Backup Experiences - How do you backup your data?

[Murphistic]

Hello,

finally I made up some free space on one of my external hard drives (actually moved or delete all of its contents) and I'm in the middle of copying all my important stuff from my notebook to it (photos, my custom videos and projects). But it doesn't feel the right way. All folders have the same modification date which messes with my OCD and later I should manually copy new data.

 

I also checked Windows File History, but it didn't start with the backup instantly (GUI said it's working, but the external HDD wasn't flashing). My favourite was rdiff-backup so far, but it says Windows support is experimental and I'm afraid of errors.

 

I think, that I'll stick to just making full copies of my directory structure once a while, but I'm curious which application should I check?

[vanished]

you should look into using the robocopy command, especially if you plan to ever take a second backup

[Spork829]

I literally just copy a single folder with everything worth backing up onto an external drive. I've used Acronis before, and it seems to work very well for scheduled backups to another drive, and I think is even able to make a bootable copy of Windows and all of your stuff on another drive, so if a drive dies you can plug the other one in and be right where you were a day ago at most. It's not cheap though.

[Murphistic]

3 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

you should look into using the robocopy command, especially if you plan to ever take a second backup

Thank you! This looks awesome and it seems to have all what I need. It can also copy directory timestamps.

 

Just for somebody else, here is the link to save a search  : https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc733145(v=ws.11).aspx

[vanished]

2 minutes ago, Murphistic said:

Thank you! This looks awesome and it seems to have all what I need. It can also copy directory timestamps.

 

Just for somebody else, here is the link to save a search  : https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc733145(v=ws.11).aspx

And if anyone here is using Linux, the equivalent is called rsync

[paddy-stone]

I download and generally when I am at home work off the NAS drive to save copying too many times... and I then backup that data to an external hard drive (Mirror/moved links) and the same to another NAS essentially (Wd mycloud). The first NAS is the workhorse that lets people stream media from etc and is in general use 24/7, I have it make snapshots every hour, the second NAS gets backed up to once a day in case of the first NAS failing... and the external hard drive gets backed up maybe once a week. You can't plan for every eventuality, but the above for me lets me sleep a bit easier at least, lol. The backups are done using freesync, very handy tool TBH especially as it also works across networks, so you can set it and forget it if you want.

[Murphistic]

Thank you for all the replies!

SyncToy is an application I've never heard about before, so I'm glad you mentioned it.

For Acronis, I forgot, that approx. 5 years ago I used it to clone my HDD to a new one, but I think it was some bundled licence with the new hard drive and it had restricted functionality.

40 minutes ago, paddy-stone said:

The backups are done using freesync

It may be a dumb question, but I only found http://www.freefilesync.org/ .Is it the same? However, it looks really nice.

 

It seems that I'll just use robocopy. It does what I need (so far) and I really like that it's bundled with Windows. But your scenarios with NAS makes me wish for a centralized solution .

[paddy-stone]

59 minutes ago, Murphistic said:

Thank you for all the replies!

SyncToy is an application I've never heard about before, so I'm glad you mentioned it.

For Acronis, I forgot, that approx. 5 years ago I used it to clone my HDD to a new one, but I think it was some bundled licence with the new hard drive and it had restricted functionality.

It may be a dumb question, but I only found http://www.freefilesync.org/ .Is it the same? However, it looks really nice.

 

It seems that I'll just use robocopy. It does what I need (so far) and I really like that it's bundled with Windows. But your scenarios with NAS makes me wish for a centralized solution .

Yes, sorry for that, it is freefilesync... Please forgive my memory lapse there, lol. You can use it automated and at will, pretty fast too, normally uses 2 threads if I remember correctly 

[vanished]

1 minute ago, paddy-stone said:

Yes, sorry for that, it is freefilesync... Please forgive my memory lapse there, lol. You can use it automated and at will, pretty fast too, normally uses 2 threads if I remember correctly 

Yes, FreeSync is for monitors as I'm sure you know

[AlTech]

9 hours ago, Murphistic said:

Hello,

finally I made up some free space on one of my external hard drives (actually moved or delete all of its contents) and I'm in the middle of copying all my important stuff from my notebook to it (photos, my custom videos and projects). But it doesn't feel the right way. All folders have the same modification date which messes with my OCD and later I should manually copy new data.

