Backup drives

[CZinSC]

First, I did a search, and the threads I found on back up drives are all pretty dated. As computer technology changes so fast, I figured it was better to start a new thread.

I'm looking for a backup drive. I was getting ready to buy an External HDD but then found some info on Backblaze and Carbonite, the online backup services.

Does anyone have any pros and cons ( preferably personal experience ) between buying an HDD vs the online services? Some of the reviews I've read of the external drives range from "Best thing since sliced bread" to "heats up like a toaster, software is useless, etc" and that is on the same drive! ( was looking at WD My Book Essential and Seagate GoFlex ).

For the online services, the $50-60 a year seems OK, but I wanted to be able to back up two computers, so for $100 a year, that's starting to get expensive compared to most 1TB Ext drives going for about $100-$150. I think I'd be ok with the yearly service fee since I wouldn't have to worry about an external drive going belly up and my "insurance policy" is rendered useless. Just want to make sure the online services are all that they say they are. ( case in point, i have an old Sony 80GB GigaVault that is giving me issues ).

What I'm backing up: two laptops, one running Vista Business 32Bit, the other Win7 64 bit. The Vista computer has about 130GB stored on it, the Win7 is new, not much stored on it yet at all.

Please don't respond with Mac options. Don't own one, don't plan to own one.

Most of the data to be backed up is documents, emails, pictures, and videos ( starting to accumulate a lot of gun vidoes! )

Thanks for the help.

[CocoBolo]

First if they are net worked, get robo copy and you can back up your "data" from one to the other. Robocopy is free at Microsoft, I use it a work for my SQL Script files, I'm a dba. Copies my scripts from my work station to each of the SQL Servers I have so I got them where ever I need them. Just use task scheduler to run it while you sleep.

At home I have a 1TB HP simple save, it backs up everything new every 5 minutes when the computer is idle and I have weekly backups as well. And being a Pro, I have a second external USB that gets a monthly copy.

I also keep a Ghost Image of my machine, which I update once a quarter, or any time I add a new application.

[bbbean]

I use both HD backups and Carbonite, but if I had to choose one, it'd be Carbonite. I've done two restores from Carbonite, and the process is as painless as a restore can be. I also like having remote access to all my files when I travel.

[Skydiver]

If you like "fire and forget", online backup like Carbonite is the way to go. All your data is offsite. A meteor can hit your home and your data will be safe. Be sure to check with your broadband provider to see if they have any monthly limits of how much data you can send and receive per month, though. As I recall Comcast starts charging extra when you go over a particular limit (5GB?) Also that know that when it's time to restore data, you'll be throttled by the download speed of your broadband connection.

If you are geeky and prefer to do things on your own, and make sure that everything is done just right, the route is to go with multiple external hard drives, and follow a backup rotation schedule: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backup_rotation_scheme . Part of the idea of the rotation scheme is to move the data offsite when you don't need it on site... eg take the backups to work, or put them in a safe deposit box.

A third alternative is if you have an old machine that is just sitting around not doing much. Convert that machine into a Windows Home Server, and start throwing in your older hard drives, as well as attaching external hard drives to it. With WHS, you can setup the same "fire and forget" online backup, but this time the data goes into the WHS. WHS is smart about doing redundancy so that incase any of the drives fail it can reconstruct data using the remaining drives. It's a lot faster to backup and restore. The downside is that your backup data is now still onsite. If you want to be paranoid, then you still have to backup offsite once more.

[gng4life]

Since you have a small amount of data, buying a few externals and using some free software like Sync Back is a simple task. As mentioned, I would use one as offsite storage and taking an image of your computers is nice. Acronis is great but I use Ghost a lot since I use it at work.

As far as online or cloud storage, I am looking at a company named Bit Casa now. I like the idea of getting to my data without going through my VPN. I will let you know what I find out.

Storage is a mundane task but like insurance, better safe than sorry

[Ryan626]

When I had a hd fail on me, I was lucky to have done a backup to an external hd. I did loose some files and pictures because I was doing a monthly backup so I never wanted that to happen again. I wanted to eliminate human error, which is me when I get lazy or forget to run the backup. If you want peace of mind, as others have stated, spend the money on the online backup. I use Mozy and have been happy with the service. To me, one of the most important files in my pc is the pictures and videos of my family which no amount of money can replace if they were lost. So I decided that yes, online service can be more expensive but to me, it's money worth spending.

Just my two cents.

Ryan

[Graham Smith]

I've been working with computers in one way or another since 1972 and must admit to being both a fan of current technology and a Luddite at the same time. This comes into biggest focus when comes to using the internet for anything other than communications. I don't care for internet apps or backup or any of a dozen other half-baked schemes for the simple reason that I don't want to be completely dependent on an internet connection for my data.

