BACKING-UP YOUR PC INFORMATION

[sriddle1]

Well, Learned a hard lesson yesterday :smiley_aafz:............I was on another site, configured much like Tractor-By-Net, posted a simple PDF File and WHAM-MOE ..........My Lenovo Hardware Monitoring Software give me an alert "Repairing Hard Drive"....O'Boy....and then, can't logon..... Long story short, lost my entire 2016 User Folder that contains, Outlook Emails, Outlook Contacts/Address Book, Internet Explorer Favorites, Pictures, Day-to-Day Documents, etc. I quickly purchased one of those data recovery products and was only able to and retrieved 1/10th the information. :thumbdown:

The only Saving Grace in this debacle, I keep my individual folders named by year, i.e. 2016 followed by the subject e.g., "2016 - Tractorbynet". Each year in late December I burn those folders to (3) individual DVDs, two for the house and one for the Safety Deposit Box just-in-case. As someone who has worked in the IT Industry I should have set-up a routine to back-up that User Folder Directory say every 4 weeks or so, just didn't get to it since purchasing a new PC in January :irked: and now I've lost over 300 Pictures of Family & Friends + countless emails, outlook contacts, documents and the list goes on, not a good thing.

So as you read this, think about all the information you have on your PC that makes our day-to-day lives simpler then think about the steps you're taking just-in-case your hard drive fails..............

 

[/pine]

If the drive still spins and has not been formatted there is still a chance (may be slight) to recover data that software alone may not be able to recover...Have you tried accessing the drive via another system?

 

[dickfoster]

Well, Learned a hard lesson yesterday :smiley_aafz:............I was on another site, configured much like Tractor-By-Net, posted a simple PDF File and WHAM-MOE ..........My Lenovo Hardware Monitoring Software give me an alert "Repairing Hard Drive"....O'Boy....and then, can't logon..... Long story short, lost my entire 2016 User Folder that contains, Outlook Emails, Outlook Contacts/Address Book, Internet Explorer Favorites, Pictures, Day-to-Day Documents, etc. I quickly purchased one of those data recovery products and was only able to and retrieved 1/10th the information. :thumbdown:

The only Saving Grace in this debacle, I keep my individual folders named by year, i.e. 2016 followed by the subject e.g., "2016 - Tractorbynet". Each year in late December I burn those folders to (3) individual DVDs, two for the house and one for the Safety Deposit Box just-in-case. As someone who has worked in the IT Industry I should have set-up a routine to back-up that User Folder Directory say every 4 weeks or so, just didn't get to it since purchasing a new PC in January :irked: and now I've lost over 300 Pictures of Family & Friends + countless emails, outlook contacts, documents and the list goes on, not a good thing.

So as you read this, think about all the information you have on your PC that makes our day-to-day lives simpler then think about the steps you're taking just-in-case your hard drive fails..............

With external USB drives in the terabyte capacity costing so little these days, that's the way I go. I keep what's important to me backed up on it and it only takes a few moments of my time. Just start copying and walk away till it's done. Things like my iTunes library are several gigabytes but it is all backed up and organized just like it is on my network server.

 

[sriddle1]

If the drive still spins and has not been formatted there is still a chance (may be slight) to recover data that software alone may not be able to recover...Have you tried accessing the drive via another system?

/pine,

As mentioned I have an IT Background (doesn't really mean anything), as soon as you do a System Recover, which I had to do getting me to the point I could log-in, some of the sectors are written-over. Since the Lenovo Hardware Recovery also added to the complexity before I could take any action, it too tried to repair the sector. Long story short, I'm back up and running however even with the data recovery tool, only a small portion was recovered and so it goes. Again, my fault for not doing incremental back-ups.

