backup options?

[mbossman2]

I have now reached a point where doing backups on DVDs is just no longer feasible.

Any suggestions on:

external hard drives with back up software?
online back up services?

[glc]

I'd probably look at an external hard drive with Syncback or Acronis True Image. Another option is Bluray.

[David M]

Howdy Bossman...long time no see in the political forum. I made a post in there concerning you know what on Sunday.

In addition to an external drive as GLC recommends, I used Acronis to create a second drive that is a clone of my C: drive. I store it in my drive bay completely unplugged. If anything ever happens such as the OS becomes corrupt, malware does irreparable damage or it dies, then all I need to do is plug in my cloned drive and I am back in business in minutes. Microsoft won't even pester you to reactivate the OS for having swapped out hardware.

Having both is effectively a double backup.

A Bluray disk recorded as a single layer has 25 GB to 50 GB of capacity. It would take me from 12 to 24 disks to record all my data. At roughly around $2 each, that's pretty cheap storage media. The downside of course is that it's recordable one time only.

But if your house burns down, your still screwed. Therefore....

As a fourth and fifth alternative, you could backup your data online and off site but if you have a large amount its not very cost effective. For the greatest security with large amounts of data, its probably cheapest and most hassle free to buy a large hard drive, make a clone and store it off site. For smaller amounts of data, I like the Bluray method.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray_Disc

[brizey]

I do a rotating swap with my parents. We have four 500 GB hard drives, two for each. Before I travel to their place, I back up my documents on to one and take it to there place. They do the same before I go home. So we have a backup drive and a travel drive for each of us at all times. It works, and my data is in the hands of someone I trust implicitly. They even keep it in their fire safe.

[mbossman2]

today seems to be my day for updates.

After kicking this around in my head and thinking about how simple this needs to be (in case I have to walk my wife thru this on the phone) I decided on the Seagate Replica.

Simply plug it in to the PCs (I bought the multiple PC edition) and it slowly copies the entire drive.

If you just need to grab files you can just surf to it and copy files. If you need to do a full restore, pop in the CD, reboot from the CD and the restore application takes over and the drive is reconstituted.

How easy is it?

Did the backups, took about 5 hours for each machine (remember it backs up the entire drive, O/S and everything).

Unfortunately, I had to do a restore on my wife's machine and this is where it was a snap. got repeated stack dumps due to some file corruption. Loaded the CD, F12 to force it change boot sequence, 3 hours later, the machine was back and running. the only lost data was from the last couple of days (nothing that couldn't quickly be recovered).

I can recommend this as a great little tool for those of us who act as the family tech support line. Plug in, data backed up...some sort of failure, load CD, plug in drive and let it rebuild overnight. Piece of cake.