Whirlpool

Hey guys I have 2 HDD's here I want to back up. All together there is about 300gb I want to back up. How should I go about doing it?

I was thinking of buying a 500GB HDD and then upgrading everything on that, but I need a new HDD to put more content on because these two are almost full.

What do you guys suggest? How often am I supposed to be backing up etc?

btw there's a new drive out at officeworks for like $150 on sale. anyone have more info on it?

thanks

If there aren't any programs installed/settings you want to carry over, backing them up is as simple as copying the files over in windows.

How often you do it is a matter of personal requirements; if you do need to use the back-ups, are you content with using a week old back-up or a month old back-up or is it essential that the back-up is less than a day old?

I don't know anything about the officeworks hard drive, but you can assemble your own external hard drive by buying a normal internal hard drive and popping an external hard drive caddy on it. 1TB hard drives can be had for $130 and add on $30 (maybe up to $50 if you want eSATA) for the caddy. Otherwise officeworks etc sell pre-made external hard drives if you don't want to go to the hassle of making one yourself.

Are those two hard drives system drives ie contain Windows or is it one system and one data? If its either the two options then I reckon you're better off grabbing a disk imaging program and using that to create backups (more specifically disk images). When it comes to restoring drives, you just use the images you created and it will recreate the exact same contents of your drive before the 'accident' or some other type of failure.

ok thanks guys.

i've decided to pick up a 1tb ext hdd and putting my 300gb data on that. is it a good idea? how often are you supposed to back up data? i mean, i can put 300gb on this 1tb drive, but then what should i do?

thanks

Roxa writes...

...is it a good idea...

How about you tell us what disaster you are planning for and we'll give you a good answer, versus everyone's opinion of what you're trying to achieve.

Protecting data, vs protecting an operating environment are two very different things. Being able to recover data vs OS recovery are two very different things...

just want to back up data files, not the whole OS really..

Roxa writes...

just want to back up data files, not the whole OS really..

I assume you are just wanting to save any important files and phots from a HDD failure/system bursting into flames etc.

If thats the case you dont really need a high tech setup. Just make a time, say once a week, where you hook up your external and copy over the files you couldnt handle losing. Then keep the external somewhere safe (underwear draw maybe :P) where its easy to grab if your house is going to burn down. Maybe even keep it in your car or something, or a friends place.... really depends how paranoid you are (some call it cautious).

Personally the only things I feel the need to back up are some important photos and some uni work. I can fit all that on a decent size thumbdrive, and I duplicate those same files onto my laptop as well. Thats 3 copies and I feel that my imporatnat stuff is secure. Everything else can always be downloaded again, so I wouldnt cry if it all got wiped.

For what it is worth, I use a USB hard drive and a program called Keep, which automatically backs up specified files or directories at a specified interval. I have it set to back up my entire Home directory every three days, which preserves all settings as well as data. The program keeps track of which files have changed and only updates these.

For really irreplaceable data, such as photos, I copy them on to CDs (more reliable than DVDs in my experience) and send a copy to each of my two sons!

Roxa writes...

i've decided to pick up a 1tb ext hdd and putting my 300gb data on that. is it a good idea?

It's a start. If the data is valuable and irreplaceable (e.g. baby videos, financial records) you want at least two external backup drives. Too much can realistically go wrong with one external backup. You drop the thing on the floor while you're doing a format/reinstall of the internal one. Or you overwrite your backup by accidentally specifying the wrong drives when restoring. Or a power surge hits and fries everything while your backup is running. Etc. etc.

how often are you supposed to back up data?

Backups take time, so it's a cost/benefit thing you have to settle on yourself. There can also be an additional trade-off – suppose data on your internal drive disappears due to corruption, malware or user error. The more frequently you back up, the sooner the problem will propagate to the backup drive, and the less time you'll have to realise the problem while it's still fixable. So assuming you do non-incremental backups (e.g. due to lack of space), less frequent backups can actually be safter.

I've never done this before guys.

What software or guide would you recommend I look into?

To backup at home I Currently have a Qnap TS239 NAS which I keep all company files on, Important personal files, all pictures and home movies. I then have 2 external esata drives which I change once a week. One external drive is always connected to the NAS and syncs nightly using the inbuilt software and the other is kept offsite (in a draw at work).

Before the NAS I had the external drives connected to the computer and used a program called Karens replicator to sync nightly which worked perfectly.

I am about to buy the Qnap QBack 25s to back up some files kept on a laptop which rarely connects to the NAS. I am also taking an image of the laptop incase windows is corrupted re the attached article: http://www.laptopmag.com/advice/how-to/backup-image.aspx

Touchwood I have not had to use the backups outside to restore some documents that were accidently deleted from the computer but were still on the ESata drives but I have seen other people where there computers have crashed and they have lost everything incl all there pictures of there children which they have no hope of replacing.

How often do you hear about a house fire in the news "we lost everything, including the childhood photos". Well, in this digital world, it is now so much easier to make a copy of those valuable photos. But, in the even of that house fire, you might want to consider keeping one copy of your backups off-site.

Burglary ... if someone breaks in and takes all the good stuff ... like computers ... and external drives ... does your backup strategy protect you against this? Do you need it too?

Personally, I believe at least 2 external backups are required. When you do a backup, take it offsite and bring back the one that was offsite.

cancan writes...

they have lost everything incl all there pictures of there children which they have no hope of replacing.

I have lost count of the number of time I have seen this. Hard disk dead ... you do have a backup don't you ... oh ...

Roxa writes...

ve never done this before guys.

What software or guide would you recommend I look into?

rsync is hard to beat. Been the standard for reliable incremental file copy and backup on Unix systems for years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rsync

DeltaCopy provides rsync capability on Windows systems.

http://www.aboutmyip.com/AboutMyXApp/DeltaCopy.jsp