Computer Backup

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Posted: Thu Apr 28, 2011 9:41 pm

Just curious how often you all back-up your computers? I'm on a Mac, and I clone my hard drive every day (and make them bootable). I have an extra internal drive which is partitioned, and I have a few external firewire drives, which are partitioned. I use SuperDuper and I basically back up daily to one of those partitions via the schedule. Sunday is backup #1, Monday is back up #2, Tuesday is backup #3, etc. I also use Apple's Time Machine once a night to a dedicated drive to that. So basically if my drive ever crashes or something else goes wrong, I'll probably only lose a few hours of stuff.

I know, I know. I'm going overboard. But that got me to thinking--how often do you back-up? If your system was to crash tomorrow, what would you lose? Do you have a back up just in case?

Posted: Thu Apr 28, 2011 11:54 pm

You must have a pretty extensive porn collection to be that obsessed with back-ups! Laughing

Posted: Fri Apr 29, 2011 12:01 am

^^I see your point Smile

No, actually, I guess I'm just anal. Laughing

Posted: Fri Apr 29, 2011 1:29 am

Mine is set to back up automatically daily to my external drive. Anti-virus stuff runs daily also. Cleaning system every week.

Posted: Fri Apr 29, 2011 3:37 am

BluthBanana wrote:

You must have a pretty extensive porn collection to be that obsessed with back-ups! Laughing

dwatina wrote:

I guess I'm just anal. Laughing

So many jokes so little time Laughing

I am horrible about backing up my computer. If it was not for the nasty little warning my computer gives I would probably never do it. I have switched to keeping all important stuff on external hard drives. Now if that crashed I'd have no idea what to do. It's steady state memory so I guess it's fairly safe. I'd like to put my important stuff in the cloud but I'm worried that if it rains all my pics will be scatted everywhere.

Posted: Fri Apr 29, 2011 3:39 am

I use a WD Passport external 500GB USB drive that copies everything new or updated as it is entered, whenever I'm using the puter or laptop.

Is your pron collection valuable dwatina?

Posted: Fri Apr 29, 2011 3:40 am

I have a daily cron job that rsyncs the data to an offsite computer. Syncing between the two onsite computers I do manually whenever I feel like it (I just did it because the vonpaso sent me a document which I downloaded from his email).

Posted: Fri Apr 29, 2011 6:45 am

I should back up my computer far more than I do. I used to make it a habit to back up my most important things (documents, pictures, etc) to Drop Box every night and my entire hard drive to my external about once a week, but I've lost that habit and haven't backed up my computer in weeks. Probably should go do that now.

Posted: Fri Apr 29, 2011 9:04 am

my external 500 GB hard drive crashed a few weeks ago, talking about security copy...

Posted: Fri Apr 29, 2011 9:35 am

dwatina wrote:

No, actually, I guess I'm just anal.

Have you learnt nothing about Custom Tags yet?

Laughing

Posted: Fri Apr 29, 2011 9:54 am

I regularly back up with a complete clone. Unfortunately, my drive went tits up recently but whhen I cloned the clone, I got the command the wrong wa round and ended up with two blank drives.
I lost the lot so now I'm considering the cloud

Baiting Guru Joined: 19 Apr 2007 Posts: 3123

Thanks for the reminder, Dwatina. I really should do it more often. Even the Windows 7 scheduler doesn't help though, I always end up cancelling...

here · Posted: Fri Apr 29, 2011 10:24 am

for things that change constantly I use Dropbox all the time, my work mail is replicated automatically, for private stuff I have a Linux server - and key stuff replicates to the main home PC (using SyncBack, dead easy to use)

plus I do full back-ups to an external drive about once a month, and family photos go onto DVDs off site

I come from an age where twin floppy PCs were state of the art, so yes I full admit to being anal . . in fact we need a siggie icon for this Very Happy

Posted: Fri Apr 29, 2011 10:55 am

I keep all my important stuff on a server that does nightly backups to a separate HD. Whenever a new computer is added to the zoo I install/configure stuff and then clone the system partition onto the same backup HD. An encrypted dump of the backup HD is sent to a friend once a month. It's a bit of work to set up but has saved my ass several times already. Smile

Posted: Fri Apr 29, 2011 11:27 am

You're right, Mr. Squirrel. Very Happy

@irishemigrant: Nah, the porn isn't that valuable Wink

Posted: Fri Apr 29, 2011 3:38 pm

I've just had a salutory lesson in getting away with it. My laptop of six years old just croaked as its video card went to hades. Luckily i can start it from a Knoppix disk or in low graphics mode and at least get files off it.

A junk-spec PC running any linux distro makes a good backup scheduler .. just gve it access to the drives you want to backup and use Cron to schedule backups. copying on an "update" basis minimises time and traffic and prevents unneccessary copying of unchanged files. i think this is the next step for my place.

I currently backup my server to a cloud service .. You shouldn't consider anything backed up unless it's offsite and out of range of a house fire.

here · Posted: Fri Apr 29, 2011 4:47 pm

for anyone not confident with a full Linux distro then unRAID is great (& free), boots nicely from a cheap small USB stick and creating shares is easy

switch on Wake On LAN in the server BIOS and remote control so easy it can be stuck away in a cupboard etc.

FWIW

Posted: Fri Apr 29, 2011 4:54 pm

I use a very similar protocol on my Mac; Time Machine runs on its default schedule, SuperDuper does a bootable backup to another disk every night. User accounts are on a separate physical disk and also backed up nightly.

At probably too long but semi random intervals I back up both the system and user disks to an external hard disk and move it to an off-site location.

Posted: Fri Apr 29, 2011 5:09 pm

Oh, wow, I was the first one to answer Never. Laughing

Posted: Fri Apr 29, 2011 5:16 pm

No, Mortal. I think I was second. I keep duplicate files on 3 different computers (docs anyway) but I wouldn't call it back up. I just do it so I don't have to go to this computer for one thing and have to go to that computer for the other. Networks? I'm not that deep into computers and can't get them to talk nice. In fact my laptop won't even open up to others. It is very introverted. Little bastard.

Posted: Fri Apr 29, 2011 6:07 pm

Nailgunner Thanks for reminding me to make sure my backup is out of my house, esp. with hurricane season coming up. Right now I am doing a lot of gardening -- maybe I can bury the backup in a safety container on the property!! Laughing

Posted: Fri Apr 29, 2011 7:25 pm

I voted never. Mint 8 just seems to run and run. Wink

Posted: Fri Apr 29, 2011 8:16 pm

Safety container, Morgain? Is that the new term for large mason jar? Laughing

Posted: Fri Apr 29, 2011 8:23 pm

auto set to monthly back up, i could cope losing pictures, but if i lost my music id be gutted, id have to re-rip my entire CD library

Wannabe Baiter Joined: 08 Dec 2005 Posts: 92

i just keep a uptodate clone of my C drive in another smaller hd. so in case of any crash, i can plug in that drive and back to business without delay. except that no back up of my 2TB storage. planning to add 2TB more soon, which will be walking without a safety net too Confused