I have a small (about the size of a folded wallet) Seagate USB drive that holds 1 TB - that's more capacity than every other storage device that I own combined - and it cost less than $100. I have a free program called Macrium Reflect that will image my hard drives. Once a month, before I do updates, I image my drives then the USB drive goes back into a fire resistant box. My business server gets backed up every night to a removable disk (Iomega Rev - no longer made) on a 10 disk rotation. Those go in the fire resistant box as well. That's the business side taken care of.

Attached to my home computer is a 500GB USB drive. I turn it on when I need to put something on it and keep it off otherwise. Some files store on it are duplicated on my hard drive.

I have a few 4GB thumb drives that act as temporary storage for stuff that needs to go with me.

[Skydiver]

Oh and if you do decide to go with the external hard drives route, these are a Godsend if you actually do HD rotations:

They're on sale at Newegg through the end of the month:

http://www.newegg.co...N82E16817153066

You can save just keep buying naked drives and plug them in and out of rotation.

[markcic]

What type of things are your data from? If it is having a disc in one of the computers fail, any backup strategy like a local external drive or local backup server will work. If you are worried about your house burning down and being able to recover the data you need to move it off site. You can do that in a couple of different way. Assuming you have a safe place to store a drive you can do periodic backups with a single external drive and store it remote. You could also buy a couple of drives and rotate them to a remote location. The easiest option is with an online backup provide but the down side is someone else might have access to your data and it is slow to download. It is all depends on how important your data is to you and how much hassle you are willing to go through to back it up and recover it. It is probable somewhere between none and having a 28 tape/disk rotation and having Iron Mountain stop by every morning.

[benos]

You could also buy a couple of drives and rotate them to a remote location.

That is an excellent idea. Currently, I have a portable FW drive stored off location that everything in my office is backed up on weekly. But with 2 drives for that purpose, one could remain well hidden in the office, so I could easily run a mid-week backup on it. (And all the work machines are backed up daily on external drives.)

be

[Fried Chicken Blowout]

First off I'm a little bit of a geek. And I'm an Apple guy, but that is neither here nor there since I'm just stating what I do and you might learn from it.

We went totally internet based for TV at our house. I subscribe to a few service like Netflix, Hulu Plus and obtain our own video by ripping DVDs, buying content from iTunes and renting from several sources digital content. I currently have about 1TB of video files that I run on our main desktop. So backing that up via an online service would not work. How you want to back up something will be dictated by what data you have and how much of it there is. If you have a lot of personally created data that can't be replaced like family photos, family videos and say a book that you are writing... Then an on line service would be best. That way when the zombies attack and you have to burn down your house, everything is safely kept off site. But if you're like me, I'm more into local storage incase I have drive failures.

Because all of our media files stream from one computer to several AppleTV media boxes in the house, Ipods and several other computers, I need a fast drive that can handle several streams of data. My house is wired with a Gigabit network and I try to keep everything wired vs wireless for reliability and speed sake. Due to the demands on this primary drive I burn them out about once a year. The primary drive is a FireWire 800 interface drive. I'm currently using a 2TB Seagate as my primary and a 2TB WD MyBook (USB 2.0) as it's back up. My last several drives were FireWire 400 MyBook drives which suck and don't last long. The Seagate is very fast and quite, but I have no idea how long it will last. If you will be accessing the data on this drive often and it will be used for video files I would suggest any FireWire drive over any USB 2.0 if you have the connection for it. Even a FireWire 400 drive is about twice as fast as a USB 2.0 drive, despite what the specs say.

So all my data is on the primary FireWire 800 drive, then several times a day that drive is automatically and incrementally backed up to another external drive which just happens to be a USB 2.0 drive, manly because I'm a cheap ass and the USB drives are cheaper than the FireWire 800 drives. When the primary drive fails, I buy a new one and just restore the data to it from the USB drive. Since I'm not directly accessing the data on the USB 2.0 drive, unless I'm restoring the disk, I don't care that it's a slow drive. I do use an off site storage service provided by Apple for important personal files and I back up my family photos and videos on another external that I backup every few months and keep in one of my gun safes. Not zombie proof, but pretty good for breakins and stuff.

[Fried Chicken Blowout]

Oh that NewEgg deal above looks very nice. You can get a couple of those with 3 drives and set up the kind of setup I have. Once for safe keeping in the safe and two to maintain constant up to date backups of everything.

[gng4life]

One other thing that isn't mentioned yet is that you should have some sort of encryption for your data, especially if it is off-site. I would not encrypt everything but for more personal things and docs, I would say to get something like TrueCrypt or AxxCrypt and make sure anything that is confidential is there. Just don't forget the password or passphrase, you won't be able to recover it.

[Gadgetech]

I use an external backup drive onsite and I also use carbonite for the same computer w/ the backup. Not an ideal situation for multiple computer as in your case but it does offer a level redundancy and offsite storage w/o having to update an external and keep it offsite in addition to the ones onsite. For my external drive I use G Drives...you get what you pay for and those external HDDs like to fail. My G-Drives (one for my iMac and one for my PC/Laptop) are in a nice metal casing w/ a heat sink on the bottom.