what backup method should i use?

Crawlerz

Crawlerz

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Nov 17, 2008
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hello my fellow eGO's! how are ya? my first thread in this particular forum, (NEW thread, that is.) but enuf about me. [sry if this was already disscussed but here are MY circumstances)

i have a modest DELL rig (2.6GHz core 2 duo, 2GB RAM, nVidia 8800GTX vid, 298GB of hard drive (no partitions), and a separately bought 2ms samsung monitor. ( i also got a bunch of controllers: wireless k/b, wireless j/k, and a gamepad.) now i have about 50-52 GB of pictures and music and videos and documents and some save games i would like to back up. i am sitting on a wireless network so 2 other pc's are seen at home. i have no portable drives. i have these options - do i have more?
1 - backup a copy of everything to another pc's drivevia network or discs or ipod or whatever.
2 - buy a 1TB hard drive (i wanted this for some time now) and back the ^$@! up like there's no tomorrow.
3 - buy a blu-ray writer and burn dual layer discs (which are rly huge and would help)

and, no, i will not back everything up to regular DVDs even if they are DVD 9s. i constantly add and will get very mixed up adding new folders (i mean i cannot back up every single day right?)
so whats ur $0.02?
p.s. i dont believe in gargantuan sigs, thats why i dont drive one.
 
My suggestion would be to get decent external drive and back-up everything to that. I don't see the point in backing-up to DVDs unless you're looking for crazy safety and are looking to put the DVDs in a separate location (i.e. safe-deposit box or something). Grab a program like Syncback and set up a automatic backup schedule.
 
I agree with the external backup drive idea. blueray burners and blank discs are quite expensive and you can get alot more uses from the drive at a much lower price
 
trykael said:
My suggestion would be to get decent external drive and back-up everything to that. I don't see the point in backing-up to DVDs unless you're looking for crazy safety and are looking to put the DVDs in a separate location (i.e. safe-deposit box or something). Grab a program like Syncback and set up a automatic backup schedule.
Click to expand...

in fact i do have a fireproof safe i'd like to actually use one day. i mean fire/mechanical failure/virus (at least most can be cured with DrWeb) and im screwed. external would be nice - i'd put it into the safe. internal would be nice too. 1TB is what i want - i cant go whrong there.
but if i buy a huge one - RAID - then if i get a virus RAID is screwed right?
 
RAID 1 is good, assuming you don't delete something by accident, a virus doesn't eat everything or a nasty surge blows up your rig.

I have an external NAT box for primary backup (a USB one would work just as well for most users and costs far less) and I send stuff to it every week.

Once a month I'll back up to DVD's. I just feed the computer the disks as it asks for them. It takes around 20 or so - a fast burner helps. I can have the other PC work on this while I play games on this machine (they are on the same desk).
 
If you've wanted an 1TB HDD then go that route, I personally have always just copied it over to another network computer. Only back up what you absolutely need (to quicken the process). Things I backed up were mainly my steam folder (to save all the maps, customs and what not), my documents, music / videos and a few install files.
 
Backing up data is a essential task that many people fail to perform until it is to late.

I would either buy a copy of Acronis True Image or Norton Ghost to back up my data.

They both have excellent compression to squeeze everything into a small backup, but I still prefer Acronis to Norton.


Here is a exert from Acronis tips and tricks page.
To handle immediate problems like accidentally deleted files, you should keep an image of the partitions containing your data on your hard drive. That's right, you can create an image of your disk and keep a copy on the same partition. Although such an image isn't nearly secure as a removable media backup, it is much faster and easier to recover files from a clone on your hard disk. However, if your disk has a failure, this image might not be accessible.

The concept of the Grandfather-Father-Son approach is that you make a complete image weekly, then add increment images daily. At the end of the week, make another complete image, but save your old image. At the end of the second week, you can create a new full image. At this point you have three full images. The oldest image is now retired, the second-oldest image becomes the oldest and now goes off-site, and you continue making daily incremental images.
Click to expand...

So the incremental backups build off the full backup and thus are much much smaller than a full backup. So you have a full copy of your disk every week, and the incremental only backup the changes.

So you do full backups on Monday and it's Thursday and your hard-drive quit. You would need the full backup plus the Tues and Wed incremental backups to get current again.

I don't know how good I tried to explain things, but if you have questions please let me know.
 
I don't think it's worth the 50$ for either one of those pieces of software for something your going to use once, maybe twice a year? Unless you make it a habit to reformat quite often.

I THINK (not 100% sure) that things like Norton Ghost are meant for say school network systems where you want every system EXACTLY identical.. I'd just roll with the external HDD I think.
 
Well kick me for being a noob but I use Carbonite.com and I LOVE it. I have had some issues in the past and totally rebuilt using them and it is a breeze. 50 bucks a year for unlimited space and you can try it out for a month or 2 for free.
 
The question that needs to be answered is what is the purpose of the back-up? Each of the different solutions presented offer different pros and cons depending on what your ulterior motive really is.

For example, RAID 1 is NOT considered a complete "back-up" solution for precisely what you mentioned - viruses. In general, RAID 1 is considered a "hardware back-up" for your PC. If one hard drive fails, you have a complete mirror of it available.

