Backing up your computer data

vipra · Apr 2, 2006

There have been a few posts lately from people who lost data when their laptop crashed, or for some other reason. I just discovered Online Backup Services, and they're great for people like us who live on the road with a laptop and don't have a home computer to store data on. You just upload anything you want saved over the Internet to the storage company's computer, and it is stored permanently away from your vehicle, and you can access it anytime you want. You can store any kind of text, like Word and Excel documents, and also music, movies and digital pictures. I have an iPod but haven't bought much music or audiobooks because the only way I can back them up is to put them on CD, and I don't have room in my van for hundreds of CDs. Now I have a way to store them so they're always available.
If you search Yahoo or Google for 'online backup service' you'll get dozens of companies. Some have a 30-day free trial. Some let you give a password to friends so they can get into your account and see your documents and pictures. Some are only for businesses to use, so ignore those. Some charge extra if you want additional computers to use the same account. The price range is pretty wide, some companies are real expensive for no reason that I can see.
I put links below to the 2 companies I like best. The first one is best if you don't have much stuff (less than 500 MB) because they charge by the number of bytes you have stored. All the other companies charge a fixed price per month or year for a fixed # of bytes, for example $100/yr for 500 MBs. This company is also unique because any change you make to a document is automatically transferred instantly to their computer, so you don't have to tell your laptop to make the transfer. All the other companies either require you to make the transfer manually, or they schedule transfers to occur at a fixed time each day, which doesn't work for me because my laptop is off when I'm driving, and I never know when I'll be driving.

www.datadepositbox.com
www.flashbackup.com

Vipra

outwardbound 2 · Apr 2, 2006

And i'm sure they are all wonderful companies that have trusted employees and secure servers that will never be hacked into.
Personally i will not trust my data to anyone but me. Rule #1 never have anything on your computer that can not be replaced. Any important data can now days eazily be stored on a flash drive or cdrw.

greg334 · Apr 2, 2006

>And i'm sure they are all wonderful companies that have
>trusted employees and secure servers that will never be
>hacked into.
>Personally i will not trust my data to anyone but me. Rule
>#1 never have anything on your computer that can not be
>replaced. Any important data can now days eazily be stored
>on a flash drive or cdrw.

I second this especialy not to have anything on the computer you can't live without, but have to add that now a days there is something call recordable DVDs - even DVD rewritables - amazing. somewhat a good idea to use it with programs like Nero and others which will also back files up on to the DVD.

hedgehog · Apr 2, 2006

While on the road, or at home, we bu our daily data, encrypt the file, then email to our email account and store it there permanently.

It's much safer to have a copy off-site, and most ISPs allow you lots of storage space at no additional cost.

There are two (2) types of hardrives.
1) One that has crashed;
2) One that is going to crash.

Be safe

phatTweaker · Apr 2, 2006

For stuff to save at an online source I like to use Google's Gmail which is basically a free email service that has 2+ gigs of storage. I don't think it is open to the general public yet, but if anyone would like an invitation just lemme know.

My favorite way to back up important info is on DVD+R or RW. They are rated to hold 4.7GB, but in my experience it is closer to 3.8GB or so.
If your laptop is fairly modern, but didn't come with a DVD burner you can usually find one that will work on eBay. For desktop a PC you can get a top of the line DVD burner for $40 or less.

ATeam · Apr 2, 2006

Online data backup services are good for all the reasons vipra says. I prefer the flash memory stick method (described in other posts) because of the security issues others mentioned. It's great to see others sharing their ideas about data backup. It's a significant topic for all expediters.

phatTweaker · Apr 2, 2006

Flash memory sticks aren't a bad idea. One of the downsides though is the larger ones can get expensive.

Florida · Apr 4, 2006

I think Angelfire.com, Yahoo.com, and perhaps Geocities.com offer free web pages and file storage areas. Upload there, and mark your data as private - only you can read it; for that *MAGICAL* word "free".

The other less secure method is to join a group, or even CREATE YOUR OWN, on YAHOO or GOOGLE, and use that space to store your stuff (again, for free).

Go to Yahoo, create a user name, go to GROUPS, and CREATE one in a category. Mark it as private, memebers only, and don't invite members. Just use it for yourself. You can store about 10MB or so of files there for free. Pictures, spreadsheets, databases, anything.

As for the security aspect; I see it being bascially the same thing, with the excpetion that one you pay and the other is free. You are uploading your data to a source in control of other companies.

About the only exception I can think of is a SLA (service level agreement) which outlines in a sales contract the integrity of your information on file not being compromised or hacked into - with those pay services. Won't get that from the freebies.

Florida · Apr 4, 2006

>While on the road, or at home, we bu our daily data, encrypt
>the file, then email to our email account and store it there
>permanently.
>
>It's much safer to have a copy off-site, and most ISPs allow
>you lots of storage space at no additional cost.
>
>There are two (2) types of hardrives.
>1) One that has crashed;
>2) One that is going to crash.
>
>Be safe

Great Thought: ENCRYPTION.

