New Year's Resolution #2 - Backup Your Computer

[jyl]

New Year's Resolution for all of us - BACK UP YOUR COMPUTERS!

Every few months, there is a plaintive post here - help, my computer crashed, how can I recover my data off the dead hard drive.

C'mon, when your drive crashes, your only response should be to click "restore from backup" and go put a 9mm through the dead drive. It should be no more traumatic than running the toilet paper roll empty in mid-p-

Best Buy has a 3TB Toshiba external drive right now for $130, which is pretty damn cheap.

I just improved my backup scheme as follows - every few hours, Time Machine does an incremental backup of my system to an external drive, that is of both the boot drive (soon to become the boot SSD) and the data drive (which holds the Mac OS libraries). Every week, Carbon Clone Copy makes a bootable clone of my boot drive and a clone of my data drive. When I have time, I'm also going to set up a cloud backup using Carbonite or similar.

[azasadny]

Yep! I tell everyone the same thing and they still don't back their data up.

[dennis in se pa]

try dropbox.com = automatic and more benefits.

[willtel]

There are two types of people. Those who do backups and those who will do backups.

I also use time machine but still have a failed Windows drive I want to take in for recovery. It will cost me around $800 at best and $1400 on the high side. An exspensive mistake.

[jyl]

I had a bad experience with a time machine backup. My drive failed and my time machine backup wouldn't restore. It would hang up sometime in the middle of the night. Repeatedly. I finally figured from the logs it was hanging up at the same file each time. I deleted the file and then the restore went further before hanging up. The next day I deleted the next file it had hung up on, and after most of a week, my disk was finally restored. Not a good experience. So now I clone as well as use time machine.

[RedBaron]

Keep a yearly backup in a safe deposit box/fireproof vault as well.

[aigel]

At work I only save to the network which is backed up daily.

At home I have very little stuff I really need long term. That I save to an external HD and generally have it on more than one of my computers.

I like this saying:

It isn't a question IF your hard drive fails. The only question is WHEN!

G

[flatbutt]

I save my financials on thumb drives. This 3TB Toshiba sounds interesting though. Is it plug n' play? What is the use life of an external drive?

[jyl]

It is a USB 3.0 external hard drive. Lifespan - should be several years, but the point with hard drives is you just dunno.

[kiwiokie]

Just lost another WD Caviar 90Gb drive today. Yes it was backed up. Guess things don't last like they used to.

[jyl]

Hmm, Carbonite is saying the initial backup only proceeds at 2-3 GB per day. So to initially back up my iPhoto Library will take 30 to 50 DAYS? Ehh, cloud backup may not be workable.

[RWebb]

add some fiber to your diet

[id10t]

I have a large raid array for my /home directory, so I'm not too worried about hw failure....

[Hugh R]

I live in brush fire country. I use Carbonite. I may well get a big external HD just because my puter is getting maxed out. I had to use Carbonite once to restore a computer and it took a while, but it restored everything. Including deleted emails.

[jyl]

I'm interested in a cloud backup in case my house gets burgled or burns down. But in necessary I'll just carry an external drive back and forth from home to office every month or so.

[azasadny]

All of my data is on my Windows Home Server with disk duplication, so everything is written on two different drives. If the server itself fails, I can read the data drives on any Windows PC. My main desktop, running Windows 8 is backed with Acronis True Image Home, and I have a current System Recovery DVD with updated drivers, etx... Everything has been thoroughly tested and it works!

Every PC is our house is backed up by the server and all data is on the server. Now, if someone breaks in and steals the server.... I'm sunk!

[Scott Douglas]

So I thought I'd do the right thing and back up my system again. Hadn't done it in a while.
Got the error of sector not found 0x8007001b.
I am running Vista 64 and have an external 750 gb hard drive.
Windows says it's the external drive that has the problem.
Where is scan disk when I need it? (sigh)

[jyl]

Or your house burns. I knew a man whose house burned. He told me the worst loss was all his photographs of his family.

All of my data is on my Windows Home Server with disk duplication, so everything is written on two different drives. If the server itself fails, I can read the data drives on any Windows PC. My main desktop, running Windows 8 is backed with Acronis True Image Home, and I have a current System Recovery DVD with updated drivers, etx... Everything has been thoroughly tested and it works!



Every PC is our house is backed up by the server and all data is on the server. Now, if someone breaks in and steals the server.... I'm sunk!

[azasadny]

I forgot to mention that I have all photos and family videos backed up on an external hard drive that is stored in the gun safe. Not fool proof, but pretty good. I should store the hard drive at my father's house in his gun safe...

[Porsche-O-Phile]

A 3 TB time capsule is in my future. The downside is it has been for about a year so yeah I'm one of those playing Russian Roulette right now...