I screwed up my computer, any suggestions?

I use Acronis to do my backups, scheduled a full backup every Tuesday at 5pm. It does it automatically. I store to a second internal drive, and every so often I will copy that to an external. I don't have anything really that important that I couldn't get again or do with out. I have my pics on another hard drive, but hardly look at time.

Also thing to learn, never unplug it improperly. Friend's brother laptop was doing a boot time scan and he thought it was too warm and he just unplugged it and then he couldn't get it to boot. Instantly boxed it up and sent it to me from FL. I opened it, selected the other option and I was at the desktop. He had already included a check for my other laptop he agreed to buy, I just had to get it ready, so a win win in my book. lol

Not sure why people are so afraid of the cloud. I've found storing my more important stuff in Google Drive, so I have access to it from all my devices very quickly. Sites like that have such a redundant backup system compared to any home user, it'd be almost virtually impossible for you to lose your data (I said almost). If you're afraid to have your "secrets" stored there, then you should have a USB encrypted stick you save that stuff on, and locked in a fire proof safe. That would not include what porn sites you like to frequent either.

 

By external drive I'm assuming you mean an external USB drive. Personally I find them to be too expensive and the transfer rates are too slow.

It would be better just to buy a bare hard drive, crack the case on your PC and hook directly into the port on the motherboard. it's most likely SATA so you will need a SATA cable and a power lead off of the computers power supply. The drive itself is cheaper than a drive with an enclosure and usb port. The copy speeds will also be much faster.

If you're not a computer guy but you're really feeling ambitious you could always read up on setting up a raid array for your data. I'm assuming we're talking about data backup and not a system backup here. There's nothing on my system that I can't have back to it's original state with a windows reinstall in under and hour to an hour and half top so I don't even bother trying backup the system itself. the data is all I care about.

 

Grimmy's idea of using some type of backup app with a secondary drive is decent too but if you're going to go that far you might as well just setup a mirrored raid array that backs up the data as it's actually written.

 

I have 2 different backup drives. One I got back in about '05, I think, and the other within the last 3 years.
The newer one uses a USB cable and moves data VERY quickly compared to the old one. It's small, and a TB.
You can also get a drive and an enclosure for it and hook it up via a USB port.
Prices aren't bad nowadays.
LOTS of options.

 

Lord, I apologize.

 

I would have to say no.

 

If you are just backing up things like pictures, there is no real reason that copying to an external USB drive wouldn't be a viable option. It's what I do, but I am a hands on person and don't like extra software mucking up my machine.

 

another no

an external USB3 or USB 2 or Firewire drive is about as simple and easy as you can get
It mounts like a flash drive and you can keep it far far away from your PC.
just not so far that when you add pics from your phone or camera you also make copies to the external drive
at the same time, out of habit
not tomorrow, not this weekend when I have more time

now

and those of us who have lost pics due to the above ( or a failed hard drive or malware ) have learned this the hard way

 

I would agree that if you're completely computer illiterate it probably wouldn't be that easy to set up a mirrored raid array but even those that are presently "computer literate" to varying degrees were at one point computer illiterate. I guess it depends on how much time you'd want to invest in learning how to do different things with computers.

As everyone said the external USB drive is pretty easy and straightforward. I just find the copy rates intolerable but then I'm always doing manual backups so I guess if you had an automated one that you didn't have to do manually it might not be so bad.

 

http://www.thegeekstuff.com/2010/08/raid-levels-tutorial/
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2249572,00.asp

 

Which is why a simple external drive like a Passport or something is simple. You plug it in and it's there . You don't have to read a book about setting up striped and unstriped, mirrored raid arrays. Wonderful when you've learned all the cans and can'ts, do's and don'ts.


Seems to me you said you had a system that worked for you, you just hadn't been maintaining it. Up to date with whatever you've got is key.

Back in the film and slide days you had your negatives for a back-up. If you valued them you kept them in a fire proof safe . Maybe even at the bank.
Today with digital files you have to have your own back-ups. And hope you never need them.

Not just pics but any valuable data.

 

Not the kind of thing for a newb to cut their teeth on. JMHO

 

No It's not an external USB drive, As I said , It is a, network drive" (NAS) Network Attached Storage " Personal Cloud, mine has a 1TB capacity.
I purchased a D-Link , DNS-321 2-Bay Network Storage Enclosure and installed my own drives
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network-attached_storage

 

There's a million different ways to skin a cat.......and everyone is going to do it differently. I have just found this is what works best for me, and anyone looking into doing backups, should do that same.....not only backup, but practice what it takes to restore. No sense in backing up if you can't restore it. I just chose to use Acronis, as working with images of hard drives saves me a ton of time in restoring (maybe a few hours at most). I actually do have a raid in my computer, 2 SSDs in raid 0 (striped) cause my board is old and only supports the SATA II connection speeds. I have a 500G hard drive that I used to store my images on to, but it filled up quickly. I store the last 6 weekly backups and the very first one. Once I got my GoPro, I started using a ton more space. So I added a 4T hard drive for my backups, and use the 500G for GoPro files. I thought about setting up a raid 1 with it, but then I'd have to buy twice the hardware. I'm not that critical in my data that I couldn't recover with out it, so I decided it wasn't a viable option for me.

Raids can be tricky to setup. They are nice while they are running and running right. Can be a huge pain in the azz when a drive fails though.

All depends how involved you want to get and what you are backing up. If it's just pics and documents, USB stick/drive works great, as well as cloud storage (Google Drive, Dropbox). If you are storing images of complete hard drives or just have gigs of stuff to save, then something more powerful would be better, whether it's a internal hard drive or a NAS (network attached storage). I haven't messed with a NAS, but I know they can be quicker than a USB connection. I've thought about making one of my old computers something just for that.......just to tinker with. I just prefer using software as it never forgets....unlike my mind when I was doing it manually and then forgot for 5 months and then lost a hard drive. DOH!!