And there is truth in your observation of fixed hard drives spinning around at 7200rpm and even 10,000 rpm (SATA). In the goold old days it was around 3200-3500rpm. The first thing that almost always wears out is the bearings that hold the disk. Once those wear and wobble, the disk won't spin true, the FAT table gets confused because it can't find the disk sectors where they are supposedly to be precisely (remember we are dealing with millionths of an inch tolerances), and there goes your info.

And if the bearings don't go, there are good chances of a hard disk crash from apower failure or surge. The failure isn't too bad, as the disk heads going into a self park mode, but when there is a power surge (which happened to me this morning), the head slams right back down on the surface of the platter with a smack; and adios disk sector along with the data it contained.

I'm not sure what I hate the worst, beating on computers to make them work, or wrenching greasy motors, tires and wheels, and those beloved asbestos brake linings ( I go back 30 years when they had that stuff everywhere).

greg334 · Apr 4, 2006

>I think Angelfire.com, Yahoo.com, and perhaps Geocities.com
>offer free web pages and file storage areas. Upload there,
>and mark your data as private - only you can read it; for
>that *MAGICAL* word "free".
>
>The other less secure method is to join a group, or even
>CREATE YOUR OWN, on YAHOO or GOOGLE, and use that space to
>store your stuff (again, for free).
>
>Go to Yahoo, create a user name, go to GROUPS, and CREATE
>one in a category. Mark it as private, memebers only, and
>don't invite members. Just use it for yourself. You can
>store about 10MB or so of files there for free. Pictures,
>spreadsheets, databases, anything.
>
>As for the security aspect; I see it being bascially the
>same thing, with the excpetion that one you pay and the
>other is free. You are uploading your data to a source in
>control of other companies.
>
>About the only exception I can think of is a SLA (service
>level agreement) which outlines in a sales contract the
>integrity of your information on file not being compromised
>or hacked into - with those pay services. Won't get that
>from the freebies.

You get what you pay for. No one mentioned that bandwidth avalible may make backups hard if not imposible. many think that they can back up the entire hard drive to the online service.

Turtle · Apr 5, 2006

Upstream bandwidth limitations will usually make backing up large amounts of data to an online service unusable. I use several methods to back my stuff up. Small data files, like Quicken data files or Word documents, I'll back up to flash memory - a memory stick or an SD card - every time I make a change to them. Once a week or so I'll upload these data files, as well as usually the entire My Documents folder, to my computer at home, which is set up with a secure FTP server. I also carry with me a 320GB external hard drive that I use to make redundant backups to, as well as Ghost images of my laptop's drive (partitioned into C and D drives). Ghost runs automatically every day, and keeps the most recent three backup images. When I go home I backup the external hard drive to another one just like it at the house. If I ever have to restore from a data file backup, nothing is ever more than 24 hours out of date.

Just last weekend my laptop's hard drive died a miserable death. It wasn't just the boot partition, either. The disk failed, click of death. Both partitions inaccessible. Ran by Best Buy and picked up a replacement drive, installed it in the parking lot in 5 minutes, and restored the Ghost partitions and was back in 100% working order within an hour. If you have a second hard drive, Norton Ghost or some other disk imaging utility is worth its weight in gold.

Florida · Apr 6, 2006

No need to back up the entire drive. Just the files containing your inuput data. Example: why backup the entire Microsoft OFFICE applications? No need to. Just reinstall from the CD/DVD. What is important to backup is those small data files which have personal and financial info; those are manageable over a bad link because they are usally small is size.

Same thing as far as the O.S. goes. Why back up the entire XP disk? Just reinstall from the CD.

I will make an adustment to this though; you have a valid point regarding bandwidth considerations. I thinking about that XP service pack 2, all 300 MEGA-bytes of it. Now that is an item I wouldn't try without at least a T-1 or CABLEmodem. Solution is easy for that though. Burn a copy of the latest hot fixes and service packs on disk; which should be good for a few months (knowing Microsoft). Chances are good that an entire HUGE massive service pack won't be released again for XP; they'll go straight to LongHorn/Vista. All you'll get for the remaining life of XP is little hotfixes and small patches - and even then, those aren't of dire need to set up and run the operating system or the applications from disk - just handy to have to keep your machine updated.

If you have bought XP-SP2 then you already have 95% of what you need to reinstall your pc back to its original condition. Just add in a few of those patches and fixes and your data files and back to speed.

Not sure I would *TRUST* a third party vendor with my personal data, the way that systems are getting hacked into these days. Good example of this is not to trust the internet to do any online banking or any internet applications which disclose your SSN# and DOB, even through SSL encryption. Think you're safe? It's your and my bank and credit hard companies which are being ransacked and identities stolen by the millions.