 

[sriddle1]

dickfoster, U're So Right !! I have a an 8 pack of Scandisk Thumb-drives sitting in my study desk, I shoulda, woulda, coulda used (2) of them by doing a leap-frog every other month but as they say I'ma, notta, sooo smartaa............ NOTE TO SELF, FREQUENT BACK-UPS

 

[rekees4300]

Well, Learned a hard lesson yesterday

Nowadays hard drives are so reliable most people don't even think about doing any backups. Have you heard of an open source program called FreeFileSync? It's not suitable for backing up an entire hard drive (recommend Macrium Reflect for that) but it's an excellent program for backing up a folder(s). It uses syncing logic (only copies files that have changed since last sync) so it's much faster than copying all files. Like you, I have a primary data folder that contains 32,000 files. FreeFileSync can sync it to a backup folder on an external hard drive in 15 seconds!

 

[Clay45]

Love my Western Digital passport ultra external HD with WD Smartware. But I've performed full restores in my life more than once and you clean up a bunch each time because you eliminate so much excess junk. Sometimes you lose data and its just gone. Spent thousands attempting to have damaged drives data salvaged to no avail. Its not perfect but a good backup is still better than nothing.

 

[rox]

Well, Learned a hard lesson yesterday :smiley_aafz:............I was on another site, configured much like Tractor-By-Net, posted a simple PDF File and WHAM-MOE ..........My Lenovo Hardware Monitoring Software give me an alert "Repairing Hard Drive"....O'Boy....and then, can't logon..... Long story short, lost my entire 2016 User Folder that contains, Outlook Emails, Outlook Contacts/Address Book, Internet Explorer Favorites, Pictures, Day-to-Day Documents, etc. I quickly purchased one of those data recovery products and was only able to and retrieved 1/10th the information. :thumbdown:

The only Saving Grace in this debacle, I keep my individual folders named by year, i.e. 2016 followed by the subject e.g., "2016 - Tractorbynet". Each year in late December I burn those folders to (3) individual DVDs, two for the house and one for the Safety Deposit Box just-in-case. As someone who has worked in the IT Industry I should have set-up a routine to back-up that User Folder Directory say every 4 weeks or so, just didn't get to it since purchasing a new PC in January :irked: and now I've lost over 300 Pictures of Family & Friends + countless emails, outlook contacts, documents and the list goes on, not a good thing.

So as you read this, think about all the information you have on your PC that makes our day-to-day lives simpler then think about the steps you're taking just-in-case your hard drive fails..............

I feel for you stridle1, I really do. Several years ago I lost all my e-mails. I was so frantic, but then after a while I just got used to it and they all got built back up again. I to have an external hard drive via a USB on a Mac and it just sits there and constantly does back up. I have a Windows Laptop that I use only for all my graphic files of all my olive oil labels and using a thumb drive I have copied them over to my Mac so they also get backed up. I don't change those graphic files very often but I have got probably a hundred of them and I sure wouldn't want to go back and create them from scratch.

I bought the Apple cloud storage thing for 99 cents a month but for some reason my Mac is not backing up to the cloud. One day I'll have to figure that out. That is the ultimate having the data automatically backed up to the cloud (which is a laymans term for a server). I never liked having my information out available stored off of my own computers, but I've decided that giving up my absolute privacy of only having my records accessible to me on my own equpment and putting it on the cloud is a smarter safer thing to do. Now if I could only get it to work, ha-ha-ha.

Check out Amazon, Amazon has a back up service. Best of luck to you. I know it hurts.

 

[MossRoad]

I have had very good luck with Stellar Phoenix recovery software in the past. Can't say how well it works now. Haven't had to use it in about 5 years. At my job, we had redundant RAID arrays at co-location facilities on top of tape backup. I have replaced literally hundreds of dead hard drives. They die.

At home, I keep everything important in a folder called "our stuff", then sub-folder'd under that. Every so often I back that up to an external hard drive and every so often I swap that external drive out with one from the safe d box. Even then, you can lose stuff.

As for photos, I NEVER keep photos in just one place EVER!!! I copy them from the device to the hard drive, then copy them to the external drive. Only after I have copies in two or more physical places, do I delete them from the camera, phone, etc... and NEVER use USB thumb drives for permanent storage.

Also, I NEVER MOVE FILES.... I always COPY FILES INSTEAD. Things have been known to go bad in a move, and your data is corrupted/lost, whereas a COPY doesn't risk the original file....

