Ask Readers: Backup Strategies & Methods

Aaron Berning says on July 11th, 2006 at 7:25 am

I use an External Hard Drive and Second Copy (centered.com) which runs each time I shut down my system and makes a 1:1 backup of whatever folders I specify. It has plenty of options for schedules and custom rules. Used it for years and years, never found anything better.

Brian Carnell says on July 11th, 2006 at 7:25 am

I back up all my personal files, which comes out to about 200gb. Backup to external HD, and then use external HD on another computer to backup entire dataset to zip files which then get burned to DVDs. Do that weekly.

Yes, it is a boring thing to do, but it doesn’t suck nearly as much as data loss.

Curt says on July 11th, 2006 at 7:29 am

Semi-important, I back up to an external drive (family photos, etc).

Stuff that I consder very important, I have in a truecrypt volume on my HD, and on the external drive (financials, scanned marriage cert, wallet contents, insurance docs, etc.).

I will occasionally burn the truecrypt volume to dvd, and mail out a copy to two different people… about 2k miles apart. This usually happens when I add something new that is very important, or make a significant change to one of the documents. (Ends up being about once every two months.)

Gary says on July 11th, 2006 at 7:45 am

I use xxcopy via a batch file. I create two separate backups one is a straight file for file copy of the appropriate directories, the other is a set of only those files changed on the day backup runs which means I have a useful but limited versioning system. I keep these on two separate hardrives one internal and one external. The approx once a month I burn the changed files to DVD which means that I can normally get away using only disk and not wasting too much time.

I can only recommend xxcopy to the geeks since it requires a knowledge of batch files and the ablity to interpret some fairly complex command line arguments. But having said that it’s the single most powerful and useful backup utility I’ve used on windows.

The most important thing to remember is that the ‘backup’ is the least important element of data security. The most element is the abilty to restore the backup in a useful and timely manner i.e. without trashing your entirely machine just to retrieve a single file. With this in mind you should test your archives regularly and ensure that you can actually restore it without jumping through too many hoops. The above method may not be space efficient but it’s relatively easy to test and retrieving files is a simple matter of using whatever indexing / search tool happens to be your favourite.

Nancy says on July 11th, 2006 at 7:47 am

I completely back up both of my Macs (12″ PowerBook & 17″ iMac) every week onto external FireWire hard drives (I do daily critical file backups using my .mac subscription) by using SuperDuper! (shirt-pocket.com). Then both drives go into a locked firesafe on the other side of the townhouse. I’m about to go overseas for several weeks, so after the backups, I’ll probably put the drives onto my bank’s safe deposit box. With automatic scheduling in .mac, the most I would ever lose is a day’s worth of work. Once you get into this habit, it’s easy to keep up with it.

Roy Jacobsen says on July 11th, 2006 at 7:53 am

Backup 1: External HD coupled with Windows OneCare’s backup routine (run weekly).

Backup 2: Mozy’s free account (www.mozy.com). Runs daily when the machine is idle. Me and Mozy are good buddies.

Tom says on July 11th, 2006 at 8:00 am

I use Amazon’s S3 service accessed via a product called Jungle Disk.

Tom says on July 11th, 2006 at 8:04 am

I used to use Mozy’s free account (www.mozy.com) but had trouble installing newer versions of the program (couldn’t fully uninstall older version !). Nice product I must give it another try sometime.

Michael A. Vickers says on July 11th, 2006 at 8:04 am

I use Carbonite (http://carbonite.com). It requires a bit of trust of course, but you could always zip and pword protect your files. They claim that they encrypt your stuff on client side before it’s backed up.

It installs into Explorer and then runs in the background. It works in the background and I never have to worry about it. It also does versioning. 5 bucks a month, unlimited bandwidth and storage space.

Michael Wilson says on July 11th, 2006 at 8:26 am

Once I finally distilled down what I REALLY needed backed up (documents, source code, license files, etc.) It turns out that the whole schmegeggy is only a couple gig.

