Last edited Fri Jul 6, 2012, 10:14 PM - Edit history (1)

I have a MacMini, OSx 10.5.8 system, and bought a Verbatim external
drive for back-up purposes, using a program called Time Machine, and
the whole thing only cost me $50 (ONE time).

I could NOT bring myself to trust some anonymous corporation to store
my data for me somewhere "out there" in the ethernets. This way the
information is not only backed up affordably, but remains MY information,
and no one else has access to it but ME, and whoever I WANT to have it.

It took me a while to realize that backups sitting next to my computer were totally useless for certain types of losses. I now use JungleDisk to save my most important data (in encrypted form) to Amazon S3.

I live in very low-fire-risk steel frame high-rise, which is
also very secure as far as "burglary" goes ... everyone's
situation is different.

DVDs hold a ton, esp. dual layer ones.

USB sticks or. An external hard drive should be sufficient for most peoples' needs.

I bought a USB hard drive last year. It came with software to back up my C drive built in. It was backing up my system a few minutes after I plugged it in.

Couldn't hurt.

--imm

Just pay the annual fee, don't recall how much it is but it's quite reasonable. Otherwise the storage limits are pretty paltry. I run Dropbox on my laptop, my home office computer, my campus office computer, and my lab PC, so in addition to the Dropbox cloud, every important file I put there is quickly mirrored on four other computers. Not a viable solution for the porn collection, I suppose, at least not the way I have it configured, but I think DB will let you mirror specific directories on specific computers, so the stuff your boss would frown at on the office hard drive can be directed elsewhere-- I just don't have any need to do that, so I mirror everything. It's incredibly easy, reliable, and transparent. Just put a file in a DB directory, and it's backed up within minutes.

...that I was joking about the porn collection, LOL.


Sure you were, Mike. That's what they all say....

it allows me to collaborate with other people and data is automatically transferred to my other computers.

I use an HP simple save for backup, but the data is not encrypted so I'm looking to change that.

We went with a local company that does it, and they are very reliable (we have had to use it in the past). They will do whatever it takes to please you and get it right. And.....well, it is a local company.

(I had never heard of them, and never see ads for them, so you may have some in your local area if you look into it.)

they just die for no good reason and are easily broken.
External hard drives are fine, but if there is a fire or break in,
you lose the original and the backup.

100% of the time, every time. And why you always have more than one back up in the rotation.
If it is important enough to back up, it is important enough to have more than one backup of the important stuff.

Backups all the computers to an external drive at home then send a copy to their storage. Works great for windows, Mac and Linux. You can even backup to friends over the Internet if you wish.

Backs up my stuff every night, never had a problem. Not free though.

We have been trying out Storegrid. So far working fine for us. Looks like they support disk backups also.

Which is to say I have never retrieved any files. They are out there... somewhere.

A hosted backup service (such as Carbonite) can be convenient but shouldn't be your only backup source. A service that is here today could be gone tomorrow, temporarily or even permanently. The buzzword "the cloud" has come to refer to any type of hosted infrastructure-as-a-service, whether it is applications, servers, or storage.

Large firms (who should know better) often will make the same mistakes too. There is an (incorrect) belief floating around that when someone else is handling your infrastructure ("the cloud&quot then you don't have to worry about it anymore. Wrong--you still have to plan for disaster recovery. Hosted providers have outages--Amazon's cloud service had a fairly large one last weekend. Megaupload (an online storage "locker" service that had at least some legitimate usage for backing up data) was shutdown when the government seized their servers.

A backup protects you from losing data on your computer, whether due to accident or failure. But you need to ensure that the backup is protected as well.

Here's what I do: I have a Windows Home Server with a couple of disks that automatically will backup my files. Then I periodically make a DVD copy of the backup and store it in a safe place. Windows 7 (I think Vista too) makes this easy by automatically performing the backup if you are doing it to a network drive or annoying you until you backup to a removable media such as DVD, flash drive, or external hard drive. Mac OS X has similar functionality as well.

For most people, make (at least) two backups copies and store one in your house where you can get it easily and the other(s) off site, such as in a safe deposit box or simply at a trusted friend/relative's house. By all means, use an online backup service (they're convenient and relatively inexpensive) but also have a backup to the backup.

also looking at adding Mozy as a 2nd backup ...

I use Carbonite to back up the most essential files (email, financial, etc) on the Carbonite servers, PLUS I use the version of their service that also makes nightly backups on an external hard drive. Ironically, a couple of weeks after I installed that, my HP machine went kablooey, and I had to send it back to HP. HP had to reimage the hard drive. After I got it back, I put it through the Carbonite restoration procedure (took about a day and a half for the entire hard disk), and I got back EVERYTHING!

Get their premium service that also uses a large external hard drive. It is a lifesaver!

That's a bit crazy.

Using Acronis or Shadowprotect (with scheduled backups) you can restore an entire PC in under an hour including apps, email etc. Just boot and go. Even to different hardware.

Or an appliance service like Bitbacked.com - which backs up to 25 PC's locally...

online, and or onto any device you wish, or any combination. While windoze will not see your Linux partition, Linux will see and back up your windoze stuff, and it does it faster and better and for free.

Break those corporate chains, they're just stealing from you.