What Is The Best Way To Back Up Your Computer Data?

[Rutabaga]

Because I lived through a system crash 2 or 3 years ago, you'd think I would have taken care of this already. But I am a dumb bunny and haven't done a single thing about it. So I thought I'd get the opinions of the technical gurus we have here at SWFans.

What is the best way to back up data for safekeeping in the event of a system crash or an upgrade to a new computer? Is it better to spend a little money and get an external hard drive, or is it better to use an online service like Carbonite? Or are there other alternatives?

[Callista]

I personally like having an external hard drive. There are cloning programs out there that will copy your entire HD daily, weekly, whatever you set it to. If you DO have a crash or upgrade your computer it's easy to just clone it back :)

My opinion - but I'm not a huge tech geek...just a Designer who lives on her computer and would die if she lost anything lol

[Dasquian Belargic]

I don't think External HD's are all that expensive anymore, so that seems like a smart option.

[Csephion Draxus]

EHD's are dirt cheap now. Get one or two.

[Rutabaga]

An EHD does seem like the easier option.

Any recommendations on cloning software?

[Morgan Evanar]

Acronis is ok, and supports incremental backups. It doesn't like Vista64, though.

[Rutabaga]

I'm very stubborn and haven't upgraded to Vista, still using XP until I have no choice :cool

[Morgan Evanar]

Windows 7 is actually good so I'd get that after 3 months of critical patches fix the "oops we forgot".

How much space do you need exactly? I keep my really important documents on my thumb drive and two other HDs.

[Rutabaga]

If I wanted to back up every single bloody scrap I have on the computer (files, programs, etc. and so forth), it's about 75 GB.

[Xavier Synik]

I'd suggest a full back up on a EHD, but like Morg I'd be making at least another copy of your important docs on another hard drive or USB key or something.

I'm lucky enough to have online back up with work, but I still have a personal EHD that I use to make back-ups as well.

[Rutabaga]

The good news is that my computer is mainly for fun and entertainment, overall I have no truly "important" documents that would create havoc and devastation if the computer crashed again and they were lost. Any data loss would be just an aggravating inconvenience and would take a tremendous amount of time rebuilding, but to me, it's still worth doing the full backup just in case.

The one thing I do fear losing, though, because of the time and effort that went into it, is my iTunes library. Right now it's something like 15 or 16 GB. Seems like all the key or thumb drives I see advertised are only a couple of gigs...or do they come bigger?

[Rutabaga]

After getting advice here and from a major computer wizard at work, I've settled on just doing the EHD for now. I got one this morning, a Maxtor One Touch 4, 325 GB (which is tons more than I needed, but it was on sale for a good price). The software was really easy to use, and the backup went really fast. I now have my iTunes library plus some other files that are important to me backed up on the EHD, so I'm all set if the computer poops out on me again, or when the time comes where I give in and upgrade to a new computer.

Thanks for the help, everybody! :clap

[Morgan Evanar]

75 gigs is peanuts these days. I have over 2 TB of networked storage at home :x

[Darth Turbogeek]

Is that all???

:-p

External hard drives are in fact the corporate method of choice for backups now. And we are hanging for SSD's to drop in price and get a bit bigger - rapidly looking to be THE backup choice.

As for backup software - XP Professional in fact has a bloody good one inbuilt. If you saw the kind of major system restore we can do using that....! Vista Business and Ultimate also has it. You should never use the Home versions, they leave good shit out