You think they would have thought of that in the future!!!!

 

[WM75Guy]

I use Office 365 for routine data files backup. The cost is $99/yr for 5 licenses. In addition to the current Office Suite Professional you get 1 GB of OneDrive cloud storage for each license. Data is stored on the local machine and uploaded to the OneDrive cloud every time you save a file. My desktop and laptop use the same OneDrive folder so they stay in sync. The minute I turn on my laptop and connect to the internet it syncs local files to the OneDrive files. If I save a file on the laptop it goes to OneDrive and then my desktop gets the new file as it is always on and connected to the internet. If I buy a new computer when I sign onto OneDrive it downloads all my files to the local drive. That does take a while depending on connect speed. Program files always get a new clean install, never from a backup.

I figure Microsoft has pretty tight security on OneDrive but anything is vulnerable . I like others do not like the idea of keeping sensitive data on a cloud server. I keep that on the local drive My Documents and back it up to a flash drive.

 

[cqaigy2]

For windows, i use Veeam Endpoint Backup. Free, but you still have to have media to backup to. Very nice bare metal restore and file/point in time restore too.

 

[newbury]

A few things to consider -
If you think your time or your data is valuable backup frequently to multiple sources. I've got 3.5" and 5" USB backup drives, I generally backup to one of them a month, alternating the backups. But being retired I don't generate much differences/extra data each month. A stable chair requires at least three legs. My stable data requires three copies. I once backed up a complete system and lost both the source hard drive and destination hard drive due to bad electronics. But I had a slightly older copy on a third.

Pictures (and anything REALLY important) are probably best backed up to media with holes in it versus something dependent on magnetics. Punch cards, CD's, DVD's, Blue-Ray etc. As long as they are good and don't delaminate.

Perhaps you are all doing it but -
A backup is a wish
A VERIFIED backup is a promise

Most good backup software does a verification but I've had many a user that went to retrieve something but they "backed" it up in a hurry, no verification, and it wasn't all there. But the initial backup had run quicker because they didn't verify.

 

[dmccarty]

I backup my home data on USB drives, an spare internal drive that replaces my BD/DVD play, and USB thumb drives. I even have some data on DVDs.

Every two years or so I buy a new external USB drive and back up to it so I have multiple drives with data. My backup problem is photos. I have thousands and my camera can use up to 75MB per image. It does not take long to consume quite a bit of disk pace.

I keep data is very specific directories so all I have to do is copy them to the whatever device I want. I happened to do some backups this weekend. :thumbsup: I have an extra drive that fits into my DVD/BD slot that I need to put into use. However I have to power down the system to put the new drive in so I have been procrastinating. This drive is 1 TB and the old one is 3/4 TB. They are cheap enough that I can backup to one of them, put the other one in the system, and put one in a drawer. I need to store one of these off site. I have some DVDs store offsite but I need to store some other stuff too...

Later,
Dan

 

[fordmantpw]

I use CrashPlan for my backups: Online Data Backup | Offsite, Onsite & Cloud | Crashplan

It's not free, but it is real-time, and I don't have to do anything to keep it working. I've got over 2TB of data backed up (family photos, videos, important documents, etc.) and it's nice to know it's all safe if anything happens to my machine(s).

PS: I'm in IT as well, and know the importance of routine backups.

 

[TemporaryKubotaOwnerMark]

With external USB drives in the terabyte capacity costing so little these days, that's the way I go. I keep what's important to me backed up on it and it only takes a few moments of my time. Just start copying and walk away till it's done. Things like my iTunes library are several gigabytes but it is all backed up and organized just like it is on my network server.

Yep.

And for system config info, use Clonezilla. When I build or buy a new computer, it gets cloned even before the first boot up. That way, I can restore the hard drive exactly as it was before first boot. All partitions, including the OEM restore partition.

Then I install all of my programs, set everything up the way I want it, but without any of my data on it, and clone it that way.

It's sort of like setting a restore point, but MUCH better, and it's stored away from the drive that is being cloned, so it won't be lost if the drive dies.

You can put the cloned image on any kind of external storage; USB, DVD, whatever.

