Confession: Backup
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I do not have any backup scheme in place on my home computer. I repent. Now what ? Every backup scheme I've tried before has always been marked by -- Complexity -- Annoyance -- Hideously Inadequate restore procedures -- Space Invaders (I was around before CD-RWs existed) -- Time Bandits (So many rules you had to sit there and run it yourself) I used some freeware backup apps, and the authors of these should receive the highest acclaim. Indeed, they should be able to find paid work within a month if not an hour, should they need it. Still, what will really work, and what will really catch on, is something where... -- Plug in a USB cable -- Pop up the app -- Click once -- Go to work -- Come home, spare disk goes in the closet So how much will such a thing cost ? Who's making this kind of stuff these days ?
robocopy
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I have only just turned on Windows 8 File Version History which will maintain a backup of all my stuff to an external drive. Didn't know it existed until I came across Scott Hanselman's post here: http://www.hanselman.com/blog/Windows8Step0TurnOnContinuousBackupsViaFileHistory.aspx[^] I have left it to the default hourly interval. I suggest that is a good starting point!
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It's one of my few Win8 letdowns that Microsoft killed "Previous Versions" via Volume Shadow Copy for that.
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I do not have any backup scheme in place on my home computer. I repent. Now what ? Every backup scheme I've tried before has always been marked by -- Complexity -- Annoyance -- Hideously Inadequate restore procedures -- Space Invaders (I was around before CD-RWs existed) -- Time Bandits (So many rules you had to sit there and run it yourself) I used some freeware backup apps, and the authors of these should receive the highest acclaim. Indeed, they should be able to find paid work within a month if not an hour, should they need it. Still, what will really work, and what will really catch on, is something where... -- Plug in a USB cable -- Pop up the app -- Click once -- Go to work -- Come home, spare disk goes in the closet So how much will such a thing cost ? Who's making this kind of stuff these days ?
Buy a USB hard drive: $100. Write .BAT file to run robocopy: 6 minutes. Add scheduled task to run .BAT file once a day: 30 seconds. You've spent $100 or less and six and a half minutes for peace of mind. Cheap.
Software Zen:
delete this; -
C-P-User-3 wrote:
-- Plug in a USB cable
-- Pop up the app
-- Click once
-- Go to work
-- Come home, spare disk goes in the closetthat's exactly what i do. i have a Retrospect job that backs up two PCs and a NAS to an external USB HD. once a month, i bring the HD home from work, plug it in, launch Retrospect, tell it to do the monthly job, go away for a while, take the HD back to work the next day. it also does automatic, unattended, bi-weekly backups to the NAS.
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I do not have any backup scheme in place on my home computer. I repent. Now what ? Every backup scheme I've tried before has always been marked by -- Complexity -- Annoyance -- Hideously Inadequate restore procedures -- Space Invaders (I was around before CD-RWs existed) -- Time Bandits (So many rules you had to sit there and run it yourself) I used some freeware backup apps, and the authors of these should receive the highest acclaim. Indeed, they should be able to find paid work within a month if not an hour, should they need it. Still, what will really work, and what will really catch on, is something where... -- Plug in a USB cable -- Pop up the app -- Click once -- Go to work -- Come home, spare disk goes in the closet So how much will such a thing cost ? Who's making this kind of stuff these days ?
I put pictures on Facebook and Google's Picasa, and a few important documents I upload to Google Drive. Everything else I only think are important, but are not really. When I've lost things in the past, I realized how indifferent I was to most of it. Work-related stuff stays at work. Home-related stuff is rarely more than pictures and a few documents. Let Facebook and Picasa save and tag them for me. When I need them again, I can either download them or pay $5 for a CD with all my information.
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disclaimer: lest anyone from my employer get spooked at your suggestion... no, i only store the HD at work because it's easier than taking it to our safe deposit box.
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disclaimer: lest anyone from my employer get spooked at your suggestion... no, i only store the HD at work because it's easier than taking it to our safe deposit box.
When they come to take you away, I presume they will search your office as well as your home... :laugh:
The United States invariably does the right thing, after having exhausted every other alternative. -Winston Churchill America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between. -Oscar Wilde Wow, even the French showed a little more spine than that before they got their sh*t pushed in.[^] -Colin Mullikin
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robocopy
:thumbsup:
"The ones who care enough to do it right care too much to compromise." Matthew Faithfull
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disclaimer: lest anyone from my employer get spooked at your suggestion... no, i only store the HD at work because it's easier than taking it to our safe deposit box.
