POLL: Do you make back-ups of your hard drive?

Do you make back-ups of your files?


  • Total voters
    50
  • Poll closed .
I'm a big fan of offsite backup because your house will likely be destroyed when you aren't there. I use Carbonite but there are others equally good. I pay about $80 for two years (IIRC). The data is encrypted so they can't see if even if they wanted to - but they don't want to be able to see it. Backup is immediate, depending on the availability of your Internet connection.

You have to have broadband access to use offsite backup.

The other advantage is that you can access your files when you're traveling (password protected).

Mike

Everybody, been reading and learning with great deal of interest. Over the years had to many crashes to mention, and starting all over is not fun to say the least.

At one point in time had two hard drives on another computer, still crashed......long story.

Have a lap top now, so external saver is out of the question. 2nd hard drive would be neat........but if
the laptop was stolen:(

Rush had be promoting Carbonite for years. So when
Mike just brought this up about them, thought what the heck. SIgned up for FREE 15 day trial...............
It is in the process now of backing up my system (HUGE)

So I thought what the heck will research it farther to my
dismay, found this blog and they sure are down on Carbonite.......seems the trend is running towards Mosey

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/...ition-in-online-back-up/?scp=1&sq=mozy&st=cse


Open for suggestions, as have lot of info that CAN'T lose
to another crash.:type:
 
One free suggestion, does your Internet provider give you free web space? Mine does, 10 gig if I remember right. I just ftp (file transfer protocol) my important stuff (farm records)
to there. Safe enough for me, not like I'm the CIA or something :D

Gives me a free off site backup.
 
I don't understand? Why would an external device be out of the question? You should be able to use an external just as easy as a desktop.

Would have unit sitting next to me in my lazy back chair
with more wires running out the side of the laptop.
I HATE wires.

Guess I could make a connection hookup about once a day or couple of days.

In the process of putting together EBook that just that alone will have 200 pages, with about 100 pictures, not to mention all the other clutter have.
 
Ok, Since I got my Automatic Document feed scanner I have decided that I will no longer keep paper copies of bills, pay stubs, and other just generally annoying to store but satisfying to have type pieces of paper.

It now seems more important than ever to maintain a 'real' backup of my PC. I took a look at a few of the on line backup services, tried to ferret out which one was better. Really didn't come up with anything conclusive as to which was better, so since I've heard of Carbonite more, I opened up a trial account and am currently in the process of backing up all the 'data' on my computer.

This Carbonite wont backup your programs and those types of things, but I can take care of that myself. What I'm more worried about is some sort of serious catstrophe where my locally stored backups 'die' for whatever reason. I'd hate to lose all the digital pictures, music, videos I've made, documents I've scanned, etc...

So Thanks Toni for this thread, as it has prompted me to do something I really needed to do. :thumb:
 
One thing to watch for, Brent, is to make sure Carbonite backs up your e-mail file. I use Outlook and the default setting did not back up that file. If you use Outlook, do a web search and find out where the Outlook file is (and what it's name is) and set it for backup.

In addition to old e-mail, the Outlook file has all your contacts and calendar. I assume other mail systems would be similar.

Mike
 
That's very good advice Mike.

I've always been a packrat with email as well, and for work where I use outlook, I archive all my mail to external pst files.

For Home, I use thunderbird, and have my default directory for mail setup to be in a subdir off of 'My Documents'.

I also typically partition my drives to have a C and a D drive. The C drive gets just the basic Windoze operating system. I move the my documents folder to d:\my documents and try and store all my data there.

I also create a program files drive on D and for any programs I download/install, I put them on that drive as well.

I just recently had my computer die (cpu committed self-immolation), so fortunately, I still had my hard drives. Still had to completely re-install and build my new system from scratch though, but it was nice to have all my data...

I wonder how many days it will take Carbonite to turn green? :D

If you have any other tips on using carbonite, I'd appreciate it.

So Far I've set it up to backup my document and settings folders, and the my documents folders. Those seem to have the bulk of the files I need, and I'll handle my operating system backups on my own.
 
...So I thought what the heck will research it farther to my dismay, found this blog and they sure are down on Carbonite.......seems the trend is running towards Mosey

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/...ition-in-online-back-up/?scp=1&sq=mozy&st=cse


Open for suggestions, as have lot of info that CAN'T lose to another crash.:type:
Hmm...that's not really good feedback, huh? Backing up appears to be easy, but it's the recovery that really matters when the chips are down. It's so overwhelmingly negative, I can't help but wonder if the comments were planted by Carbonite's competition. Probably not, but the possibility exists.

Anybody here have any experience recovering data from Carbonite?
 
This review tends to give carbonite the edge as a being cheaper and easier than mozy. Mozy apparently has some tools that would give it the edge for the business user.

http://www.backupreview.info/2008/02/02/carbonite/

As far as the other comments on that blog, I look at it the way I generally look at reviews on Amazon. Typically, you will see the squeaky wheels posting the most absurdly negative feedback. Dissatisfied users are usually more motivated to post. I have no idea what the really, really negative guys set up was like. Did he have a really slow computer? Did he have other software problems, on his machine? Who knows, you generally won't see the people with the negative reviews posting that type of info.

I'm not doing carbonite as my entire backup solution, but rather as the backup of last resort. I'm doing my own backups to external hard drives, but if something should happen to them, well, then I still have the carbonite files. Just something that seems like cheap insurance against the unforseeable.
 
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