. I use two external hdds which I swap weekly; the alternate one is kept in a basement storage cage.

The iMac is on 24 x 7 set so the display sleeps but the CPU does not as it is a media server for our Apple TV (music, photos and videos). I run OS X Server on the iMac partly so that it can act as a server and backup via the home wifi network for the other devices:

- a MacBook Air which backs up via its time machine to the iMac via wifi, whenever the MacBook is at home;

- a windows laptop (wife's) that also backs up to the iMac, roughly daily;

- two iPhones and an iPad or two all set to sync to the iMac via wifi.

The setup has been put to the test a few times:

- I've deliberately tried restoring from the time machine backup to a spare drive to confirm it works;

- after installing an SSD in the iMac and setup it up as a fusion drive, restored everything from the backup;

- after wife's iPhone was broken recently, the first question at Apple was "is it backed up ?" before they replaced the handset. Restoring from the backup (via iTunes) worked perfectly.

[leon]

Yes, I back up all my Data, I'm not that clever with all that other stuff

Leon

[GeoffW1]

Hi,

Here's a relevant article to read

http://au.pcmag.com/operating-systems-and-platforms/44092/news/how-to-back-up-restore-your-documents-in-windows-10

Cheers

[Steffen]

I'm backing my MacBook Pro at work to a USB3 TimeMachine drive. The drive stays at work when I go home.

All the family's irreplaceables are on a RAID-5 NAS at home, backed up to a RAID-1. No off-site storage there yet, I'm working on that.

Photos, home videos, music and passwords (1Password) are also in iCloud.

[lazjen]

Mixed OS household, I got sick of juggling HD backups around when drives failed and there would almost certainly be something missing.

Now, I've got Crashplan set up everywhere. Everything backed up to the local server and to the cloud. I've had to restore a few things (mistaken deletes and machine rebuilds) and it's worked fine.

Of course, it's not a free solution - about $150/yr for the plan I'm on (less if you keep an eye out for discounts). Worth it. Especially if you value your data and your time.

[sil]

I do HDD recoveries so I'm slack re individual machines. However I do use Cobian backup and a good NAS.

Cobian is free and can schedule backups (full/incremental) of files and folders and store in zip files. Zip has the benefit of compression but you are not tied to a single piece of software if you want to restore a file. you can just unzip it any time.

With a NAS get one with at least four bays and when setting up let is use at least one drive as a buffer so if any drive fails you dont lose data. Also use NAS rated drives, if you just buy the cheapest drives you can then you WILL kill the drives in time. Its costly to start with but you notice the benefits fast and you can add drives over time as you can afford them (start with two for initial setup). I work off my NAS from my computers mostly so I know the data is safe. External drives will just fail too

A few things I mirror online with Evernote for easy access on phone. But at all costs I AVOID cloud services, why pay and trust someone else to protect my data That I can do faster and easier myself? Likewise specialty software. You are locking your data away in a single point of failure. You can not guarentee that the cloud service or software will even exist when it comes time to needing to recover a file.

[multiweb]

There was a massive thread about privacy and the census earlier on, yet people still back up to "the cloud" or use external online services. The cloud must be all up high and white and fluffy and pretty and secure. The land of unicorns. :lol:

[lazjen]

Hence the reason why I also backup locally. If the service goes away, I won't lose data. I'll know when they go away and I can change things at that point. I run the software 24/7 so it won't be a surprise.

I could probably setup my own online backup somewhere, but I just don't want to manage it - the wasted time on that far outweighs the convenience I've got now.

As for privacy, it's encrypted. Won't stop the NSA, et al, but it's good enough for most purposes.

[lazjen]

Do you encrypt all the data on your home machines? If not, it's basically just as secure.

[multiweb]

I don't need to because I know exactly what goes in and out. I have one single connection point filtered by a hardware gate with a set of rules in place. Anyway I don't understand how you can state that my unencrypted data locally is just as secure as my data backed up on the cloud. Can you elaborate on this?

[sil]

In reality, as i went into in another thread, A hacker isn't going to waste time trying to find YOUR computer online and try to break in. Its easier to physically break into someones home and just take their computer. Basically YOU (each of you out there) are not interesting enough for the effort involved unless you've publically let on you have data worth money to someone.

Its far safer instead to target a cloud service, test their security and reliability with exploits and attacks and end up with a database of accounts and then access all the data you all store there. Or even social engineering to gain access. To many the risk is worth the reward.