But, if you factor in viruses, accidental deletes, catastrophic loss (fire? tornado?), it certainly isn't a "complete" back-up.

If you're worried about your PC's power supply frying everything, then maybe you need to mirror the drive across your LAN to another PC.

If you're worried about the tornado ripping off the roof and spreading your drive platters across seven states, then you need off-site storage. You'll need to consider cost and most importantly (IMHO) ease of use. If it isn't easy to do, you won't do it.

On-line is the easiest, but it can be pricey, often has crappy upload speeds, and the management can be cumbersome.

Off-line via some external drive is cheaper, easy to do, and you control it. But then you have to remember to do it, put the external drive in a safe place, and remember where you put it.

Burning disks (Blue-Ray) or otherwise isn't the greatest idea. It's expensive, easily damaged, and can degrade unexpectedly.

One free resource I happen to like is Microsoft SkyDrive. It offers 25 GB (that's right GB) of space, free, on-line, for files.

http://skydrive.live.com/
 
Make sure if you do buy a external drive that its RELIABLE. The only reason I say this is bc I beta tested the Maxtor Central Axis last x-mas. At first it was freaKIN sweet. 1tb of space OMG. Everything I've ever downloaded or installed on my pc went to that thing. Well 400 gbs ltr the thing DIES... and its a widespread problem. Now I've disassembled and have a 1tb for my pc... 400 GIGS ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh. gl
 
Wow Scrappy for a dog with a hormone inbalance you are pretty tech savy... I am going to have to PM you a problem I am having with my vista 64bit rig to see if you can help me..
 
ScrappyDoo said:
The question that needs to be answered is what is the purpose of the back-up? Each of the different solutions presented offer different pros and cons depending on what your ulterior motive really is.

For example, RAID 1 is NOT considered a complete "back-up" solution for precisely what you mentioned - viruses. In general, RAID 1 is considered a "hardware back-up" for your PC. If one hard drive fails, you have a complete mirror of it available.

But, if you factor in viruses, accidental deletes, catastrophic loss (fire? tornado?), it certainly isn't a "complete" back-up.

If you're worried about your PC's power supply frying everything, then maybe you need to mirror the drive across your LAN to another PC.

If you're worried about the tornado ripping off the roof and spreading your drive platters across seven states, then you need off-site storage. You'll need to consider cost and most importantly (IMHO) ease of use. If it isn't easy to do, you won't do it.

On-line is the easiest, but it can be pricey, often has crappy upload speeds, and the management can be cumbersome.

Off-line via some external drive is cheaper, easy to do, and you control it. But then you have to remember to do it, put the external drive in a safe place, and remember where you put it.

Burning disks (Blue-Ray) or otherwise isn't the greatest idea. It's expensive, easily damaged, and can degrade unexpectedly.

One free resource I happen to like is Microsoft SkyDrive. It offers 25 GB (that's right GB) of space, free, on-line, for files.

http://skydrive.live.com/
Click to expand...

External drives will suffer from the same issues as RAID. What is going to stop a virus from wreaking havoc, spreading, or deleting your backups as soon as you connect it? Slim odds, but still is possible.

BioHazardd said:
I don't think it's worth the 50$ for either one of those pieces of software for something your going to use once, maybe twice a year? Unless you make it a habit to reformat quite often.

I THINK (not 100% sure) that things like Norton Ghost are meant for say school network systems where you want every system EXACTLY identical.. I'd just roll with the external HDD I think.
Click to expand...

Norton Ghost is originally a disk cloning tool, but can also be used for backups. That is why I said I prefer Acronis.

Also I never said to reformat each and every time. Just once to get a nice clean backup. Also that is why he needs to make this automated. Because if he doesn't have a automated backup schedule it's likely he will backupt once or twice and then never again.
 
RAID1 (or mirroring) is not a backup solution. Any malicious writes that destroys data will most likely be also be written to the second drive before you can do anything about it.

A cheap solution is to copy your data to another drive (external or not) like others have suggested.
 
Personally, I'd get a 1TB internal drive. I constantly run into partition-related problems (NEVER viruses/crapware) so id just use Acronis Trueimage to back up monthly.

I'm not worried about my HDD frying/ physical damage, so that's all I need.
 
BaHAmuT said:
RAID1 (or mirroring) is not a backup solution. Any malicious writes that destroys data will most likely be also be written to the second drive before you can do anything about it.
Click to expand...

QFT

I use Acronis and image my OS drive every other week (and before any major software addition/modification/deletion). I store the images on an external drive sitting on my desk and another sitting in a fire-proof chest. My data and steam games folder are on other drives. It takes ~40 minutes to restore my computer back to a previous image. Acronis also allows you to restore to HDDs of a different size. So if you have a 80GB drive that fails, you can buy a 320GB drive and Acronis will restore all your data and scale your partitions accordingly. This is something Vista's built-in imaging software can't do. It's saved my ass so many times that it's worth the $50 I paid for it.

Every month, I upload an image to an online backup solution. I'm thinking about moving to Amazon S3 because they are cheap.
 
A couple if good online line sites for hard drives is Tiger direct or maybe edgegamers could find you 1
 
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