Backing Up a Windows PC

I do backups of computers for a living. There are a ton of different products on the market to backup your data. First and foremost for me, I try pics different than the rest of my files. My photos are uploaded to Smugmug.com for my first copy. A second copy is captured with my normal backups of my data files. You can use cloud storage solutions like DropBox, Google Drive, Amazon cloud, etc.... Personally I don't find the cloud solutions be a good fit for me. It's not that I don't like the idea of my data sitting in the cloud. No for me, I want the orginal, a local copy and an office coffee. The product I use to satisfy my needs is Crashplan.com. Check it out.

 

I don't keep much stuff on the laptop drive.....it's backed up to an external and/or a cd/dvd. I move or copy pics and other stuff fairly often, so it's not much of an issue.
Don't like the idea of the cloud. Stuff gets hacked.
boettg33 would be the guy to talk to about software solutions, but most backup software I've tried has, uh, limitations. Much easier to just drag and drop or copy/paste, or burn a disk of anything I want to save. I also prefer to do clean installs instead of upgrades, but that's another thread.

 

Huh?

 

Here is a breakdown of how I look at my personal files.

Two types of data on my computers:

1. Pictures
2. Any other files.

Let's look at pictures first. Pictures are my most important data in my opinion. This is why I have an additional step in place for them. In the event of a fire that destroy's your home, or some other disaster, the one piece of data that you cannot replace are your pictures. If you are like me, you have 10's of thousands of digital pictures. For pictures, I do the following.

1. Create a local copy.
2. Create an offsite (not at home) copy.
3. Upload my pictures to a site just for pictures.

Any other files:

1. Create a local copy.
2. Create an offsite (not at home) copy.

Local Copy:

This can be handled using an external drive that you connect to your computer via a USB cable or by purchasing a NAS drive that you connect to your home network. Many external drives and NAS drives come with simple software in order for you to copy and or backup your files to the USB drive and or NAS drive.

Offsite copy (not at home)

Most of the offsite solutions are now cloud based. Whether it's called cloud based or online, it's the same thing. The offsite copy serves you in the event of a disaster where you lose both of your local copies. These solutions take a great deal of time to upload your data to the cloud/online. It's not always your ISP speed. Most of the cloud/online storage limits your connection speed. This results in long upload times. Once your data is in the cloud/online, subsequent backups will be much shorter as you are only sending updates.

Cloud Storage:
Google Drive - Offers a base of 15GB free, and plans to purchase more storage beyond the 15GB. Google drive can be accessed remotely from any computer with an internet connection. Google Drive has an applicaiton you can install on both Windows and Macs in order for your Google Drive to show up locally. This allows you to copy and paste.

Amazon Cloud - I've not used this. It's part of Amazon Prime I believe.

Dropbox - Dropbox is very similar to Google Drive. You get a certain amount of storage free, and then play for plans greater than the base amount.

Backup Software:
Crashplan.com is the one backup software that I've found that works extremely well. It allows you to satisfy the local copy and the offsite copy. They offer than own version of cloud for the purpose of backups.









The only piece missing for me is the site for pictures. Which I highly advise. For most people at home, the one piece of data you can't replace in the event of a fire, hardware failure or electrical surge is your pictures.

 

One other suggestion. If you do not like putting your data online to cloud/online, then there are options. There are a variety of ways to make offline copies and store at another location that is not your home. Here are some suggestions.

Option 1

1. Purchase a external hard drive to store your important files on. (These come with different connectors to your computer. USB, Firewire, eSATA. Personally I'd recommed USB as MAC and Windows laptops/desktops have USB connectors.)
2. Make a copy of your pictures and important files onto the external hard drive.
3. Arrange to have a family member, a friend, a safe deposit box or work(work should be a last resort in the event you get laid off, you might loose access to this copy for a time) store your external hard drive in a safe location.Do not store this copy in your car. Excessive heat/cold could ruin this medium.
4. On a regular schedule(once a week, every two weeks, once a month,etc...) retrieve this external hard drive and either add new files or make a fresh copy of all of your files.
5. Take the external drive back to your offsite location. ***Do not keep this external hard drive at home for longer than it takes to make your backup.
6. Continue to bring the external hard drive home on a regular basis to ensure you add any new files to it.

Slight variation.

1. Purchase two external hard drives and rotate them. Store the external hard drive with your most recent backup at your offsite location.
2. The second external drive comes home, and is there when you are scheduled to make a fresh copy.
3. When you make a new backup to the second external hard drive, you take it to your offsite location and swap out the external hard drive, and bring the one that was offsite home.
4. This plan has additional cost, but it reduces the number of trips back and forth to your offsite location.

Option 2

1. Most desktops and some laptops have a DVD burner. This allows you create a DVD backup of your files. There are two main mediums of DVD burnable disks. DVD-RW (DVD rewriteable) and DVD-R (One time write).
2. If you elect to use a DVD burner instead of an external hard drive, just replace the word external hard drive in option one with DVD-RW or DVD-R.
3. If you use DVD-R's. you simply create a backup with any new files created onto a DVD-R, and add it to your offsite location.
4. If you use DVD-RW's, you can rotate them like the slight variation suggests. Keep in mind that you will need several DVD-RW's depending on the amount of data that you need to store.
5. Caution - You always need a DVD drive on your computer in order to read the data. (Personally I am not a fan of this option. DVD's are more susceptible to damage than an external hard drive.)

 

I bought a passport ultra external hard drive at best buy last week and attempted a full back-up. It took hours, so I assumed the gigs of info were transferred. However, when I opened the files on the passport after the back-up, it seems many things are not there. (Like about 1,000 pics for instance) So I went back and tried again with the windows back-up option (again) and it states I already backed it all up. I'm confused on the back-up process also!

 

With an external hard drive, it's easier to simply copy and paste your files.

 

Like I said, I haven't had much luck with software backup "solutions", so I just do as boettg33 suggests and either drag and drop, or copy/paste. In a business environment, it's a whole 'nother ballgame.
I learned a long time ago, when doing this, to use copy, then check that it did. At that point, you can delete the original to free space......or not.
If you right click, then d/d to "move", and it gets stupid, you might lose whatever it is you're trying to save.
I've got a couple external drives, and put all my important stuff there, and also made many copies to cd or dvd.
Put those in cases or sleeves to protect the "written" surface from getting all scratched up.

 

I use Acronis for my backups. I have it scheduled every Tuesday at 5pm, a full image taken and stored on my 4T drive, keeping the last 6 copies. I know it doesn't protect me from fire and such, but I'm more protecting myself from a hard drive failure, running 2 SSDs in raid 0, so I can get back up and running quickly.

 

thanks for the feedback! Maybe backing up "manually" would be a better approach...I'll let ya'll know how it goes...