OT; PC Backup

I save anything vital like my business accounts on to a memory stick, but I don't backup general stuff - which could be an inconvenience if anything happened.

I have Norton 360 which has a built in back up feature - but it doesn't work. Drives me mad.

Everytime it reaches the stage 'Insert DVD' it them claims the DVD isn't empty. Tried loads of different makes & the DVD slot works OK with everything else.

So, would I be better off with one of these online backup companies or buying some kind of external device?

If the latter, any suggestions to a PC numpty?

Reply to
The Medway Handyman
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Definitely get an external HD of some kind - NAS or USB. They're not expensive. If going USB, one which doesn't need an external PSU is much more convenient - eg WD My Passport drive. Copy your general stuff as well as the apparently vital stuff.

Make a machine level backup too. The free edition of Macrium Reflect is good at that (and I have tested it :-) ). Norton Ghost is probably a similar product.

Online backup seems like a really good idea, but I have no experience of who, if anybody, can be trusted in that field.

Or you could do as Dennis recommends and spend a large sum on a tape backup :-)

Reply to
Clive George

I use one of these ! Just drag over what you want to store.

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you want a SW solution, then hopefully someone else has some suggestions, because what I use on Windows is very old. On Linux I use 'Image for Linux' which is OK.

Andy C

Reply to
Andy Cap

I use a Buffalo network attached storage(NAS)device with Memeo autobackup. The software, which should come with the NAS, automatically makes at least one backup of a file as it changes, then copies it to the Buffalo. If you use a router to connect to the Internet you probably connect to it using a network RJ45 cable often coloured blue. You just need to plug the Buffalo into the router as well, also using a network cable, and the router will sort out the addresses for you.

I had no problem installing the device and have now had it running for over two years. Never needed it for a system failure but it also works as a media file streamer.

Peter Scott

Reply to
Peter Scott

Portable external hard drive and

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use it all the time. Backups are performed in 'real-time' so you can carry on working. You can also do selective file restores as well in case you wish to recover just one file.

Reply to
John

;-(

Bit of both maybe?

For your important stuff Dropbox could be handy.

Up to 2G is free (plus you can earn more capacity by getting others to sign up etc) and it's basically a folder that gets synchronised between your PC / Mac / Linux and the WEB ... then to any other machines that share the same Dropbox. ie, You drop a file into the folder and it appears on the web (password protected etc) and say yer Mrs PC. I've only been playing with it for a while but it looks ok. Someone will probably come along and tell us why it isn't a good idea though. ;-(

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If the latter, any suggestions to a PC numpty?

For true 'get yer *data* somewhere easily ... and restore easily' I'd go along with the other suggestions and an external USB drive of some sort and a Clickfree transformer:

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numpty appeal:

Plug transformer into USB drive. Plug combo into PC. Click 'Yes' (one time) to the agreement. Sit and watch .. (first time will take a while, subsequent ones less so).

... As it goes round your drive finding all the pictures, documents, videos and a large quantity of other stuff one might consider data and stuffs it all on the external drive.

You can then top it up at whatever intervals you want (/remember) and do other machines as well (and store the backup off site?).

Worst comes to the worst, or you buy a new PC, plug the thing back in, tell it to restore (choose the machine name from it's list) and either put all the files in a new folder to sort though at your leisure, or, let it put them all back where it got them from (even across different versions of OS).

It doesn't do the OS though, just your data (and the most important bit presumably). [1]

I've used mine several times when wiping a machine and I'd have to say it's pretty seamless (your mileage may vary etc).

It's not subtle like may other systems but simple enough to use easily and much much better than not doing anything at all (often the alternative).

They do the concept (software built in) with a hard drive as well but I preferred the flexibility to be able to use the dongle thing over several drives.

Cheers, T i m

[1] You could use the raw external drive and 'some software' to take a snapshot of yer new / clean system then use the Clickfree thing (to the same drive) to back up yer data as you go?
Reply to
T i m

I use Genie Backup Manager, and take an image of my C: drive every so often (manually initiated), plus an automatic backup every time I first login each day. The automatic backups are of selected folders and files (ie my data files, email database, pictures, config files etc) but not program files, which don't change very often. For these data backups I have set the backup software to create a full backup every 30 days, with intervening daily incremental backups (only files that have changed). Individual files or folders can be restored/recovered in addition to complete backups. Full backups are kept for 12 months and incrementals deleted after the following three full backups.

