"puter back up...best way?

Vanzo

For all you puter brainiacs....what is the best way for me to back up my computer so if I have another major crash I can restore everything from the backup?

Is it one of the services where you pay a yearly fee for them to backup for you everyday or an external hard drive? Or something else? I am not a computer whiz and recently lost everything including all my pictures and business records.

I want a system that is fool proof so all I will have to do is reload from the back up and keep going....if there is such a thing!

Thanks in advance,
Van in Alabama

[Deleted User]

I use a remote hard drive and a free software program called Carbon Copy Cloner.

I back it up (manually) once a month, but if my business depended on it I'd do it daily at C.O.B.

Vanzo

Thanks. I went to the website and it looks like it is for Mac users only?????

fieroguy

Van - I use an external hard drive (#1) to store ALL of my data. If the computer crashes then nothing is lost.

I use a second external drive (#2) to back up #1 and do so about once a month.

Large external drives are relatively inexpensive when you consider how important your data can be.

Sorry 'bout the loss of your data. Lost photos and important files are irreplaceable.

WooDoggies

My brother who maintains servers for an international company uses this backup system for his home computers and kids computers.

http://www.carbonite.com

Inexpensive and unlimited backup.

john

RRP

I absolutely agree - Carbonizer is cheap, painless and no head slapping needed thinking - oh crap did I back that up? it's done constantly.

Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker

i use mozy for my two work computers. safe, secure, and out of the house.

a back-up drive is great, but for anything truly important, you want offsite storage too.

tach18k

To put a value on back up first figure out how much you would pay someone to retrive it all. The BEST way is tape backup, not cheap but very consistant and easy. second to that is how you handle email, I use google which is forward to another google account for storage, I used outlook for my reader, backs up everynight. It is 1.5 gigs of emails files. I use Acronis to make a weekly clone of my hard drive, if it crashes I lose at most a week of files, but more than likely I can get it all back. I can just swap the hard drives and never miss a beat. But then I have been doing this since 78...

Misippi Egger

I am a MAC user so I have their software -Time Machine- backing up our 3 computers hourly to my "Time Capsule" harddrive/wireless router. I also have an external HD that contains mostly photos.

I recently wanted off site storage so subscribed to "Carbonite", as suggested by WooDoggies in his post. I have it on all three computers and once it ever gets done with the first backup (7 days for my laptop), then it only updates changed files - in the back ground and with seemingly little loss of bandwidth.

A couple of years ago I had an external HD go bad and before I could get a new one and re-back up, my laptop HD crashed - data unretrievable! Now I have multiple backups.

Good luck.

Vanzo

I am in the process of checking out all of your sugestions. Can't afford for this to ever happen again....not fun!

Thanks again. If you're ever in Bama and looking for some good boiled peanuts, barbeque, fresh corn, or raw oysters then look me up and I will tell you where you can find the best!

Roll Tide,
Van in Alabama