Backup strategy

[bgstcola]

I just bought a new computer and I'm wondering what would be the best way to secure my data. I think I will buy a Crashplan subscription, but I also bought a second hd to make manual backups.

Is there any option better than Crashplan for the same money?

Is it overkill to make backups to the second hd?

What do you guys do?

Thanks

 

[Zap]

If it is important data, it needs multiple copies. How many copies depends on how important it is and how paranoid you are. Having backups is more important than how you back up. How you back up really depends on cost and convenience.

Backing up to the second HDD in a system will save you if your primary HDD dies. It won't save you if something happens that wipes data (virus, glitch, evil ex-girlfriend, etc.). Doing backups on an external HDD that is then disconnected is another step beyond that, but of course if your house burns down you lose everything. You can keep the external drive in a bank safe deposit box for that added security of an off-site backup. Or, pay monthly for a service if you don't have too much data to back up.

Basically think of a way that is affordable for you as well as easy enough that you will do it on a regular basis.

 

[bgstcola]

But is it overkill with both a monthly service (Crashplan) and a manual backup to a second hd?

 

[alaricljs]

In the world of backups, nothing is overkill if you can justify the price of doing it. My wife considers our family photos to be extremely important. Here's the flow of data:

Off the SD cards and onto an external (normally disconnected) HDD. This is the drive I do all my manipulation and cataloging on. This immediately gets duplicated to a mirrored pair of drives in my server in the basement. Those drives serve the photos to anyone in the house that wants to view them and this is set read-only. That mirrored pair gets backed up to an on-line disk in the same server. My mother-in-law has a copy that we routinely refresh, my parents also have a copy that's not so routinely refreshed since it's in NC.

I've never lost a single one of these disks and have never accidentally wiped any of the photos and I *still* do all of this.

 

[ncalipari]

But is it overkill with both a monthly service (Crashplan) and a manual backup to a second hd?

even gmail and amazon failed in the past, and I think they are more reliable than crashplan.

If you don't need backups from multiple machines, I would ditch crashplan, buy an hot swap bay and use HDDs as cartridges.


Buy a 60$ 2 TB disk and use it as backup until it's full. Then take the disk and place it somewhere safe.

Buy another disk and start all over again 😉

Much cheaper.

 

[capeconsultant]

If it is important data, it needs multiple copies. How many copies depends on how important it is and how paranoid you are. Having backups is more important than how you back up. How you back up really depends on cost and convenience.

Backing up to the second HDD in a system will save you if your primary HDD dies. It won't save you if something happens that wipes data (virus, glitch, evil ex-girlfriend, etc.). Doing backups on an external HDD that is then disconnected is another step beyond that, but of course if your house burns down you lose everything. You can keep the external drive in a bank safe deposit box for that added security of an off-site backup. Or, pay monthly for a service if you don't have too much data to back up.

Basically think of a way that is affordable for you as well as easy enough that you will do it on a regular basis.

Very nicely said. Backup is super important these days. I myself just had a SSD totally fail. All stuff gone in an instant. Thank God for backups!