 

[vvanders]

I use CrashPlan for my backups

It's not free, but it is real-time, and I don't have to do anything to keep it working. I've got over 2TB of data backed up (family photos, videos, important documents, etc.) and it's nice to know it's all safe if anything happens to my machine(s).

PS: I'm in IT as well, and know the importance of routine backups.

Crashplan, Carbonite, heck even Dropbox. Anything that you can just setup and don't have to do anything afterwards is the way to go.

Also ransomware is on the uptick these days, just as important if not moreso. Just today another 0-day was disclosed in flash and is being actively exploited.

 

[MossRoad]

Yep.

And for system config info, use Clonezilla. When I build or buy a new computer, it gets cloned even before the first boot up. That way, I can restore the hard drive exactly as it was before first boot. All partitions, including the OEM restore partition.

Then I install all of my programs, set everything up the way I want it, but without any of my data on it, and clone it that way.

It's sort of like setting a restore point, but MUCH better, and it's stored away from the drive that is being cloned, so it won't be lost if the drive dies.

You can put the cloned image on any kind of external storage; USB, DVD, whatever.

And another benefit of that is that many times, if a PC becomes infected with malware, virus, etc... the restore points are often targeted as well. So when you do a restore, you end up restoring the problem.

 

[sdef]

Lots of good comments. I am also in IT and really want my data backed up. Can't afford to lose all of the ammunition hand loading recipes I have developed with chronograph data along with legal documents, etc.. My strategy for years has been to direct all data to a separate internal drive- be that on a laptop or desktop PC. If a separate drive is not available, then to a separate folder. I call that drive/folder: DATA. On a regular basis I backup the data drive/folder to a NAS with auxiliary backup software, including the C:\USERS\xxx folders. And the NAS is backed up occasionally to a USB drive. Plus I do Windows backups occasionally of the entire system to make things easier in case of a catastrophic failure.

This process may seem excessive to some but all aspects have been used over the years due to various failures. Recently I had a NAS failure and was able to rely on the NAS data that was backed up to the USB drive.

Also with a NAS it is pretty easy to backup all computers on a schedule to the NAS, not to mention stream audio and video. I currently have two NASes, one a Synology and the other an inexpensive consumer model and would not be without at least one of these devices. During Black Friday sales I am looking to upgrade to a new Synology NAS due to new secure chat software being produced to run on the newer models.

 

[dickfoster]

Yep.

And for system config info, use Clonezilla. When I build or buy a new computer, it gets cloned even before the first boot up. That way, I can restore the hard drive exactly as it was before first boot. All partitions, including the OEM restore partition.

Then I install all of my programs, set everything up the way I want it, but without any of my data on it, and clone it that way.

It's sort of like setting a restore point, but MUCH better, and it's stored away from the drive that is being cloned, so it won't be lost if the drive dies.

You can put the cloned image on any kind of external storage; USB, DVD, whatever.

Good info.

 

[dickfoster]

Lots of good comments. I am also in IT and really want my data backed up. Can't afford to lose all of the ammunition hand loading recipes I have developed with chronograph data along with legal documents, etc.. My strategy for years has been to direct all data to a separate internal drive- be that on a laptop or desktop PC. If a separate drive is not available, then to a separate folder. I call that drive/folder: DATA. On a regular basis I backup the data drive/folder to a NAS with auxiliary backup software, including the C:\USERS\xxx folders. And the NAS is backed up occasionally to a USB drive. Plus I do Windows backups occasionally of the entire system to make things easier in case of a catastrophic failure.

This process may seem excessive to some but all aspects have been used over the years due to various failures. Recently I had a NAS failure and was able to rely on the NAS data that was backed up to the USB drive.

Also with a NAS it is pretty easy to backup all computers on a schedule to the NAS, not to mention stream audio and video. I currently have two NASes, one a Synology and the other an inexpensive consumer model and would not be without at least one of these devices. During Black Friday sales I am looking to upgrade to a new Synology NAS due to new secure chat software being produced to run on the newer models.

Basically what I do with the exception of the OS backup. I do just the data.