How do you backup everything?

[BlueLightning]

So lets say an hdd breaks..what do you do to have it all backed up? And do you lose windows if it was your boot drive?

[Theminecraftaddict555]

have an external hdd to back up all of your important files....also use crystaldiskinfo to see if your hdd is dying, if it is backup your important stuff immediately...Yes chances are you will lose windows if it dies, however you should have no problem reactivating it when re-formatting windows 

 

Also any programs installed on that hard drive will need to be reinstalled after you re-format the harddrive again

[imreloadin]

2 minutes ago, BlueLightning said:

So lets say an hdd breaks..what do you do to have it all backed up? And do you lose windows if it was your boot drive?

I only backup my important files to an external HDD to save space. If I ever lose my boot drive due to hardware failure I just get a new drive and do a fresh install of Windows because it most likely needs it.

[FatPenguin]

I like to use a USB hard drive and put all my important files on there. Also if I need to go somewhere that has a computer I can just bring along my USB HDD and have all my important files there also.

[HPWebcamAble]

I have CrashPlan (free) backing up my libraries and a few other locations to my external 2 TB HDD, works very well in the background

[Lurick]

I have windows do a backup image to my server, MirrorFolder mirror my files, and crashplan mirror my files as well. The server runs in RAID 10 and from there it backs up to the CrashPlan servers offsite.

[Qi_Forever]

 

You storage solution will depend on how important your data is.

 

I been so unlucky over the years using Hard Disk Drives.  I think I have bought some very poor drives in the past and have had very mixed results when burning CD/DVD's in the past, (it too much work) as well. Even tried an external USB-HDD if I remember correct that failed eventually. 

 

My life and pocket was saved many years ago when I bought 120Gb Revodrive for OS and games.  120Gb was enough for a while. Would have about 4-5 large games installed at one time, soon I realised it was not big enough. Plus back-up HDD's  were still inconsistent.

 

Now I use a fast, cheap and reliable Samsung evo 850 500Gb SSD as boot and game drive.  Then a 1TB Western Digital HDD for back-up.  (I put most large unimportant files like MP3's, program installers, video files and game installers.  Stuff I would not be to bothered about loosing.

 

I do keep all the really important stuff like photos, documents, etc on USB sticks.  I find them rock-solid for long term storage.  Very small and can be kept in an extremely safe place (however I did loose one once).  It is not the fastest storage in the world nor the safest. They have served me well in the past and present.

 

If your running a business I'm guessing remote storage or on-line storage maybe the way to go incase of fire/disasters/ acts of god or theft.

 

Most modern systems today use a boot SSD and HDD for back up files.  Times are changing and peoples need differ.

 

 

 

 

[Captain_WD]

14 hours ago, BlueLightning said:

~snip~

Hello there

 

My two cents on this: having backups of everything and making sure they are secure is basically having exact and as current as you can copies of all your data on multiple locations physically detached from one another. There are a few ways to make backups: with a third-party tool, with tools from the target place or from the OS itself. You can have it compressed as an image file or as identical copy on a local or a network drive. 

 

Regarding the OS, downloading a copy of the OS is free and easy but the important part is keeping your OS key. 

Assuming you can boot your computer without any problems, you can easily create a simple VBscript that will read the value out of the registry and then translate it into the format that you need for reinstalling. Copy and paste the following into a Notepad window:

 

Set WshShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
MsgBox ConvertToKey(WshShell.RegRead("HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\DigitalProductId"))

Function ConvertToKey(Key)
Const KeyOffset = 52
i = 28
Chars = "BCDFGHJKMPQRTVWXY2346789"
Do
Cur = 0
x = 14
Do
Cur = Cur * 256
Cur = Key(x + KeyOffset) + Cur
Key(x + KeyOffset) = (Cur \ 24) And 255
Cur = Cur Mod 24
x = x -1
Loop While x >= 0
i = i -1
KeyOutput = Mid(Chars, Cur + 1, 1) & KeyOutput
If (((29 - i) Mod 6) = 0) And (i <> -1) Then
i = i -1
KeyOutput = "-" & KeyOutput
End If
Loop While i >= 0
ConvertToKey = KeyOutput
End Function

 

You’ll need to use File -> Save As, change the “Save as type” to “All Files” and then name it productkey.vbs or something similar ending with the vbs extension. Once you’ve saved it, you can just double-click and the popup window will show you your product key. Protip: If you use CTRL + C when the popup window is active, it will copy the contents of the window to the clipboard, and then you can paste it into Notepad or somewhere else. 

 

If you provide a bit more details we might offer better and more detailed solutions for you.

 

Captain_WD.

[KuJoe]

I get asked this a lot so I made this diagram (I also love showing it off because it gives people ideas on how they can improve their backup scheme):

 

I updated this about a month ago when I added two servers in different countries for better geographic redundancy. This also does not include the full system backups I perform.