I'm looking into the options I have for backing up all the info I have stored on my laptop (HP Pavilion ze5400). I've never backed up a computer before. My previous one's have died, been traded, etc., with all of the info on them being lost. With the current info my wife and I have on this one, particularly since the purchase of a digital camera, if anything happened to this one it would be fairly tragic. Anyone have any suggestion?

Please keep in mind that I would not consider myself computer savvy at all.

Covered in the "gear" section. Check out the link below...

www.honda599.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=423 (http://www.honda599.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=423)

Actually the in thing coming in backup solutions, is to store your data online. This is going to become more common, and cheaper for all. It has the advantage that you can access it from any pc with an internet connection, so don't need to carry it around (and in doing so put it again at risk of loss)(Assuming you can remember your password.. lol)

"In the final analysis, online storage is a personal choice, be it for sharing and collaboration or for pure backup. There may well be an option or a selection that one particular service may offer that you really want. That's why the free trials with no credit card information required are so important. There's no risk in trying them out, and if you don't already have an offsite backup plan, the only risk you're taking is not actually backing up online..."

Otherwise external hard drives enclosed in cases with network connections are nice. Try to get one bundled with a nice piece of backup software included. I can't recommend one in particular but this site is one to be trusted for equipment reviews...

http://www.tomshardware.com/storage/index.html

:wink:

Covered in the "gear" section. Check out the link below...

www.honda599.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=423 (http://www.honda599.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=423)

Um, did I miss something here? That thread's got a lot about backpacks, but I didn't see anything there about backups.

As for storing data online, I'm still skeptical. Its advantage (from my perspective) is that it's off-site storage. If your place gets sucked off your land by aliens, your data is still available on someone else's server. On the other hand, I don't want my data (financials, photos of family members, personal inventory lists, business data) stored on someone else's (read: not under my control) servers. Something to think on.

As much as I'm not impressed with Norton 360 (yet), I do like its backup feature in that it does a file-by-file copy. This says to me that if I back up my desktop machine to a portable (USB) hard drive, then I can search that portable drive for a particular file and access it immediately (it's not all packed together as in Microsoft's built-in backup feature).

And as off-site storage goes, that's pretty easy to do with two portable drives. Do a backup to both drives, then put one in your safe deposit box at the bank (or in some other trusted / secure location). Once a week (or at your own predetermined frequency) back up your machine to the portable drive that's on hand, and then go to the bank and swap again. If you're really data-paranoid, then you immediately back your machine up onto the drive you just retrieved. Then set it aside until the next copy-and-swap event.

I don't always practice this method well (though I do back up my "mustn't lose it" stuff to DVDs periodically), but it seems to make good sense.

:banghead Oooops. Hey I blame the meds. I've been sick all week.

I format all my pc's as soon as I get em and set them up the way I want them I never use the restore partition crap.... create a partition for windows or whatever OS and create a seperate partition for my stuff..... then if windows crashes I can format and re install all the while my stuff is in a seperate partition and is still there after the new install never gets disturbed :thumbsup But yeh the important stuff I still burn to cd just in case.

I would go for one of the USB based drives. Basically, it's a laptop drive with an IDE to USB adapter. In fact, recently (less than a week ago) my laptop died and I took my old laptop drive out and put an USB adapter on it, so now it's my backup drive for my new laptop, and my wife uses an old laptop drive for her backup as well. These are great because they don't require a separate power supply.

The way I do my backups is I try to keep all of my data under the "documents and settings" folder in XP or, in vista, it's just the "users" folder. Understand my Vista experience is about three days now but it appears this is the default location for most application data, documents, pictures, music, etc.

" it appears this is the default location for most application data, documents, pictures, music, etc." to me .... That SCREAMS "Do NOT put Anything in these Folders" :lol:


Ehhhh I really run Ubuntu in my Computers but my wife uses windows still

I would go for one of the USB based drives. Basically, it's a laptop drive with an IDE to USB adapter.

This is more than likely the direction I will be looking. It sounds fairly user friendly and fool-proof. But what does "IDE" stand for? :oops:

I'm just using a small external hard drive...about $100. My security software runs the back up once a week. The only thing I'm really worried about are my personal files that can't be replaced...photos, videos and music mostly. Also, I would burn anything irreplaceable to CD or DVD periodically.

If youre looking for a permanent solution, id say dvd discs would be best. Once you burn them, you stick them in storage for years until needed. They dont have electrical or moving parts, so they wont just randomly fail like a machine would.

If you want something you can add to frequently, id say a usb pen/thumb drive. Again, no moving parts, fairly rugged if you buy a decent brand, and you can get up to 16-32 gigs on a drive. They are pretty cheap too for the space you get.

If you have tons and tons of stuff, an external hdd is the way to go. Id suggest buying an internal hdd and an enclosure though. That way if the drive begins to fail you can simply remove it and pop in another one. If youre rolling in money you could get a blu-ray burner, 25gb single layer and 50 double layer discs... its about $500 though.

Personally, ill never put my stuff on a server somewhere that i cant unplug and lock up in my own house. Ive always been paranoid about online storage, but thats just my personal hang up.

Usb pen drive would probably be the simplest. :thumbsup

Claire and I use 250 gig La Cie firewire hard drives for backup. I also have a couple of USB laptop size hard drives for more-portable backup drives. I also use two separate on-line services to backup my documents. Yes, I'm paranoid, but I am also an attorney and I have to keep my documents safe.

Anyway, my strong recommendation would be to get a firewire drive (or eSATA if you can use it) because they are FAST. I have our Macs scheduled to backup regularly and automatically to the external drives. I would not use an on-line backup for anything more than documents because it takes far too much time to make a full backup of a computer drive, and it would be expensive as heck too.