I use" Karens Once a Day"

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trigger the Genie backup the first time I login each day, leter versions of Genie may now have this feature built in.

Slightly older versions of Genie backup can be found for free on magazine cover disks and online. It runs in the background so you can carry on working. Acronis True Image is an alternative, also available free for older versions.

All my backups are to a usb hard drive, then every so often I also copy the monthly backup files to a remote (and physically hidden at the other end of the house) NAS drive in case my PC and usb drive gets damaged or nicked.

Bit belt and braces, but both the usb and NAS drives get used for other things as well, so not over expensive.

Big drives are so cheap now it's really not worth bothering with tape, and they are pretty reliable. I've never trusted remote backup solutions, so not tried them.

Reply to
DavidM

The Medway Handyman wibbled on Sunday 04 April 2010 13:35

For quite a robust little system, if you have WIFI, then a WIFI NAS hard disk-in-a-box could be quite cool. It would give you the potential to put in the garage or shed, giving it some protection against accidents and fire or flood that might take out all your computers in one go.

Happy to look into this a bit more if you're interested. This method and any method that uses an always-on hard disk has the potential to automate backups daily so you don't forget, though good reporting is essential - eg it should email you if something didn't work.

And back up your accounts to both the NAS and the USB stick for double protection.

In the meantime, personally I would use 2 USB sticks or one of a very decent quality such as the Corsair stick-in-an-ali-tube:

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have an earlier version, 3 years old. Almost indestructible and waterproof when in the tube and the flash RAM is good quality too - and faster than a lot of the cheaper flash so copying data is several times quicker than a cheap and nasty stick (I've compared a few).

Reply to
Tim Watts

Go buy Acronis True Image and a cheap USB HD.

Do a complete image to the new HD. (Takes anything from 10 to 30 minutes.

Then do incremental backups to that image. You can even mount the image to browse as if it were a real HD. I can even run some simple programs from the image.

Keep the new HD disconnected and stored in a safe place, preferably in another building.

Reply to
ericp

Here's an 'AVOID' warning....

Seagate sell something called the Seagate Replica - wich consists of a USB hard drive and some software. USB drive is OK - but the seftware is truly dreadful - supposed to backup in the background, but slugs the system response while it's doing so - then, from time to time, it believes that it's filled up the external hard drive and falls in a heap, giggling. Ask Seagate support about it and they reccomend hacking the registry, resinstalling the software, disembowelling goats & etc.

On my 'to do' list =- format the USB hard drive & use 'something else' for backup software.....

Adrian

Reply to
Adrian Brentnall

In message , The Medway Handyman writes

I've been through various options here and ended up using the free SyncToy from Microsoft (and a Windows Home Server running on a very cheap HP server box). I tried using a couple of NAS devices, and ended up frustrated by software updates and other inconveniences, and sold them on ebay. My experiences with other dedicated backup software from specialist suppliers have always ended in tears. For my data, as opposed to something that will restore the OS as well, I run a second machine on the network and hang an external drive across this, then use SyncToy to back up to both the machine and drive. SyncToy is a tiny bit "hands on" at first, but can be automated and once you understand how it works, it's really simple and clear to use.

The server just gives a second pair of braces, and can mirror any vital data as well as backing up every machine.

Reply to
Bill

How much hard drive space have you currently used? In the space of a month, how much new information would you guestimate you generate? (i.e. docs, files, photos, etc).

Online can be ok for small amounts of stuff - however it becomes problematical for large amounts. Problems typically include using too much internet data traffic, being too slow for disaster recovery etc.

Follow the onion principle - you need layers!

How much do you want to spend? (more to the point, how much are you prepared to spend?)

Reply to
John Rumm

Save or backup? If the memory stick is the only place you save it then I'd suggest putting elsewhere as well! I've had plenty of memory stick go bad (admittedly, less common with decent brands).

For stuff like this you might want to consider dropbox

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if you are feeling generous, use my signup link and I'll get some more space ;-) (
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)

You get a couple of gig free - so it's not massive but handy to be able to get hold of stuff on other machines at time. It just gives you a "folder" on your machine that you save things to - and then they are copied up into the cloud.

There are other options around like this - Microsofts Live would be one worth a look if you don't want cross platform.

what sort of size backup are you talking about? Complete machine backup?

*runs away*

Possibly both. Online will be restricted in size (unless you pay, and even then you won't want to backup GBs over your broadband connection).

