Backing up what media to use

[jbqfc]

i back up everything to a external hard drive but my laptop hard drive is getting very full i want to delete all my photos about 4000 so need to make another back up for these but not sure what to use

do i go for another hard drive CD/DVD disc USB memory sick or memory card

or do i use on line back up

thanks john

[Katier]

Multiple places.

 

Options ( all of which are good) include a NAS drive ( o2's routers support this which is handy ), another external, Drop Box - all good options.

 

DVD is good as a backup, but personally I prefer the multiple hard drive option.

[beast66606]

Don't use a USB stick or a memory card (effectively the same thing)

 

I agree with Katier.

[Danemouth]

A removable hard disk drive would be my choice. I got caught with a DVD that would not read despite being che ked at the time it was written.

 

Dave

[beast66606]

If you want to use DVDs, make sure they are kept in the dark after writing - but I wouldn't advise using them as the only backup

[South Pole]

A removable hard disk drive is so easy.......... imagine all the hassle of writing to multiple DVDs.........

[spamcan61]

One copy on a portable HDD, one on my NAS and one on Skydrive.

[buffalo]

All pretty good advice so far. I would avoid DVDs except for short-term convenience and I would never use them as a sole backup, and certainly would not expect them to last more than a few years. I have a number of old CDs, both written on my own machines and things like old Kodak PhotoCDs that are now unreadable. Fortunately, I have other copies on more reliable media. The problem is that, like CDs before them, no one really knows how long recordable DVDs will last. Any figures you read are estimates rather than experience, and the life of recordable CD/DVD is very much less than commercially printed (i.e. music, video, etc) discs.

 

In fact, all media, including magnetic discs, eventually suffer from drop outs and other retrieval errors. The only reliable way to limit problems in the long term is to copy your backups to new/recycled media at regular intervals. For example, if you write to a removable disc, don't expect it to retain your data for ever. Don't fill it up then put it away in the hope that it will last for ever. Instead, copy the contents to a different disc every year or two. This effectively "refreshes" the backup and goes a long way to ensuring that it lasts.

 

Do I follow my own advice? Not always, but I do keep copies of my most valuable files on at least two machines, plus a NAS unit. RAID formatting on the latter helps to minimise the dangers of failure of any one disc. In addition, copies of really important stuff is kept on at least one disc at another location, though, to be honest, I don't always keep that up to date and that is the real hole in my strategy.

 

The bottom line is one backup copy is never enough and, if you're serious about backup, one location is never enough.

 

Nick

[Baby Deltic]

I back up my documents, etc to a 2TB USB hard drive which I bought from Maplins. I also keep an image of the hard drive which I created with free software called Macrium Reflect. I use Macrium all the time in my job as a Service Engineer to take images of the hard drives on customer's machines. If the hard drive fails, I can put in a new drive and load the image from my backups.

[Oldddudders]

The bottom line is one backup copy is never enough and, if you're serious about backup, one location is never enough.

Deb has a very large collection of legit, paid-for film and tv DVDs. Having spent some time in hospital in recent years, she reasoned that copying each onto an external hard-drive would enable her to have a huge source of entertainment in one portable place, without having to lug dozens of DVDs about. The copying process isn't exactly instantaneous, but the 1TB drive coped fairly well - and then stopped working. Sigh. Nothing is perfect, and double back-ups must be a better idea.

[beast66606]

I currently have 25 x (mostly) 1 TB drives (4 x 2TB drives, and a couple of 320MB drives), roughly half of them are NAS, the rest are USB.

 

I take backups seriously but nothing is infallible.

[MJI]

Backups - mainly lots of DVDs but also the odd BluRay.

 

I have around 1TB of personal files to keep safe.

 

800MB on drive D and about 200MB on drive C.

 

I need another drive to copy things on to.

 

As to contents 1 hour of video is 14GB in DV format, and 25 year old video tapes are not guaranteed to last forever, I hooked up my old portable VCR to my DV camera and used that. People might say compress it but MPEG is a lossy format, DV is 5:1 compression but that is the standard all video editing packages work on.

 

D: contains the contents of about 15 Beta L500s, 5 or 6 MiniDV (still doing them) and all of my HDV.

[jbqfc]

thanks every one i will go for another USB hard drive

[Belsay Lad]

I use multiple redundancy (aka belt and braces)-

 

Back up to external hard drive x2. Keep one off site ie with a friend?

 

Ditto re DVD/CD backups

 

Ditto re memory sticks/cards

 

I also have a cheap 'netbook' which is never connected to the web but which holds virus scanned files.

 

But as has been mentioned before check your backups regularly, if in doubt back up again.

 

Having said that I have files on 3.5 floppies (from computer pre-history!), CD's burned around 10 years ago, ZIP disks etc. all of which can still be read...

 

Maybe I have just been lucky?

[Guest Natalie Graham]

Backing up is something I always intend to do up to the point where the hard-drive dies and then I don't have to bother any more.

[Adrian]

All good advice - however I think there is one thing missing so far.

 

TEST your backup. Which ever system you opt for, once up and running then move a file to a temporary area and make sure that you can recall the original file from backup. I've seen it a few times where the so called "backup" was unreadable.

[beast66606]

In fact, all media, including magnetic discs, eventually suffer from drop outs and other retrieval errors. The only reliable way to limit problems in the long term is to copy your backups to new/recycled media at regular intervals. For example, if you write to a removable disc, don't expect it to retain your data for ever. Don't fill it up then put it away in the hope that it will last for ever. Instead, copy the contents to a different disc every year or two. This effectively "refreshes" the backup and goes a long way to ensuring that it lasts.

 

All good advice - however I think there is one thing missing so far.

 

TEST your backup. Which ever system you opt for, once up and running then move a file to a temporary area and make sure that you can recall the original file from backup. I've seen it a few times where the so called "backup" was unreadable.

 

 

To be pedantic just reading the file is not good enough, you need to fully test it, so if it's an image, does it open and view correctly ? If it's a database, does it open and contain the data, etc. etc.

 

My previous job involved writing / supporting hospital (computer) systems (for nearly 25 years), I've seen it all when it comes to backups, from the ridiculous to the sublime.

[30801]

To be pedantic just reading the file is not good enough, you need to fully test it, so if it's an image, does it open and view correctly ? If it's a database, does it open and contain the data, etc. etc.

You can't possibly eyeball all your files

Keeping a hash of the original is the way to verify things. If you're using backup software it should hopefully be doing that for you...

[Oldddudders]

Backing up is something I always intend to do up to the point where the hard-drive dies and then I don't have to bother any more.

I had a PC collapse in a heap a couple of years back, sans recent backup. Took it to the local PC clinic, who advised after a week or so that the PC was indeed dead (motherboard or some such) - but they could extract the hard drive with data. So for 50 euros I got my hard drive in a proper alu case with USB connection and all data intact.