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C-P-User-3 wrote:
-- Plug in a USB cable
-- Pop up the app
-- Click once
-- Go to work
-- Come home, spare disk goes in the closetthat's exactly what i do. i have a Retrospect job that backs up two PCs and a NAS to an external USB HD. once a month, i bring the HD home from work, plug it in, launch Retrospect, tell it to do the monthly job, go away for a while, take the HD back to work the next day. it also does automatic, unattended, bi-weekly backups to the NAS.
that's what I do, backup HD, also, is at work.
Nihil obstat
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I do not have any backup scheme in place on my home computer. I repent. Now what ? Every backup scheme I've tried before has always been marked by -- Complexity -- Annoyance -- Hideously Inadequate restore procedures -- Space Invaders (I was around before CD-RWs existed) -- Time Bandits (So many rules you had to sit there and run it yourself) I used some freeware backup apps, and the authors of these should receive the highest acclaim. Indeed, they should be able to find paid work within a month if not an hour, should they need it. Still, what will really work, and what will really catch on, is something where... -- Plug in a USB cable -- Pop up the app -- Click once -- Go to work -- Come home, spare disk goes in the closet So how much will such a thing cost ? Who's making this kind of stuff these days ?
Acronis true image or be banished to outer darkness and gnashing of teeth.
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I do not have any backup scheme in place on my home computer. I repent. Now what ? Every backup scheme I've tried before has always been marked by -- Complexity -- Annoyance -- Hideously Inadequate restore procedures -- Space Invaders (I was around before CD-RWs existed) -- Time Bandits (So many rules you had to sit there and run it yourself) I used some freeware backup apps, and the authors of these should receive the highest acclaim. Indeed, they should be able to find paid work within a month if not an hour, should they need it. Still, what will really work, and what will really catch on, is something where... -- Plug in a USB cable -- Pop up the app -- Click once -- Go to work -- Come home, spare disk goes in the closet So how much will such a thing cost ? Who's making this kind of stuff these days ?
My backup strategy: 1. Put all project files, pictures, and music in a directory that is backed up by Dropbox or Skydrive. 2. Accept that if my computer melts it will take me a few hours to reload the software on a new machine and pull my useful files back from the cloud. 3. Have a drink.
Play my game Gravity: IOS[^], Android[^], Windows Phone 7[^]
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robocopy
Robocopy and a batch job run by windows scheduler. Works great! I have a few USB and eSATA connected 2TB drives with complete copies of everything on my main drives. Simple, easy and a doddle to restore broken or missing files.
- Life in the fast lane is only fun if you live in a country with no speed limits. - Of all the things I have lost, it is my mind that I miss the most. - I vaguely remember having a good memory...
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I do not have any backup scheme in place on my home computer. I repent. Now what ? Every backup scheme I've tried before has always been marked by -- Complexity -- Annoyance -- Hideously Inadequate restore procedures -- Space Invaders (I was around before CD-RWs existed) -- Time Bandits (So many rules you had to sit there and run it yourself) I used some freeware backup apps, and the authors of these should receive the highest acclaim. Indeed, they should be able to find paid work within a month if not an hour, should they need it. Still, what will really work, and what will really catch on, is something where... -- Plug in a USB cable -- Pop up the app -- Click once -- Go to work -- Come home, spare disk goes in the closet So how much will such a thing cost ? Who's making this kind of stuff these days ?
I don't about anyone else here on Code Project, but I'm getting tired of sub-standard optical media not working across different CD/DVD burners. I can't always keep files hanging around on external USB HD, so anything that's unlikely to change gets shoved onto a DVD/CD. But.. 1. they've proved to be not so reliable as they're claimed to be. 2. a change of dvd hardware you discover the discs throw up CRC errors etc. by the time you discover the problems, it's so long ago you can't remember when or where you bought them. To date, I've lost far more files from bad DVD/CD than any other form of backup.
Q. Hey man! have you sorted out the finite soup machine? A. Why yes, it's celery or tomato.
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My backup strategy: 1. Put all project files, pictures, and music in a directory that is backed up by Dropbox or Skydrive. 2. Accept that if my computer melts it will take me a few hours to reload the software on a new machine and pull my useful files back from the cloud. 3. Have a drink.
