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Question of the Day: What's the most interesting small town you've visited in South Africa?
Backup
- Thread starter Pooky
- Start date
They have some programs installed that would be a mission to setup again if all goes haywire so I thought a clone of the drive, plus also their documents/pictures folder so they have access to that easily.
AfricanTech
Honorary Master
Free or paid?
Ie willing to shell out some bucks for a backup solution or not?
Also, what is the primary reason for wanting a backup?
1. In case of hard drive failure
2. Loss via theft / Catastrophic loss ie house burns down or something
How easy must it be to use?
1. Completely transparent - no user intervention
2. Some user intervention (click a button every night)
3. Minimal user intervention (ie leave an external connected all the time)
Many, many different solutions.
Free is usually somewhat more intervention required.
Willing to spend money usually translates to less user intervention required.
AfricanTech
Honorary Master
Notwithstanding my other post, easiest solution for the scenario above is a Raid 1 drive setup - will explain why later
Edit: Typed Raid 0 instead of Raid 1 - doh
Last edited:
It's really for someone who just wants to backup because they don't want their data to be lost and also just because they can (with my help
)Not willing to spend money. I am thinking easy because it will result in less work for me trying to teach them how to do it, but it will just be a backup they can do themselves so some user intervention is fine and they will probably only do it every week or even longer.
They just want to backup to an external which is then unplugged.
Depending on the size of the data wanting to be backed up. Why not use Skydrive or the like. You get 7gigs free and then its something stupid like $12 a year for 25 gigs of more space.
I use it for pictures and documents. It does take ages to upload all thestuff but once its there its a dream
I use it for pictures and documents. It does take ages to upload all thestuff but once its there its a dream
Well you can't really backup installed apps that way.
One possibility is to clone the internal drive to an external and then sync regularly between the two so they are duplicates of each other. Alternatively run Raid 1.
You don't mean Raid 1 for mirroring?
AfricanTech
Honorary Master
It's really for someone who just wants to backup because they don't want their data to be lost and also just because they can (with my help
Not willing to spend money. I am thinking easy because it will result in less work for me trying to teach them how to do it, but it will just be a backup they can do themselves so some user intervention is fine and they will probably only do it every week or even longer.
They just want to backup to an external which is then unplugged.
Ok cool - then I recommend Macrium Reflect Free Edition - I have used this with great success over the years - it's a 'one click' operation (albeit "all or nothing") that will image the drive on the fly without having to shut windows down.
The free edition has a couple of limitations (specifically, does not allow you to do incremental and differential backups, and file/folder only i.e. not the whole drive, and a couple of other things) - if you want those features it's USD45.
AfricanTech
Honorary Master
Sorry man, quite correct - meant Raid 1 - will fix
Moveitmobile
Member
Last year Steve Wozniak said that he thinks the two main issues with cloud storage are:
1. You give ownership of your data and
2. Cloud storage is not as secure as we'd like it to be (yet).
Ref: http://www.wired.com/insights/2012/08/is-woz-right/
I think that unless you are a small to medium enterprise with lots of data and no money for technical resources then cloud should not be your first choice. Moore's law means that storage is affordable (and it will continuously get cheaper), so rather keep control (and ownership) of your data.
1. You give ownership of your data and
2. Cloud storage is not as secure as we'd like it to be (yet).
Ref: http://www.wired.com/insights/2012/08/is-woz-right/
I think that unless you are a small to medium enterprise with lots of data and no money for technical resources then cloud should not be your first choice. Moore's law means that storage is affordable (and it will continuously get cheaper), so rather keep control (and ownership) of your data.
NomNom
Executive Member
Windows Built in.
That's all very well, but it comes at the cost of convenience and is probably not as robust as a cloud storage solution, unless you use raid in a fireproof safe. But to each his own.
Just a single question here. If you do a Windows backup (image) and you later need to restore a few files is it possible or is a full backup needing a full restore to get anything back?