Happy "World Backup Day"

[Boyd]

http://www.worldbackupday.com/en/
___________

DON'T BE AN APRIL FOOL.
Be prepared. Back up your files on March 31st.

THE WORLD BACKUP DAY PLEDGE
“I solemnly swear to backup my important documents and precious memories on March 31st.”
I will also tell my friends and family about World Backup Day - friends don't let friends go without a backup.

 

[manumuskin]

Funny you should post this.This computer has been acting funny and it's thirteen years old so yesterday I backed up about 100 gigs worth of stuff.I was a day early

 

[46er]

An after you back it up, test it, to make sure you can do what you think you can with it

 

[Teegate]

Also, make sure that the file format you save your files in will still be accessible 20 years from now. For example, I saved many of my early stone calculation files on Apple's Claris Works. Today it is hard to find a computer that will actually run that program and I have those files throughout my stone records. For the most part I don't need them but it would be nice to look them over if need be.

As companies do away with the old and introduce the new, your files may one day be like a Beta video tape.

 

[46er]

Also, make sure that the file format you save your files in will still be accessible 20 years from now.

I really don't have to worry about that

 

[Boyd]

I saved many of my early stone calculation files on Apple's Claris Works. Today it is hard to find a computer that will actually run that program.

Guy, I used ClarisWorks and AppleWorks extensively too. And a family member was still using it on her old Mac when I helped her upgrade to a new machine a couple years ago. Fortunately, there is still a program that will open these files and the best thing is that it's free.

Give it a try, it is also a very nice replacement for Microsoft Office: https://www.libreoffice.org

 

[Teegate]

Downloading now. Will check it out. Thanks!

 

[ninemileskid]

Funny you should post this.This computer has been acting funny and it's thirteen years old so yesterday I backed up about 100 gigs worth of stuff.I was a day early

Let's see...15 year old computer....100 gigs.....DAMN! That's a lot of floppy disks!

 

[Teegate]

It worked Boyd! I opened one file and was able to save it in a different format that will allow me to open it with multiple available programs.

 

[46er]

Let's see...15 year old computer....100 gigs.....DAMN! That's a lot of floppy disks!

Get a 1tb xhd and never worry about floppy's again; about $50.

 

[46er]

As companies do away with the old and introduce the new, your files may one day be like a Beta video tape.

This may be a case of where use of the cloud would be worthwhile.

 

[ecampbell]

I use an external 6TB Western digital my book with USB 3. I back up a complete image of my computer with the free version of Macrium Reflect. I have nine months of images on there averaging 575 GB each. I also use Carbonite for daily backup of my pics, docs and music. I did a backup of Basecamp today, over 9 GB.

 

[46er]

I use an external 6TB Western digital my book with USB 3. I back up a complete image of my computer with the free version of Macrium Reflect. I have nine months of images on there averaging 575 GB each. I also use Carbonite for daily backup of my pics, docs and music. I did a backup of Basecamp today, over 9 GB.

Ever do a restore to see if there are any glitches?

 

[Teegate]

I use an external 6TB Western digital my book with USB 3. I back up a complete image of my computer with the free version of Macrium Reflect. I have nine months of images on there averaging 575 GB each. I also use Carbonite for daily backup of my pics, docs and music. I did a backup of Basecamp today, over 9 GB.

Very nice Ed!

 

[manumuskin]

Let's see...15 year old computer....100 gigs.....DAMN! That's a lot of floppy disks!

I have a 1 terrabyte external hard drive.It swallered 100 Gigs,Belched and asked for more.

 

[Boyd]

I have a total of 22tb of backup disks that I use for 14tb of system and data drives on 4 computers. And before 46er asks, no I have not tried restoring every one of those, but have selectively tested them. A couple weeks ago the 3 year old 3tb media drive failed on my iTunes server. Unplugged it, plugged in one of two clones and was up and running within 5 minutes. It is automatically backed up every night so I didn't lose anything.

 

[ecampbell]

Ever do a restore to see if there are any glitches?

Not a full image but the OS and some other stuff after a crash of a Windows 10 update. I am back to Windows 7 which is fine.

 

[Jon Holcombe]

I have two computers but only use the more recent Mac Pro (2013 cylinder). The only internal drive is a 500 GB solid state drive, containing system files and applications only. I back this up using Carbon Copy Cloner to two 1 TB external drives (backup 1 and 2). I keep all of my work files on a 8 TB external, with 3 external backups, all 8 TB (backups 3,4, and 5). I keep photos and media on another 8 TB external, also with 3 external backups (backups 6, 7, and 8). I use CCC to backup everything, staggered throughout the day so if something corrupts I do not lose more than a couple hours of work. I have had to boot to a cloned drive, and also retrieve files from clones backups and so far everything has worked well. I researched NAS and DAS but it looks complicated, and expensive. Just using a "bunch of disks" seems to work for me. I have been considering an "offsite" storage plan, in case my house burns down. But from what I have read cloud upload speeds are quite slow, and I have a lot of data.

 

[ecampbell]

I have 366GB backed up with Carbonite Basic and have recovered files from them. Once you get through the initial large backup, which took me over a month, the incrementals of daily work are quick. If Carbonite detects a file has changed it will back up the new version, tossing the old. I had a folder that somehow got corrupted so I went to Carbonite to restore the folder only to find it had stored the corrupted folder. So there is a weakness in relying only on Carbonite. I restored from my local backup. As a third layer of protection I copied critical pictures and videos to double layer blue rad discs, 50GB each but you won't get quite that much, and stored them at my mothers house.

 

[Boyd]

I also like Carbon Copy Cloner on the Mac. The nice thing is that it can make bootable clones, so you can just plug in an external drive and get back up and running immediately as opposed to restoring files. But I also have an Apple Time Capsule that constantly backs up my primary machine. It would take a long time to restore a whole disk from this, but it's handy when you accidently delete something and then need it a few days later.

I use Acronis to backup my Windows desktop machine. I have restored files from these backup disks with no problem. I keep one backup of my primary computer offsite, just in case. Cloud backups really are not viable with my slow DSL connection. If Verizon makes good on their pledge to bring me FIOS next year, maybe I will look into that.

BTW, since we're talking about backups, computers aren't the only devices that need them! Be sure to backup your phone and gps. As a moderator at GPSReview.net, every few days we see examples of people who have lost their data or have completely "bricked" devices that are difficult if not impossible to recover. A backup would make this very simple. I use iCloud to backup my phone, and occasionally back it up to my computer also.