 

I also checked Windows File History, but it didn't start with the backup instantly (GUI said it's working, but the external HDD wasn't flashing). My favourite was rdiff-backup so far, but it says Windows support is experimental and I'm afraid of errors.

 

I think, that I'll stick to just making full copies of my directory structure once a while, but I'm curious which application should I check?

Using OneDrive. All my data is hosted there and I can access it on any device. And it's backed up.

 

I've got 1TB of OneDrive storage so I may as well put it to good use.

[paddy-stone]

15 hours ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

Yes, FreeSync is for monitors as I'm sure you know

Yeah, I had a busy day and was dead on my feet last night.. I'm suprised I could type or even think coherently at all

 

[paddy-stone]

7 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

Using OneDrive. All my data is hosted there and I can access it on any device. And it's backed up.

 

I've got 1TB of OneDrive storage so I may as well put it to good use.

I'm probably being paranoid, but I really don't trust microsoft with my data anymore. Not that I ever did really, but they have made some really messed up calls with regards to users privacy etc recently.

[AlTech]

15 minutes ago, paddy-stone said:

I'm probably being paranoid, but I really don't trust microsoft with my data anymore. Not that I ever did really, but they have made some really messed up calls with regards to users privacy etc recently.

Actually their privacy policy is better than Google's. And you are being paranoid. Every company collects data from you.

[paddy-stone]

1 hour ago, paddy-stone said:

I really don't trust microsoft

 

1 hour ago, AluminiumTech said:

Actually their privacy policy is better than Google's. And you are being paranoid. Every company collects data from you.

Yeah, with regards to privacy I don't "trust" any company, they are all out for profit from whichever means they can generally. What I meant was I am picky about what kind of data I host online and that's with ANY cloud based storage. I prefer to keep certain data in my hands alone and in secure backup locations. That's not paranoid by the way, if you have clients and you didn't treat their data as securely as you would your midget porn collection then that's dumb IMO.

[AlTech]

2 minutes ago, paddy-stone said:

 

Yeah, with regards to privacy I don't "trust" any company, they are all out for profit from whichever means they can generally. What I meant was I am picky about what kind of data I host online and that's with ANY cloud based storage. I prefer to keep certain data in my hands alone and in secure backup locations. That's not paranoid by the way, if you have clients and you didn't treat their data as securely as you would your midget porn collection then that's dumb IMO.

Well I don't have a porn collection so I wouldn't know.

 

And I trust Microsoft with personal things but not Google. Anything you give them, they own.

[paddy-stone]

1 hour ago, AluminiumTech said:

Well I don't have a porn collection so I wouldn't know.

 

And I trust Microsoft with personal things but not Google. Anything you give them, they own.

Yeah, I agree with you to some degree.. I'm not pro google or microsoft, I'm just saying don't trust them too much with any info you would like to keep private or not have backed up elsewhere... some data is priceless whether it be morally,privacy or sentimentality based. I was just using midget porn as an example of something most people might be ashamed to reveal they had a preference for. I really don't care in regards to people knowing where I am, I'm really not that interesting, LOL - I do however have a problem with government bodies knowing and probably cataloguing people's movements unless they have good reason to do so. I don't mind someone targeting me with ads due to my location etc as someone else mentioned any passerby in the street would know. I think we kind of got the wrong end of the stick with each other to some degree, I was just saying don't trust too much to any company really, keep some stuff safe if it's irreplaceable ie don't keep everything only in an online storage in case their servers get messed up or it's inaccessable when you need it.