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external hard drive backups
wraith808:
The most important thing is to back up your data...
But the pain and hassle and stress that you can avoid by having a full drive image backup is immense.
If you have a recent full drive image and you encounter a complete hd crash or infection, you can be back up and running within 15 minutes of buying a new hard drive.
Without it you are looking at days of reinstalling windows and your apps and then dealing with discovering all the settings and files you forgot to back up.
I think drive images are an essential part of saving your sanity when things go wrong.
-mouser (July 09, 2017, 09:28 PM)
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I used to think that. Then when it happened, there was a lot of work, because I took the opportunity to do an upgrade and at the time you couldn't restore to a different sized partition (not sure if it's still the same). And it didn't take me that long to get back up and running, and I got rid of a lot of dross I'd accumulated over the years. Then I mounted my old image- and realized I didn't really need anything. I looked through, sure that I hadn't been keeping a backup of the drive for nothing, and realized I had.
Now I keep my programs (for the most part) on a different drive than my data. And I just back up my data drive. And you have a lot more options with just your data to back up.
Is cloud storage safe to use?
-techidave (July 09, 2017, 09:44 AM)
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Is storing your files on other people's computers safe to use?
-Tuxman (July 10, 2017, 05:46 AM)
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Depends on whose computer you're storing them on. This is a spurious argument facilitated by people as it distills it down to anyone's computer with any security in place, and it's just wrong.
Tuxman:
Depends on whose computer you're storing them on.
-wraith808 (July 10, 2017, 08:08 AM)
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Do you only entrust your personal files to people whose lies are not too obvious?
mouser:
and I got rid of a lot of dross I'd accumulated over the years.
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That is definitely a thing.. It can be extremely beneficial to occasionally start from scratch and install the programs you use on a new clean OS, etc. But I'd hate to be forced into that and not have the ability to go retrieve the settings or documents from something I forgot wasn't being backed up. I stand by my position that full drive images are so easy to do these days, and backup drive space so abundant, that it is foolish not to make occasional full image backups.
at the time you couldn't restore to a different sized partition (not sure if it's still the same).
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a modern drive imaging tool like Macrium is happy to restore onto partitions and drives of different sizes, and you can always resize later.
MilesAhead:
@techidave do you have USB 3.x or another fast interface on the machine? USB 3.0 docking stations have become very cheap recently. If you already have USB 3.0 on the machine you could use the docking station with bare 3.5" HD Sata III 1TB or larger for very reasonable money. Then you could use a simple sync program to copy files from the internal HD or SSD to the WD drive in the dock. I used to get WD Black 1 TB drives for about $84. I think they are even cheaper now.
For backing up my C: partition I use Macrium Reflect. But I tried making an image for data files one time and the image produced was actually larger than the input data. Also it was slow because it was trying to compress the data. If you have a dependable file by file sync program it can be much faster as it only copies changed files. As Mouser suggested, don't keep your drive in the dock all the time. I used a small plastic stack of drawers I got for $8 at Walmart that held 6 WD drives. I put the drive in an anti-static bag then slid it in the drawer. Not a fireproof solution but if you combine it with Cloud backup you should be ok for a single machine.
It may be something to consider for local quick access backup in addition to the suggestions made by other posters in this thread. Another cool thing you can do with a USB 3.0 docking station is slide an SSD into it. If you play around with heavy file manipulation stuff like video muxing and put source and destination on the SSD you can get amazing throughput due to the nearly instant random access speeds. IOW, if you get a USB 3.0 dock you may be able to have fun with it in addition to the backup chores. Last time I priced them they were only around $20. What might run a bit more is if you have to add a USB 3.0 expansion card to your machine. For just backup I did not see any great speed increase with the SSD as the sequential write speed of the SSD I had was not all that much faster than a WD Black Sata III "spinner." But as I noted the random access times of even a cheapie Kingston SSD are insane. Just another angle to consider. :)
Shades:
Depends on whose computer you're storing them on. This is a spurious argument facilitated by people as it distills it down to anyone's computer with any security in place, and it's just wrong.
-wraith808 (July 10, 2017, 08:08 AM)
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It is not completely wrong. Besides, what type of data are you backing up and is it possible to get into legal trouble? For example: you work from home and store by accident or as an ad-hoc transfer solution, store your work on your cloud account. In my case, I would get into serious legal trouble, even for the briefest of time that work would be on any server other my own or at the customer. You better make sure something similar doesn't apply to your personal situation when you (accidentally) mix work/private stuff using any cloud solution.
Which level of security you cloud solution provides is not the issue or, for that matter, the legal team they employ to keep the data you store on their servers safe. Legal ramifications of simply "misplacing files" could be much, much more problematic than any cloud solution is worth.
SpoilerOf course, cloud file storage solutions are no option for me, because of the unreliable power grid and as a consequence spotty internet connection (sub-station generators running out of fuel has happened several times already), make the cloud a very crappy solution here in PY. And there is latency to consider when the cloud is accessible. In the main cities of PY this is managed much better, I have no doubt, but that is not where I live.
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