Play my game Gravity: IOS[^], Android[^], Windows Phone 7[^]
That's not a bad approach. I have not tried Dropbox, but my Pictures folder alone currently takes up 50 GB, so it is not an option for me to back all that up to Skydrive. I know I can purchase extra storage, but I think I would rather go with something else. Soren Madsen
"When you don't know what you're doing it's best to do it quickly" - Jase #DuckDynasty
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I do not have any backup scheme in place on my home computer. I repent. Now what ? Every backup scheme I've tried before has always been marked by -- Complexity -- Annoyance -- Hideously Inadequate restore procedures -- Space Invaders (I was around before CD-RWs existed) -- Time Bandits (So many rules you had to sit there and run it yourself) I used some freeware backup apps, and the authors of these should receive the highest acclaim. Indeed, they should be able to find paid work within a month if not an hour, should they need it. Still, what will really work, and what will really catch on, is something where... -- Plug in a USB cable -- Pop up the app -- Click once -- Go to work -- Come home, spare disk goes in the closet So how much will such a thing cost ? Who's making this kind of stuff these days ?
Sounds like a good idea for a personal project. There are many free online 'cloud' solutions with probably more than enough space for personal stuff...assuming bandwidth is not a problem and you actually trust someone else to 'look after' your stuff. Otherwise buy an external USB HD and use that vendor's backup suite. I have the luxury of having a home/office server and use synchronized mapped drives for the important stuff. If the HD craps out on the server, my files are available on one of two systems that share those files. It's worked great for me. :)
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse
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I do not have any backup scheme in place on my home computer. I repent. Now what ? Every backup scheme I've tried before has always been marked by -- Complexity -- Annoyance -- Hideously Inadequate restore procedures -- Space Invaders (I was around before CD-RWs existed) -- Time Bandits (So many rules you had to sit there and run it yourself) I used some freeware backup apps, and the authors of these should receive the highest acclaim. Indeed, they should be able to find paid work within a month if not an hour, should they need it. Still, what will really work, and what will really catch on, is something where... -- Plug in a USB cable -- Pop up the app -- Click once -- Go to work -- Come home, spare disk goes in the closet So how much will such a thing cost ? Who's making this kind of stuff these days ?
I use Acronis. It has saved me on a number of occasions - it allows incremental images. I image each drive separately and every month(or so...)I perform a full image on the OS drive and incremental images on the other drives. It's worth the price - what's the cost of losing your pictures, work and music? The only thing you can be sure of regarding hard drives is that they will fail at some point; it's not a case of if, it's a case of when.
“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
― Christopher Hitchens
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I do not have any backup scheme in place on my home computer. I repent. Now what ? Every backup scheme I've tried before has always been marked by -- Complexity -- Annoyance -- Hideously Inadequate restore procedures -- Space Invaders (I was around before CD-RWs existed) -- Time Bandits (So many rules you had to sit there and run it yourself) I used some freeware backup apps, and the authors of these should receive the highest acclaim. Indeed, they should be able to find paid work within a month if not an hour, should they need it. Still, what will really work, and what will really catch on, is something where... -- Plug in a USB cable -- Pop up the app -- Click once -- Go to work -- Come home, spare disk goes in the closet So how much will such a thing cost ? Who's making this kind of stuff these days ?
I have one word for you - DropBox 1) Copy 2) Paste 3) Done
If it's not broken, fix it until it is
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That's not a bad approach. I have not tried Dropbox, but my Pictures folder alone currently takes up 50 GB, so it is not an option for me to back all that up to Skydrive. I know I can purchase extra storage, but I think I would rather go with something else. Soren Madsen
"When you don't know what you're doing it's best to do it quickly" - Jase #DuckDynasty
Yeah, Skydrive is about $50 a year for a 100GB. Nice bonus there is you can browse all your photos online if you're away from the home machine. You can even email access to the photos to other people for sharing. I like the cloud storage best because it is off site. If the computer gets hit by a bus or the house burns down I don't lose any of my content files. Hopefully the odds of either of those happening is pretty low.
Play my game Gravity: IOS[^], Android[^], Windows Phone 7[^]