Niece who does proofreading and editing etc working from home has just lost (at least) a day's work after an HD crash on her PC.
At one time a Raid array would be the thing to avoid this - but is there a better etc way these days?
I'd guess whatever it is has to be automatic and as foolproof as possible.
If the files are a reasonable size, you can simply store them in your google drive folder. They get synchronised pretty much straight away.
Raid is good - but the first priority IMO would be to add a small NAS type *backup* box to her network and fix it to backup every day automatically.
RAID will not of course guard against accidental file deletion.
And replace her laptop disk with an SSD - it'll give a huge boost in speed as well. Plextor M6M and Sandisk Extreme (various) are both excellent IME.
I use a mirror of 2 disks (which is RAID1) on my home system.
I also snapshot all my files daily so I can go back to the state of any file on any previous date in case I accidentally overwrite one. One colleague with children doing homework snapshots much more often, so they can go back to last few minutes of work when they overwrite it.
Note that whilst these schemes protect against sudden disk failure and accidental overwriting, they don't detect against loss of the whole server (power glitch, fire, theft, etc). For that, you should be using some off-site backup too. That could be something like a portable USB disk stored at a friend's place, or a cloud based internet service.
She was lucky to use just a day's work. Most people lose _very_ much more than that in a disk failure. One former work colleague lost all the photos of their children in the Boxing Day tsunami, but fortunately not the children themselves. That was a laptop which was washed away with its backup, but it's also a common issue with lost mobiles nowadays.
Snapshot regularly to a USB stick? I haven't considered how to do this (!) but it should be a lot cheaper than a RAID array, and would require the same strategy to regularly save updated files.
Oh, and is the PC a laptop or desktop/under? Makes a lot of difference to the hardware options.
Cheers
Dave R
Some of the material she deals with is commercially sensitive. It sometimes gets delivered on a CD etc rather than via email. So I doubt she'd be happy using such a system. I'd not for that sort of thing either.
I believe she does backup to an external drive. Dunno when and how, though. Maybe just when she remembers to. ;-)
I'm not sure that's so important in this particular case. Once the work is done and dispatched, it's someone else's problem.
Something like this would do it.
It would also have the benefit of her being able to look at or restore earlier versions of her documents after editing blunders etc.
I'm a very satisfied user of that product, no connection, etc.
Use a dropbox folder for documents? However Word can be set up to save every so often, but of course if there was a total disc loss, it would be good old murphy who would decide how much was in fact lost. Save to ram stick? Brian
I don't think cloud storage and a computer always on the net are actually much different in security terms. If a person really wanted the data, they sould somehow infect the4 machine anyway.
I don't think there is any such thing as total security. Brian
if I was working on such a file I'd drag it to a USB stick every 30mins or so. Also rather than bother with TM for a few files I email myself the files. Also dropbox would be useful although I've yet to try it.
Brian Gaff put finger to keyboard:
Once you've uploaded something to the cloud, you must think of it as being "out there" forever, and potentially accessible by any number of unknown people.
But where does it put its backups? If they're on the same HD as the original file, they'd still be lost in the event of a HD failure.
Ideally, you should do frequent backups to *two* external HDs - alternating between the two. Then, in the unlikely event that your main HD *and* one of the backups both fail, you've still got the other backup.
Does AJC have any means of backing up any open files automatically (say) every 5 minutes, or does it only do a backup each time you manually save the file?
As others have said, you can set up MS Word to make automatic backups at regular intervals. I think you can specify where to put them - so they could be on an external HD.
Unlucky. HD crashes these days are comparatively rare unless you jolt one pretty violently that is spinning. There are companies that will (try to) get data back for a (large) price but I guess that isn't cost effective here.
Some desktop chipsets offer RAID functionality as standard and that would be adequate - the cost of a mirror disk isn't high these days.
A backup program that permits regular incremental backups of her documents directory saved to an external drive would be one option.
Another alternative is to alter her manual workflow so that she saves work in progress to a timestamped copy on an independent SSD drive or even a thumbnail drive 64GB ones are now quite cheap.
You have to also consider the potential risk that cryptolocker or similar gets onto the box and renders everything unreadable. (TBH I'd rate that as more of a threat today than a disk crash)
Backup to a USB drive is dead easy. Drag and drop, job done or go and have a cuppa while several mb/gb's are copied over.
What OS does she use? Win 8.1 can be set to do backups of personal documents to an external USB drive every 10 minutes if required. (look for "file History")
Saves having to set the auto save on every programme used and avoids the "cloud issue" for sensitive data.
For earlier versions of windows allwaysync does the same thing and is free for non industrial numbers of files
I use FreefileSync but there is a sister companion of RealTimeSync though have never used it.
If security is an issue, she could use TruCrypt or whatever it's now called for saving to an external drive.
Was she waiting for those disks in the post from the UK's three highly sensitive enquires about deaths in police custody? Tell her they've been lost...
I think they thought of that. :-)
It puts them in the drive and folder that you tell it to.
I don't know about "alternating". I have active backup to one disk, and overnight backups to two other disks, one of which is in a different building.
It obviously can't save information that's in the app's working storage but not on the HD. When I'm using my editor, whenever I press Ctrl+S, Active Backup backs up what I've just saved. A timed backup would be superfluous.
ISTM that timed backups are an inferior sticking-plaster for people who don't save their work often enough. But if someone really can't get into the proper saving habit, it's better than nothing, I'm sure.
Had one crash here not that long ago. The replacement has been fine - without changing anything else.
Her repair man is attempting this.
I'd noticed something about Raid on the bios pages of one of my PCs here. But wasn't sure if it was a self contained feature. The cost of an extra HD would be neither here nor there.
Wonder how reliable SDD actually is? Perhaps too new to be certain?
But whatever used would have to be automatic. All to easy to forget to do backups when working at home - and running a young family.
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