People in general are lazy and blindly storing data online so someone else can look after it is just giving up control. My data stays with ME where I can keep it secure, when an online storage company gets into financial difficulties they don't announce "hey we'll be dead in a week, grab your files now before they are lost forever". You're putting your data and trust in a bunch of strangers plus plumbers, electricians etc which gain physical access to where the servers may be stored. Plus you're paying them for it, Plus you're paying money for bandwith so you have slower access to files than a NAS provides. Its just idiocy for something thats laughably simple to look after yourself.

[multiweb]

People are not careless or stupid, well some are... but over time they've become complacent and then they get caught. We've heard about this very cleverly marketed "cloud" for years (or stick an "i" in front of anything). It has become a standard now that every one has accepted without batting an eye lid.

"We'll take care of you and release you of the burden of looking after yourself. We will protect your sensitive information and save your from disaster recovery. Have your data available everywhere anytime from any device."

Who in their right mind would say no to this? No more worries. Help is at hand.

Data mining has become such a big part of everything that is online these days, it is scaring me. I recently went to a few UNI open days. UNSW, Macquarie, UTS, USYD. The theme that came around invariably was the demand by the banking sector (Commonwealth/Westpac), the online gambling mobs (Waterhouse) and a few other financial institutions for the brightest kids that have problem solving skills. So we're talking about Statistical Analysis (Maths) and surprisingly a lot of Physicists. It was demoralizing to see our brightest kids lured and channelled into a machine designed to promote "how do you rip off the plebes" more efficiently, better and faster than ever before.

So, see? "the cloud" is just another giant piece of the puzzle about knowing who does what, no more no less, and the sums of money involved in this business are simply astronomical.

Google scares the hell out of me. Their new entry in the mobile phone market is extremely unsettling.

[Steffen]

Your condescension and platitudes indicate that you don't really know what you're talking about. "The Cloud" is just a marketing term for "someone else's data centre". Thinking that your own home is more secure than at least some of those is laughable. Remember that information security encompasses privacy, integrity and availability. All three.

There are of course online storage offerings that are best avoided, either due to their business models or history of poor governance. Among these I would count anything to do with Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Evernote, Dropbox and several others.

Most importantly, you need to figure out what the risk (likelihood of compromise ⨉ impact) to your information is, and how much you should spend – in money and/or effort – for treating that risk.

[multiweb]

I've been in the industry since the mid 90s, grew with it and saw it change.

:shrug: I don't really understand where that one came from but this is pretty insulting. Then again from your past interactions with other forum members on IIS I'm not really surprised of your lack of manners

As for the rest of your post I'm not even going to indulge you with an answer as your statements are incorrect and more politically driven than technical, like everything else you usually post.

Have a good day. :)

[Steffen]

Seems like I've got at least ten years on you then. Your sweeping, undifferentiated point of view certainly does not make you sound like someone with 20 years experience in IT security.

[silv]

awe... I just now got out my popcorn ...



********

The local backup drives:
since the ransom hacks I guess the 1-backup-drive solutions, even RAIDed, lost their appeal to you, too?

********

Leon wrote he burns old imaging raw data on CD/DVD once a year or so.
I like that.
I can imagine going through old data sets in a few years, using some futuristic new stacking software or someink. And discover black matter or ... you know...
whatever is then the hippest latest subject of discovery.

But: when I went to school we were told this form of physical media has a life expectancy of 10 years.
Anyone know better?

[silv]

The cloud? For personal files?
Yeah. No problem. I, for myself, can hardly see how, in the future, any idiotic intelligence clerk could interpret anything damaging into my data which puts me in prison.....

Cloud is a good - second - storage location. Especially for users with multiple devices.
Does anyone remember the bad old days of having to synchronize data from a handheld device to a PC or server and vice versa?
Tragic disasters ....

I'd never suggest cloud in a corporate environment, though. Never ever.
And if then only a cloud that resides within the country of the company.

[RAJAH235]

ACRONIS TI 2016 works just fine here.
I do weekly back-ups to an external HDD.
One full & two incrementals, plus always have them validated, just to be sure.

Have used ACRONIS for about 4 years with very few probs.

[skysurfer]

Time Machine for MacOS, and Titanium Backup for Android. Both to an external HDD.

[Kunama]

Time Machine for MacOS twice weekly to 2 external drives......

[hobbit]

I back up to a raid 5 NAS and from there to backblaze online storage.

[Karne]

I use Comodo BackUp. This software is easy to use and gives good results. I am satisfied:thumbsup:

[cfranks]

A lot of people now back up reasonably often but my experience (46 years in IT) tells me that very few actually test the back up just taken. Too many times the attempt to Restore fails for whatever reason, just when you need it.
Always test your latest back up copy. Spare HDD's are relatively cheap and could save a lot of worry.