What is your computer back-up strategy?

[Joey Jo Jo Jr. Shabadoo]

I've got my own NAS that provides about 5.6tb of storage with raid 5 so I can lose a hard drive and just fit a new one and it will automatically rebuild. I just save all photos, documents, music and pretty much everything that I want secure to that. Not the cheapest option though.

 

[bhaexpress]

I see so even if the motherboard is fried, you can remove the hard drive, plug the adaptor in, stick the other end in to USB on a working machine, which should mount the drive.

Yep, I've used it for certain situations. However after many years in support I have a variety of tools that are only useful when they are badly needed. A job I did a couple of years ago involved shifting some old servers which meant stripping them out of the cabinets. One old one had the heads of it's bolts wrecked and they were panicking about how to get it out of it's rack. Of course my trusty mini mole grips shifted the duff bolts in seconds. You tend to discover these things and then know next time.

 

[Publius Ovidius]

we are one of the largest dr business continuity
companies in the world...you would be surprised how many people back up to tape and never check that they work!

 

[Bozza]

we are one of the largest dr business continuity
companies in the world...you would be surprised how many people back up to tape and never check that they work!

I can't imagine too many home users are backing up to tape, but I stand to be corrected. Anyone...?

 

[Wozza]

Auto weekly backup to local 2TB drive.

Auto backup (twice daily) to Mozy. (But the initial backup was very slow and they're now expensive).

Occasional backup to a drive which I leave at my parents' home.

Sorted.

 

[Tom Hark Preston Park]

It's Christmas, It is a symbol of Jesus

I think you'll find its Santa that comes out of your chimney. Jesus is the other one.

 

[DanielT]

I do love complicated solutions, but at the same time, backups are about being simple, otherwise you won't do it.

That's why I use Dropbox. I have tried a few other online backups, including jungledisk/amazon-s3, Spideroak and Wuala. Never tried Carbonite as it doesn't backup external drives. Dropbox is cross-platform, has an app for Android and probably the other popular smartphone-wannabe.

However, as long as the hard drive is able to spin up, all your data is on it and can be recovered using various methods, of which a Live-CD is the simplest. A little program called testdisk will recover files, even deleted one, from all drives, including SD cards (handy for when people delete/format their camera cards)

 

[Art Vs Science]

I think you'll find its Santa that comes out of your chimney. Jesus is the other one.

I get confused, beards and stuff

 

[Martinf]

I get confused, beards and stuff

I've got this idea of writing a children's book called 'Who stole Santa's Beard?'. I might ask you to illustrate it for me. We'll make millions.

 

[Art Vs Science]

I've got this idea of writing a children's book called 'Who stole Santa's Beard?'. I might ask you to illustrate it for me. We'll make millions.

Not a problem. Multi layered talents!! Errrrrr who stole it then?

 

[Martinf]

Not a problem. Multi layered talents!! Errrrrr who stole it then?

View attachment 24766

Not sure. It's a work in progress.

 

[Gilliver's Travels]

Just noticed - all the posters on this thread appear to be male.
Any idea why?

 

[Art Vs Science]

Just noticed - all the posters on this thread appear to be male.
Any idea why?

How do you know they are male?

 

[Gilliver's Travels]

Just a hunch. But it does leave one wondering just what NSC's ladeez do for backup...

 

[Gilliver's Travels]

Anyway, I've got this Samsung 320GB external drive, but the user guide for Samsung Auto Backup is so appallingly written that I'm too chicken to use it and risk losing all my data. Anyone else?

 

[deletebeepbeepbeep]

"Oh bollocks!"

Not much of a strategy granted.

 

[Lethargic]

Qnap NAS and Mozy online storage. SSD are great in terms of performance but they do have a finite lifetime.

 

[Fef]

No it's just a bit of hardware. A cable and a power supply to drive the disk if required. Got mine on Ebay I think, no great science ! See here -> R-Drive

I got something similar - a caddy - right after Mrs Fef decided to fall asleep one evening with a mug of tea in her hand whilst using her laptop. The noises they both made were quite interesting. I removed the hard disk from the deceased laptop, and her new laptop read the old hard disk on the USB port.

Nowadays, all our laptops automatically back up to a Drobo connected to our home network; PCs using Microsoft's SyncToy and MacBook using SuperDuper and Time Machine.

 

[cuthbert]

Hope for the best, it's only failed me twice, which is one hell of a better record than I have with women.

 

[Bad Ash]

That's a similar setup to me (ZFS rather than RAID). Problem is, it doesn't cover the thing being stolen, burnt, etc. or more than one drive failing.