I burn a dvd, copy to a 4gig flash drive, and upload the really important stuff (in an encrypted zip) so an external site.

I have a little fireproof box that my sister keeps at her place (states away) and I send her little notes with “toss that old disc and put this one in there.”

If some catastrophy gets all those backups, then chances are it’s gotten me too, so I’m not really all that worried about it.

Jake says on July 11th, 2006 at 8:44 am

I copy everything to an offline RAID device once a week. That takes human failure and hardware failure out of the picture. Now all I need to worry about is fire or flood. An offsite HD would fix that, but that requires less laziness then I have.

deep says on July 11th, 2006 at 9:07 am

Currently I’m using SyncBack to automatically backup important folders to an internal back up hard drive. I think I may also try to automate the process of creating an offline DVD of important data or put some other files on a secure memory stick for a redundant copy.

In the past I would try and get myself to regularly burn data DVDs but since this relies upon discipline it never occurred on a regularly schedule. Paid the price for this recently when my main hard drive went belly up and the most recent backup I had was 6 months old. Some data I could rebuild (i.e. downloading it from my webspace again), other data was gone for good. In a way it’s been kind of liberating, it’s one way to cut through the data / email / etc. glut and find out what you really need and what’s really important.

Bill says on July 11th, 2006 at 9:48 am

Nightly backup to external hard drive with MS Backup.

Weekly rsync job to match laptop files to desktop. I also run it manually whenever I have downtime.

Marcelo Ruiz says on July 11th, 2006 at 9:50 am

I really recomend the software I use. It’s called Cobian Backup (http://www.cobian.se/) and it’s incredibly free!!
It has various backup modes (complete, differential, zipped, not zipped, etc…) and you can create “backup tasks” for different folders and schedule them at different times.
I have two scheduled tasks, one for backing up my work files every day at 9:00 AM and other for my Outlook.pst, at night. The backuped files are saved in a network drive (outside the PC where they live) and I do a differential backup, that is it only copies the files that changed. But I could also make a complete copy if I wanted… that would also allow me to keep a version control of my work files…
I tell, this backup saved me many times!!

Kim says on July 11th, 2006 at 11:21 am

I have different categories of files. The most critical files are on a portable drive that goes everywhere with me. I back up those files to DVD, and have a copy of the files on a separate hard disk. I also have some files stored online that I might need access to and I have a smaller set that travels on a USB drive with me. At this time, I am not using any automatic backup solution.

Kim says on July 11th, 2006 at 11:21 am

I have different categories of files. The most critical files are on a portable drive that goes everywhere with me. I back up those files to DVD, and have a copy of the files on a separate hard disk. I also have some files stored online that I might need access to and I have a smaller set that travels on a USB drive with me. At this time, I am not using any automatic backup solution.

Dave says on July 11th, 2006 at 1:04 pm

Once a month I do a full backup to DVD. This is about 4GB. (4GB? I remember back when my entire home folder would fit on one 100MB Zip Disk.) I keep a zipped copy of the backup on my HD so if I accidently delete a file I can easily go back to the zip. I take the DVD to an off-site safe deposit box, although I only seem to make the trip out there every couple months or so.

I haven’t thrown away a DVD yet – they are all kept in the safe deposit box. I do this in case I lose some files and it is several months before I notice. This actually happened to me once when a folder of photos “disappeared” from my hard drive, and luckily I only had to go back a couple of backups to find the missing photos.

Once a week I do differential backup. This is only about 30MB. I upload that to an off-site server.

Jason says on July 11th, 2006 at 1:48 pm

I bought Norton Ghost and an external HD. It does a periodic full and a nightly delta. It’s easy to use, I don’t need many features, just a program that will back up my stuff without me having to think about it.

Daniel Kim says on July 11th, 2006 at 2:23 pm

I burn static files to DVD for storage at home, and also put them on an external drive for easier access at work.

Files that change more quickly are backed up using Mozy Free. They amount to less than the 2Gb limit, and I find Mozy to be entirely transparent and unobtrusive.

