I Just Finished a Computer Backup, Have You?

glenn bradley

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This is a public service announcement to remind us all to do a backup of our home systems . . . today . . . why not now?

:stick:

Since I do incremental backups and do them regularly, this took just a few minutes. I haven't even finished my coffee.

:bliss::bliss:
 
I use something called Genie Timeline that automatically tracks changes and backs them up to a NAS (network attached storage) device. I've got it running on 4 computers around here.

That does remind me that I need to set something up on my linux boxes as well. Hmmm....
 
I use a portable 1T Western Digital 'Elements' drive. I have had unpleasant experiences with backup software that requires you to have that software running in order to restore the backup files. Backup software may not even do this anymore but, with storage so inexpensive, I just us Allway Sync which is a free software targeting the synchronization of multiple devices. I don't use a lot of the features. I just configure it to move all new and changed files from my source computer directory to the destination drive directory. If you setup your directory structure . . . I almost said "correctly" how OCD is that!?! :rofl:

Ahem . . . if you setup your directory structure so that it is hierarchical, you only need to source from the root of that hierarchy. Result = super-simple incremental backups.

I have one drive that goes from home to work to LOML's. It just stays at whichever location was done last thereby creating a pseudo-random, alternate location, site destruction protection methodology :rofl:
 
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I mostly rely on Carbonite, but do have 2 USB drives that I back up to once a month, one stays up at the shop, other in the fire safe. Probably should consider doing something I can store elsewhere though.
 
ok for us that dont have all the switches on like you major tec guys,, here is my existing home setup up and what would be the best recipe for a good backup strategy? i have one desktop machine in shop, 2 laptops in house and one desktop in basement. shop to house hard wired with dsl cable, house has router for wireless laptops. would like to have it all covered and the directions on what is needed and the eaasiest way to do it.. back in the old day job we used retrospect and a mirrored external drive. so i do have some insight on this:)
 
I have one drive that goes from home to work to LOML's. It just stays at whichever location was done last thereby creating a pseudo-random, alternate location, site destruction protection methodology :rofl:

My methodology works for me, but I doubt it would work for most folks, and certainly not for non-technical folks...

1) both mac's at home have external USB disks managed by Time Machine. So I've got my first line of defence there

2) Both my wife and I have DropBox and I will manually copy some stuff into there (tax files annually, budget files when I do budget)

3) I work at a University with buckets of spare bandwidth, so I have a surplus Linux box in my office at work and I have a script that runs nightly at 2am that uses Rsync/ssh to synchronize "most" of the user files on my mac, and my wife's mac to to the Linux box. That gives me an off-site second backup which is somewhat like the "carbonite" type of solution that Darren mention, but homegrown.

Since it is rsync, only the changed files get copied. But the initial backup is huge. I simply brought my wife's mac mini to work so that the first (multi-gig) backup was done locally.
(I Forget how I handled my imac -- likely just let it run over a couple days on the weekend.)

If I ever change jobs I'll have to think of something else...
 
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