Best way to back up my hard drive

[126coupe]

My P/C has never been backed up, I'm getting nervous, its a XP operating system.

Thanks in advance

[Hugh R]

You can buy a big a$$ external hard drive for less than $100 at Frye's. I did that, and I use Carbonite.com which saved my butt a few weeks ago. Also, I live in brush fire country, so off site backup is a must.

[fingpilot]

Sometimes, depending on how much actual data you have (pic, files, vids, spreadsheets) a thumb drive (largest possible) will suffice if you only save the data, and not all the programs.

Hugh is right, if your backup is the same place as the puter, won't do you any good if worst case happens.

See if you can get an idea of how much you need to save (in MB's or GB's).

For the avergae Joe that is not 'into it', carbonite.com is brainless, easy to do, and definately offsite. Amount of data is not important, they take everything you have and store it. Cost is reasonable as well.

[126coupe]

I am only concerned about my Quickbooks personal and business files, is their a way I can check to see how much space I need on a external hard drive?

[fingpilot]

I know several people in here that could talk you to that info, but if that is truly all you are wanting to B/U, a large thumb drive would probably do it.

Slodave????? You around?

[RPKESQ]

Best advice?

Do it now. (buy, rent, pay for the expertise, but now, not later)

[slodave]

Hold the hard drive up to the light and hand copy all the 1's and 0's in the exact order... If you want 2 copies, use carbon paper...

The ideas above are sound. You can also buy an inexpensive program, like www.secondcopy.com (I like this for simple backups) and a large external HD as Hugh mentioned and set up an automated backup schedule. SC is a glorified copy and paste program, meaning it does not convert your files to a tape backup like stream that is unreadable. SC can do normal/incremental/differential type backups.

Off site backups are good too, just need to be aware that they do cost money, although the prices are not bad today.

Even if you don't settle on a backup plan today, it would still be wise to pick up an external drive or large thumb drive and manually copy your most important data for now.

BTW, it's not really the OS you need to worry about, it is the hard drive that will fail to the point of expensive recovery.

[scottmandue]

Originally Posted by Hugh R

You can buy a big a$$ external hard drive for less than $100 at Frye's. I did that, and I use Carbonite.com which saved my butt a few weeks ago. Also, I live in brush fire country, so off site backup is a must.

Yep, I got a USB external drive from tigerdirect and just slid all my files off onto it.

Easy peasy

[scottmandue]

About ten year I suggested to friends we set up an internet site to store peoples files.

"Scott, you idiot, no one would trust their data to the internet"

Sigh

[Schumi]

Move all your important, must have stuff onto an external hard drive. All the rest of the programs just let go. All that software people pay for backs up everything, but it's not always that easy, especially when you have a lot of strange programs installed. I've gone through several bad hard drive failures where I just simply lost my stuff, and after about a month of rebuilding, I'm usually happier as I have a nice fresh install of windows and less junk.

I just copy my Documents folder and any zip files or program installers I may need, let the rest burn.

[Super_Dave_D]

Buy a Mac!! I know you didnt ask that but this is a cool feature

OSX comes with Time Machine- which backs up the entire computer (in my case wirelessly) every hour. It analyses the changes made to the hard drive in the past hour and back it up. Then it backs up the daily changes and then weekly. So if a tragic mistake is made – I can back up to the past hour and keep moving. The hourly back up that’s about 30 seconds depending on the amount of changes.

[gr8fl4porsche]

If you use external drives - do not let them run. Turn them on, back up data and turn off. They have no cooling method so they get hot and eventually fail. If you need to back up everyday due to new info, then a Raid or off site storage is the way to go.

I believe I pay about $ 3.75 a month for Carbonite. That's almost 2 years of service to break even with an external drive. Carbonite backs up (if you like) a little while after you create the data.

[slodave]

Originally Posted by Schumi

Move all your important, must have stuff onto an external hard drive. All the rest of the programs just let go. All that software people pay for backs up everything, but it's not always that easy, especially when you have a lot of strange programs installed. I've gone through several bad hard drive failures where I just simply lost my stuff, and after about a month of rebuilding, I'm usually happier as I have a nice fresh install of windows and less junk.

I just copy my Documents folder and any zip files or program installers I may need, let the rest burn.

This is why I suggested SC. It only 'copies' and 'pastes' the files you select. Just like you would do by hand. The other benefit, is that if things are 'backed up' to an external drive, you could take the drive with you and the data is fully readable.

At $30, it's not bad for simple on site backups.

Anyway, everyone just needs to backup period. However it is accomplished.

[126coupe]

Ok I received my external hard drive (western digital), plugged it in to the USB port.
Nothing, its getting power, but shouldn't I have received some software with it?
How do I get it to work? Shouldn't an icon appeared under my computer??

[dentist90]

Usually they're plug and play. When you plug it into a USB port you will see a message 'found new hardware' and then 'hardware installed and ready to use'. Clicking on 'My Computer' you should see your new drive appear with a drive letter assigned to it.
If not, leave the external hard drive on and plugged in and reboot your computer to see if it finds it.

[Joeaksa]

Originally Posted by Hugh R

You can buy a big a$$ external hard drive for less than $100 at Frye's. I did that, and I use Carbonite.com which saved my butt a few weeks ago. Also, I live in brush fire country, so off site backup is a must.

Same thing here but I also keep my "old computer" and back things up every month there, then as well use a USB external drive. Not going to lose two sources at one time.

[stealthn]

Synctoy...

[jcsjcs]

Mozy.com

I have a 500 GB hard drive for my pictures (over 100 GB in use.)

$5 per month and it is all backed up to mozy.com.

Use if for my business as well.

After 25 years of providing IT support - offsite internet based backup is the only way to go!

[slodave]

Originally Posted by jcsjcs

Mozy.com

I'm tempted to sign up for mozy, just because of Justine Ezarik...

[ErVikingo]

So Mozy or Carbonite or?

I back up my personal files to WD portable drives and store them on a fire safe. Also to offsite WD "World" drives.

Office backups are similar + paid service which is too expensive for personal use.