How Do You Back Up Your Computer?

[Daytona_Guy]

Today I was asked by one of the agents I work with, "How do you back up your computer?"

I use several services like Dropbox, Backblaze, two different USB drives (one on-site and one off-site) and WP Clone for my Wordpress sites.

Here's a video on how I use them and if you have other suggestions, please post them here, too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sxfJW8FRUg]

Thanks,

Chris

 

[russelltw]

Chris,
Your best bet is imaging or cloning your harddrive in conjuction with online backups. Backing up just saves files. Cloning or imaging a hard drive will allow you to be back up an running with your set up the way it was in the time it takes to swap harddrives and restore.


I lost a solid state harddrive and it took weeks to get things back the way I wanted them. I was using online backup (sos onlinebackup service) and realize how little of use that is. It's good if you lose a file, but if you lose a harddrive, getting set back up is VERY time consuming.
R

 

[Mark]

I have two usb flash drives. One I need in my wallet and one at my office. I have some of my important files on copy.com also.

 

[Milkman1265]

i have a NAS with 2 bays, and it auto backs up my computer every 1,7,30,90 days and then it mirrors onto the the 2nd harddrive.

i can't do USB drives, i lose them so easily lol

 

[DHK]

External USB hard drive for full windows backup.

I store most of my stuff on cubby.com.

https://cub.by/i/01_qutaDS7VdRV

One of my other older laptop computers power connection completely died a few weeks ago. The laptop itself was at least 6 years old as I originally got it with Windows Vista pre-installed, and later upgraded to Win7.

I put the hard drive into another laptop and re-installed Windows 7 on it. I was careful to choose the installation option that would keep all my files into a folder called windows.old. It saved everything and I copied it to my external hard drive to use for the new computer. It takes time, but your data will be safe.

However, that particular computer was not encrypted, so I don't know how having your system encrypted could impact that process if I had to do it again.

 

[Cory]

I would back-up regularly to a usb drive or work off the usb drive, but now I work off of a Mac with Time Machine. Big adjustment from a PC to a Mac, but think I like it so far.

 

[somarco]

Carbonite Cloud Backup Services - Online Computer Data Backup

 

[russelltw]

Bob,
Be prepared if you lose a hard drive to be frustrated with online backups. It takes quite a bit of time to re-install all your programs, configure your settings like you used to have then, download those files from backup, etc. Also I realized some of the settings on some of my work programs were not saved on the backup because I didn't know I had to select that obscure file "over there in the corner of my computer." Losing a solid state hard drive showed me that cloning/imaging was more important than online file back ups. I still do both, but imaging is more important to me. If I lose a harddrive again, all I have to do is install and new one and image my old harddrive over to the new harddrive. I am back up and running like nothing happened in no time.

 

[somarco]

Rusty, I have used Carbonite for years. Yes, HD's do go out and I have two laptops with all the stuff I need including access to Carbonite for my files.

I have considered switching to Crashplan because of unlimited backup which would allow for a complete mirror of my desktop.

I have used USB drives from WD in the past. Works fine until I had a power surge and lost everything. That's why I want something offsite to avoid that issue again.

 

[russelltw]

Understand. I use an external hard drive for my imaging. I have thought of using my imaging software to do partial images (an initial image and then the software only images what has changed at set intervals) and back those up with my online back up. Just have not gotten around to playing with it yet.
R