To back up your computer
- Thread starter Cerise
- Start date
Mirlyn
Well-Known Member
The question is, how important is your data?
How much is it worth? How far back are you comfortable being limited to (1 day, 7 days, weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly etc)? What data can you recreate (ie, bookmarks, wallpaper, etc), and what is invaluable (family pictures, financial books, etc)? You can go from just a good sized USB flashdrive left plugged in, to keeping an external drive or tapes in a safety deposit box in the bank.
Personally, I have a RAID1 array for sharing our photos (cutting the chance of a dead drive), which gets backed up to an external USB drive (for accidental deletion), and also gets mirrored offsite to a dedicated server (in case of fire/disaster).
Cerise
Well-Known Member
The ads for Carbonite make it seem like you can make an exact clone of all the info on your computer and restore it if your hard drive fails so it's like nothing ever happened. Are they exaggerating?
Can you use the backup program that came on XP with a thumb drive to save photos, videos, individual programs and the info on them, and browser info like faves and passwords?
Can you use the backup program that came on XP with a thumb drive to save photos, videos, individual programs and the info on them, and browser info like faves and passwords?
Mirlyn
Well-Known Member
First off, as the developer of a offsite backup method utilized and sold by the company I work for, I may be a bit biased.
Now then.....
Are they exaggerating? I would say so. Short of a bit-by-bit copy of the drive to another drive, which cannot be properly done while using the OS on the source drive, I don't know how you'd make it "like nothing happened." I could see individual files being recovered, but I don't know how they recover things like user profile hives (those files that keep the settings of your profile) when those files are constantly in use by the OS. Now maybe I'm just being picky, but its been my experience that people (my customers) would consider "like nothing happened" to be wildly varying expectations. Does it back up your scheduled tasks? Does it back up your display preferences such as start menu layout, XP/Vista vs Classic mode, etc? Or do they just give you back your files? It's just not clear for a technical person like myself. I also don't like articles calling out their employees for posting positive reviews without identifying themselves as affiliates of the product. Makes it hard to find and trust an unbiased explanation of how their product works.
My biggest question, and one that I would have to sign myself up for their service to answer, is how long do you get before the file cannot be recovered? For example, I delete a file on Friday and don't notice it missing until Monday, is it gone from my backups? Carbonite appears to only give you unlimited space of one set of data.
If I did use Carbonite, I would be sure to use my own generated encryption key. If you use one provided by Carbonite, they too would obviously have the private key, which makes your privacy worthless if they were hacked, had employee theft, or were tapped by the govt to provide data.
That would be my choice. Everything but passwords is stored in easily portable files in standard locations. I believe there are third-party utilities available to backup autocomplete forms such as passwords for IE. Mozilla should keep them in its normal profile folder along with all your other settings, so it should be easier.
Programs are next to impossible to backup and restore themselves as they integrate tightly with the registry. In the days of DOS-based apps, then sure, it could easily be done. Nowadays, however, its best to keep a copy* of the software in a safe place and backup any saved data files it uses (*.QBW for Quickbooks, etc) to recover once reinstalled.
* if you're legally allowed to make a copy, of course...but that's another story...
Mirlyn
Well-Known Member
Again, while I don't fully understand the product, it seems to me like you are limited to how much flexibility you have in archiving. Comes back to the question I posed above, about how far back are you willing to lose your data.
Yeah, it sure seems cheap. Sounds like they bought a packaged product, which keeps it cheaper. I also think they're playing the game of VoIP and web hosting--volume. Low ball the price to attract more customers.
I'm just leery of their game. If it seems too good to be true, it probably isn't.
Mirlyn
Well-Known Member
Yeah, online backups can take days (or weeks) depending on your upstream and total backup size to be complete. After that, they normally check each file and upload only the files that changed.
USB drives are cheap and easy.
BeardofPants
New Member
Chrome OS. 
I disagree with the USB drives for backups. They are far more likely to fail than a very good external hard drive. There are 2 types of flash: data and code. What you get in those sticks are data flash. It is acceptable to the remarketing company (like Memorex) to have areas with bad sectors. Not so for code, btw. It is more important that code grade flash have no bad sectors.
Again, don't go with the USB drives (though they are cheap) if you have pictures and documents you want to save.
Online backups can take a very long time depending.
What I advise to friends and family who don't have a lot of expertise is to get a decent external hard drive and just copy the folders you would want to rebuild to that drive or use a backup utility if you can do that without help. (Sorry, I don't know your level of computer knowledge and I am not trying talk down to you.) If your computer takes a dive (or gets stolen) you still have the files (like pictures and documents) and folders you really want to keep to copy over to your new computer.
Mirlyn
Well-Known Member
By USB drives, I meant either flash or external USB hard drives. USB in general. Or you could buy an actual hard drive and get a USB caddy.
You could go eSATA for speed (for backups that don't complete in a night), but that's not quite as universal as USB.
I use this one at home. The Western Digital Passport line seems like a solid product as well.
You could go eSATA for speed (for backups that don't complete in a night), but that's not quite as universal as USB.
I use this one at home. The Western Digital Passport line seems like a solid product as well.
01000001 +
When we got her Nikon, we had to upgarde our photo program so we could save them as raw. It's a bit more work but worth every minute.