I've given up with Western Digital - currently using Samsung storystation external drives which seem good. YMMV.

As I say, dropbox is simple and free (and limited). External drives I would currently go for samsung but they are much the same I suspect.

Software wise I suspect others will know better. Doesn't windows backup "do" now? I'm a Mac and solaris person really.

Cheersm,

Darren

Reply to
D.M.Chapman

What you haven't done is tell us how much 'stuff' you've got. As already mentioned, DropBox can be very useful for 2GB (free). And Google allows up to 8GB total (think that includes mail - but you can have multiple accounts).

But you also need to think about what exactly you would do if you lost your current PC. You need to consider applications (no good buying a PC and either not having the applications you need or finding they don't work under the Windows 7 you have found on your replacement machine). And could you borrow someone else's machine for a while?

And how you would recover from your backup? Make sure that you can actually do so. In fact, I would recommend backup your your whole PC using whatever backup tool and also backing up documents separately.

Online storage, memory stick, USB drive, NAS drive - all fine but don't rely on just one.

Make sure you have details of all user names, passwords, unlock codes, etc. for when you took the backup/installed the software/etc.

For a basic backup, the standard Windows ntbackup.exe is possibly usable. But you might need to manually install it from the CD in Windows XP.

Reply to
Rod

Sorely tempted by a 500GB "Seagate Expansion" USB drive for If going USB, one which doesn't need an external PSU is much more

True but may well indicate that the drive inside is a "laptop" drive. These do not have the life rating of proper desk top drives. Think a few tens of thousands hours for a laptop drive against a few 100's of thousands of hours for a desktop drive. Life hours probably isn't a problem for this application unless it really is spinning 24/7 (unlikely) but it also says some thing about the overall reliabilty.

I don't trust any body but me with my data... Which company had a "whoopsie" fairly recently and lost a loads of peoples data? Some mobile phone type gadget was involved.

Reply to
Dave Liquorice

Doesn't that slow the machine/network down just when you want to use it? And surely you want a backup done when you log off rather than on so things that you have just created/changed are backed up ASAP.

Each user on the windows boxes here has Second Copy

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run when they log off which copies anything new/changed to their area on the server. Stuff that is deleted, or the previous copy of changed stuff, gets shuffled into an "archive" directory in their area.

The archives just build up but I have a script that goes through them deleteing anything older than 30 days just before the weekly full backup of the server to a NAS drive. There are daily incrementals of the server as well and 3 sets of full/incrementals.

Reply to
Dave Liquorice

I use 2 USB HDs, problem is, they have more info on them than the pc. I.e, once stored on both drives I delete a load of stuff from the pc to make more space. So, is there an easy way to keep adding data to them without manually checking if it's already there? Presumably if I used an incremental backup it would delete files if they weren't on the pc? Or maybe not?

Reply to
brass monkey

SyncToy. Sync Center. RoboCopy. Xcopy.

Assuming Windows, depends on version what options you have. All the above have options like "copy every file that does not already exist on the target drive", "copy only if updated at a later date/time than the one already on the target drive".

All are either standard components of some version(s) of Windows or are freely downloadable.

Reply to
Rod

So far nobody seems to have mentioned the backup utility which comes included with Windows. Control Panel has a backup and restore feature which can back up part or all of your filestore. This is fairly simple and straightforward - AFAIK the add on products are aimed at providing more features than you get as standard with Windows. If you only want the occasional backup then use the built in software. If you want automated scheduled backups which only pick up files which have changed (incremental) then you may need more sophisticated software.

How much do you want to back up? If it is more than will fit on a single DVD then you may have to back up different parts of your system to different DVDs. One way is to back up to your internal disc (if you have space) then copy the backup file(s) to DVD.

I haven't backed anything up recently so I haven't used the tool under Windows Vista but it looks to have enough features.

With your Norton 360 is it possible that you are trying to back up more than one DVD's worth of data and the software is too stupid to tell you this clearly? Perhaps try backing up a small area of filestore and see if this works?

HTH

Dave R

Reply to
David WE Roberts

At the time I couldn't find anything that would let me run the backup program on logoff, and anyway there's usually someone else in the family queueing to use the PC when I finish with it. I've set Genie to run with low priority, so while it does slow things down a little the machine is by no means unuseable.

Is this a feature of Second Copy, if not how does it get triggered?

David

Reply to
DavidM

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