My more modest home computer files are all backed up using Mozy Free.

Note: Remember that some of your data will live in your “Local Settings” and other folders that are not in “My Documents”.

shimmyohana says on July 11th, 2006 at 3:03 pm

rather simple method,
live files are backup daily automatically with msbackup to a tape drive which comes home with me.
files i am finished with and done need now i burn to cd/dvd and use a program called advanced disc catalogue if i ever need to find them again.

Jacob says on July 11th, 2006 at 3:27 pm

I use rsync on my mac to sync my entire drive with my firewire 800 external drive. I can run it when ever I like, and have it set as a cron job once a day. It’s great because if my PowerBooks HD ever dies, I just plug in the firewire and boot from the external.

AndyB says on July 11th, 2006 at 6:37 pm

I have two identical firewire drives – with hardware encrypted enclosures. They each have a key – insert the key and the drive works, encrypting to DES3 at full speed to the internal drive.

One key is at home, one key 200 miles away.

I alternate my backups to each drive – and then take the backed up drive into work and store there. If a drive is stolen from work, or in transit it’s no problem as it’s completely encrypted. If my house is destroyed I have a work backup, and they key at a remote location.

I never have all the disks in the same location.

Backup is pretty simple – I use SuperDuper! to image my Mac, then copy my tunes and photos off another external drive to my backup. If I lost my computer drive, I can boot off the latest firewire backup and restore in under an hour.

Brian J King says on July 12th, 2006 at 12:24 pm

Super Duper from Shirt Pocket Software & a 300GB Maxtor OneTouch II in 3, ~100gb partitions.

Smart update, sandbox, & more!

mac says on July 13th, 2006 at 7:02 am

Your critical files should be encrypted and backed up off site. Have a listen to Steve Gibson and Leo Laporte’s podcast about TrueCrypt at http://www.grc.com/securitynow.htm

Carefully back up the password, especially if it is long or complicated. Imagine if you carefully send out all those encrypted DVDs to off site storage and the keys to unlock the unbreakable cryptography are lost when your computer crashes. I can tell you from experience that it is very easy to confuse a passphrase.

Test your restore process periodically. This is especially important with products that make some kind of archive file that you can not browse through and verify your files. It is easy to get a setting wrong and wind up with software that is not doing what you think it is. Do not trust the ‘verify’ options in the software.

For the files that are not critical I suggest simply coping to removable or network storage and making an .md5 hash so you know they are all there and correct. There is also a podcast about .md5 on grc.com.

Keep working on your strategy until you find something that you will actually do. Having a plan is no good to you unless you do it.

C Brown says on July 14th, 2006 at 1:53 pm

You should also check out Data Deposit Box for online data backup. It’s inexpensive and very easy to use. It takes about 2 minutes to install the online backup agent. Once installed it’s fully automatic with nothing to remember and no procedures to follow. You can access your online data storage easily with a web browser.

munawar says on May 13th, 2007 at 5:18 pm

Hi – Great advice on this website.

I’m using Moby unlimited which is $4.95 for unlimited storage. I was going to purchase an external drive, but this is far cheaper, and a thousand times more reliable.

Another great service is godaddy.com domain name registration. For a $12/YEAR cost, it provides a domain name and 5 GB Online storage available via FTP. I sync to it using Syncback software (google it). Think this one through, you can register a domain called “youname.com” and it’s where you’re storing your daily critical files, with easy access from anywhere in the world. No software required (well FTP access).

Lastly – I have setup a home network with a fileserver.

Hierarchy of backup:

1. MS Backup of data files weekly/monthly to local fileserver. More to free up space on my desktop and create redundancy.

2. Syncback daily up to my domain of files i need on a daily basis. I access it from work and from home to sync stuff up. This is like a virtual harddrive, as syncback sync’s up the latest copies only.

3. Ghost clone of my entire harddrive up to mozy unlimited service. (I have to automate this)

4. Data backup daily to Mozy to protect against catastrophic failure. I have many large audio and video files, so this is worth it.