Are YOUR Files All Backed Up?

[everettdavis]

There are on-line backup solutions such as Carbonite, iDrive and others who offer on-line backup services, some with no limit on what you can back up there, that are reasonably priced.

Some are fully automated, and occur automatically overnight etc.

Hardware failure, theft, fire, tornado whatever, the on-line back-up is generally geographically a long way from your system (out of harm's way) and can be restored from anywhere you need to another computer.

I would stay with the majors if you go that route, and make sure the company and the place they store your data is domestically positioned in the US if you're in the US, UK if UK, and so on.

[bffulgham]

I've been responsible for backups, disaster recovery, or whatever you want to call it for 42 years....Enterprises, single systems, Mom-n-Pop-Operations, etc.. In those years, I've come up with the following:

There are 2 types of computer users:
1. Those who have lost data.
2. Those who will lose data.

Fulgham's corollary:
3. Those who will lose data again.

A backup is only as good as the backup is. There ain't nothing worse than a backup that you think is good; when, in fact, it can't restore your data.

If you have a backup, try to restore it. Only then will you know if you have a true backup.

[garys]

A system backup is a waste of time and space in my opinion. I don't want my system backed up. The only thing I back up is my personal files. The system can easily be reinstalled from the original disc. Personal files need to be backed up somewhere. I have a file server on my network and all the personal files from each machine are backed up there. If any workstation fails, I simply copy the files from the server back to a new computer. If the server would ever fail, I simply copy the files from each workstation back to a new server.

I don't trust anybody in their little cloud with my personal files. That doesn't make sense if you care about security.

[Ed in Tampa]

You guys are making me nervous.
When I said my files were backed up automatically, I meant to the cloud drive. Not a physical drive.
I just bought a new allinone and everything transferred just fine from the cloud.
Is anything wrong with just using the cloud?

The only problem with the cloud is the fact that because it is there it is also a target for hackers. That said most hackers are looking to make a buck. So unless you have something that could be sold on the cloud no one is interested in it.

Personally anything I want backed up and is personal like passwords, bank accounts, inventory, etc. I back up to my thumb drive, which is plugged in only when I'm offline and have scanned my computer for viruses.

Before I got the Ipad this was a problem especially when trying to reconcile my check book. I keep my quicken files on a thumbdrive and only plug it in when I'm offline. To see my current bank statement I would have to eject the thumbdrive, go on line, look up what I was hunting for and going off line then bring quicken back up and plug in the thumb drive. Now I can just go online on my IPAD while I have quicken up on my desktop.

[fitzhugh]

Just remember your backups on either local disks or on a cloud service like Dropbox are only safe if you leave then disconnected/unmounted except when running the actual backup. They will help in many cases regardless but not when hit by ransomeware. Your computer treats them the same as your main drives (in some important respects) so they will end up encrypted too. Or, with Dropbox, for example, it will sync the encrypted ones over the older good copies... Same result (that being tears and hair pulling and likely bloody knuckles from punching your computer).

This is a real problem because most people want the backups to run at early morning hours and don't want to get up and plug the drive in then.

[BuckeyeDennis]

Dropbox maintains older versions of your files in the cloud, and you can recover them on demand. The free Dropbox version officially maintains them for 30 days. I just did a spot check, and found that it still has a copy of my Quicken data file dating back to January. For paying customers, they will maintain old file versions much longer.