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New to making data backups, do I have this right?
el_vicio
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Hi!
So, I'm trying to be smart and back up my data, since SSDs, as I understand it, don't give you much of a warning before they go out, and it's generally good practice. So I got 2 external drives (redundancy). The only question is: what is the most efficient way to actually do it?
I could obviously just copy the folders over, and click "don't overwrite" every subsequent time, but There Must Be A Better Way.
Windows 10 has a backup function, but I read a few articles claiming that it can be unreliable, so I might be better off doing it the old-fashioned way described above? I don't need to clone my entire drive, it's "just" documents, media, etc
So, I'm trying to be smart and back up my data, since SSDs, as I understand it, don't give you much of a warning before they go out, and it's generally good practice. So I got 2 external drives (redundancy). The only question is: what is the most efficient way to actually do it?
I could obviously just copy the folders over, and click "don't overwrite" every subsequent time, but There Must Be A Better Way.
Windows 10 has a backup function, but I read a few articles claiming that it can be unreliable, so I might be better off doing it the old-fashioned way described above? I don't need to clone my entire drive, it's "just" documents, media, etc
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On the topic of redundancy: having two drives is good, but not really necessary. The more important thing is to have a backup offsite like Google Drive, OneDrive, Carbonite, or whatever your backup service of choice is. The external HDD is great, but it won't save your data if your house burns down.
https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197970666737/
https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197970666737/
thanks for the replies!
You do get 1TB of storage on OneDrive if you have an active Office subscription though, so there's that.
https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197970666737/
OneDrive is not backup, it's file synchronization. OneDrive for Business has some additional bulk restore features that approach a normal backup solution, but those are still limited to 30 days. But if you're using the regular version of OneDrive, versioning won't cover all possibilities or use cases and you'd still want a proper backup solution on top of it. It's fine for reverting changes to single files or known recent deletions but bad for bulk operations or long term storage or recovery.
If you're manually uploading to OneDrive it's no different than anything else. The versioning is fine but it didn't sound like that's what OP was looking for.
https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197970666737/
I'm not a fan of BackBlaze for the moment because it's an exclusion-only back-up program vs. a select-what-folder-you-want back-up program, so it will basically back-up any telematics or other perma-temporary-generated-shit-Microsoft-creates-to-track-you in Windows 10.
If you're just going to use the external drives. Write a batch script, or setup a scheduled task to do the copy for you with some parameters.
The downside to all of these solutions is that none of them actually tell you if the data you've backed up has been corrupted or not. If you want to be super proactive about it; make some md5 sums for every file you back-up, and have the batch script check for a previous md5 of the file, if the file has the same meta-data and size (i.e., it hasn't been touched since the last back-up). That way you will get a warning when bits have rotted in the latest back-up copy, so you can do a manual restore of any corrupted files.
There are even more advanced things to do if you wanted to be paranoid about your files, but honestly the easier thing to do at that point is not do a back-up but have your files live on a Dropbox/Google Drive/OneDrive/iCloud share (within an encrypted container of course).
I just set my father in law up on it with his new machine.
I personally use Spideroak but that will be changing next year because their software is just god awful. I need to find a multi-TB backup that has a good software suite that supports networked drives (mapped/mounted drives).
I also say this everytime this topic comes up so I apologize in advance if it sounds dickish.
You WILL NOT care that google or whomever didn't have your private super secret data when you lose it in a fire or flood. You would give anything to anyone to get those family photo's and documents and voicemails from deceased loved ones.
It's absolutely NOT a backup if you keep an external drive or pile of DVD's next to the computer with the data.
At a MINIMUM you should have an offsite backup of "don't lose" files with a friend or other family member if you don't trust the "cloud".
Myself, I trust EvilCorp to take better care of my data than my sister.
Again, sorry for how that sounds but I worked for years at a computer store dealing with crying people who've lost everything and have even lost irreplaceable photo's myself. The pain of that trumps virtually everything else.
Honestly, for $60USD/year to back up literally your entire computer, backblaze is a really good deal. You just set it and forget it, and never have to think about it again.
also, Google and Microsoft collect the same kind of data, and do a lot of the same things with it. If someone is afraid of putting data into google's servers, you should be just as afraid of putting it into Microsoft's. The only reason people freak out more about Google is because, generally, Google just already has a larger base of that data because their services are a billion times more popular than microsoft's.
It was dead easy to setup and the configuration options for your backups are great.
Pricing is pretty standard and I estimate I'll save about 30% from spideroak since 99% of my use case is backup and not retrieval.
this will sound dumb
but by encrypted container, do you mean something like a simple 7zip with a decent password that I then back up?
(and then hope that I never forget a weird character string)
As a very basic encryption, yes, but it's incredibly manual (so prone to human error in process, "Crap, did I decrypt/access that zip file on the remote device, so now there are unencrypted temporary copies on the remote server?", or "Crap, I forgot to encrypt that last archive before uploading.")
No matter the encryption, you're always making sure you don't forget or lose the weird character string.