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Thread: Best and easiest computer back up system

  1. #1
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    Best and easiest computer back up system

    I am not very computer savy. What is the best and easiest , emphasize EASIEST, computer back up system?
    Thanks
    Dennis

  2. #2
    I like Cobian Backup. it''s a lightweight freeware app. I have it set up to create backup of files on my main hard drive and store them on a secondary drive. It's easy to set up and you can pretty much ignore it after that. Mine creates a back up at midnight every night and keeps the last three back ups.

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    Quote Originally Posted by dennis thompson View Post
    I am not very computer savy. What is the best and easiest , emphasize EASIEST, computer back up system?
    Thanks
    It depends on what you decide to backup...the entire OS or just certain files like photos, personal documents, user settings etc. The way I have it setup for myself is with an external drive connected by USB to the computer and using a small backup program to incrementally backup the important stuff like photos, files, mp3 etc. And I run it every day. If you use windows 7 then it has a built in imaging program that actually works. So once you are setup then the backing up part is easy. There was another thread talking about a computer hit with an encryption virus. An image backup could help a lot in this case.

  4. #4
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    I keep telling myself I need to get an external hard drive for backing up my files. Just putting them in a second location on the computer you are using is not really a great backup. Lets say your hard drive goes out = you're screwed.

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    My external hard drive I used for backup went south. I now pay for a backup service and it is BU nightly.

  6. #6
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    Quote Originally Posted by Jerry Thompson View Post
    My external hard drive I used for backup went south. I now pay for a backup service and it is BU nightly.
    Jerry
    what backup service do you use?
    thanks
    Dennis

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    There are many good third party back up applications. Since you want easy, if you are running windows 7, use the one that is built in. It is easy to set up, it works and you've already paid for it.
    Grant
    Ottawa ON

  8. #8
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    I've been using Carbonite in 3 different computers for several years now and am very pleased with it......
    The significant problems we encounter cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.

    The penalty for inaccuracy is more work

  9. #9
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    With the thread about cryptolocker this is appropriate.

    I don't think there's a single answer for this. Depending on what is important to you a usb hard drive and thumb drives may enough. Cloud might be your answer. With a cloud backup the availability and speed might be a bit off but at least it's easy to carry around with you.

    Build a network drive computer with multiple hard drives (RAID system) to back up to if you really need availability and speed where cost is no object.

    Years ago I backed up my system with those tape cartridges (QIC-80 IIRC) and then found the backups just didn't work when I needed them. That was in those good old days of PC-DOS.

    A question I have about the cloud backups: If you did get hit with a nasty like cryptolocker and then your backup service runs and copies the now garbage files to the cloud, is all lost? Or can you set it up to keep multiple generations of files?

    It's times like this I wish i had a vaxstation at home!

    Right now I'm using a combination of usb hard drive, thumb drives and some compact flash cards. So far so good until the day that it isn't. If I went to some type of cloud service I would want to set it up so that I would have to manually trigger the backup.

    Right now I'm running linux so cryptolocker can't hit me. But I'm not going to gloat, it'll be my turn soon enough.

    Hmm. What would happen if your cloud service got hit with cryptolocker and they didn't get the unlock info after THEY paid? With my luck if I signed up for that type of system that would be the one I picked!

    -Tom

  10. #10
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    For anyone with a home network, check your router. If it has a USB port and if that USB port is enabled - Verizon's Actiontec router USB ports for example aren't - that can provide a handy sharing/backup method. I can plug an external drive or USB flash drive into that port and move files I want to back up to that drive. That both backs up files on individual machines and enables sharing between machines without enabling file/print sharing which has been used by malware in past. Use a synchronizing program to keep folders backed up. This protects against machine failure and may help protect against malicious drive encryption. I don't know how the cryptolocker type malware works. Does it encrypt all drives including network, or just local drives? The 'poor man's NAS' wouldn't protect against something like a house fire but you could rotate backup devices keeping one off site.

  11. #11
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    I would never use a web based backup I have a net disk and one in my house to back up to. That way if something happens I have a redundant drive.

  12. #12
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    You need to also think about "backup" versus "redundancy." I use a RAID5 NAS device for redundancy, but it is not a "backup" in the sense that it does automatically provide prior versions, etc. A true "backup" would allow you to recover, for instance, accidentally deleted files, not just recover from a bad disk.

    For something like cryptolocker to work, it has to run programs that are OS-specific. Cloud backup sites shouldn't be executing any of the files that you upload, so something like cryptolocker would have to attack the backup site directly to lock up the files--someone, for example, could simply steal your account and demand money to return control to you.

    If you wipe an infected computer and then re-install a backup from the cloud, you may or may not be able to fully recover. If the backdoor allowing the infection was already installed, it could be attacked again. But if you have regular backups, you may be able to restore from an earlier backup that is not infected. If you can identify the files that caused the infection, you may also be able to download other data files from later backups without any issues.

    In my case, I use a ReadyNAS Pro 6 drive device that sits on my network and mapped as a network drives to the various machines in the house. Any individual drive in the array can fail and be hot swapped out without affecting the integrity of the data that is stored on the machine. That takes care of redundancy for me.

    For backups, I am less concerned about full backups of the machines--with my data files on the NAS, I'd rather wipe the machines and do a clean re-install of the OS and software if something happens. But, I do need to back up the files on my NAS. Amazon Prime subscribers get free unlimited photo storage, so I back up a *lot* of personal photos to Amazon. Since I'm using Amazon anyway, I'll periodically encrypt the living hell out of records I need to keep and pay a small amount to Amazon to store those--those types of files are typically pretty small in comparison to media files. The music files and my wife's commercial photographs get incrementally backed up onto M-discs. This doesn't provide a true backup in case of file deletions for those files, but the music files are largely static and the way my wife's photo workflow works provides some protection--she'll download from the camera to her iMac, duplicate the original RAW files to the RAID, and edit in a non-destructive way so the source files are always pristine (flagged files for client proofs get copied to a second subdirectory). She might lose an editing session through an accidental deletion, but that's it.

    So you need to really think about what's important to you and what inconvenience you are willing to tolerate for different files of different importance.

  13. #13
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    Why not a web based...Carbonite for photos and files $59 a year.

    Then a pair of 2 TB hard drives to hold a file backup at $100 each. One drive on my network and a copy in a safety deposit box?

    I often wonder what happens now and in the future to the billions of pictures being taken with phones and all sorts of things. Will the next generation have access to important photos taken on you phone? Will it be like finding a stash of 80 year old photos found at your grandma's?

  14. #14
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    Quote Originally Posted by Chuck Wintle View Post
    It depends on what you decide to backup...the entire OS or just certain files like photos, personal documents, user settings etc. The way I have it setup for myself is with an external drive connected by USB to the computer and using a small backup program to incrementally backup the important stuff like photos, files, mp3 etc. And I run it every day. If you use windows 7 then it has a built in imaging program that actually works. So once you are setup then the backing up part is easy. There was another thread talking about a computer hit with an encryption virus. An image backup could help a lot in this case.
    I have heard of the Windows 7 image backup being available. Any docs on what is called, how to run and use it?

  15. #15
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    Quote Originally Posted by Larry Frank View Post
    Why not a web based...Carbonite for photos and files $59 a year.

    Then a pair of 2 TB hard drives to hold a file backup at $100 each. One drive on my network and a copy in a safety deposit box?

    I often wonder what happens now and in the future to the billions of pictures being taken with phones and all sorts of things. Will the next generation have access to important photos taken on you phone? Will it be like finding a stash of 80 year old photos found at your grandma's?
    What makes you think that a cloud based backup can't be hacked or crash.

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