Laptop wouldn’t boot up this morning for some reason. It’s fine now but it got me thinking about storage/backup.

Nothing commercial, huge or high value – I just don’t want to have to rip all my CDs again etc etc if things go tits up on this machine.

Ideally I’d just like to highlight which folders to sync, pay a pittance a month and forget about it.

Any recommendations?

You could get an external hard drive and just drag folders over to it. Or download Microsoft Synctoy.

I’ve got an external drive and it’s got most of the family photos on (the rest are still on the camera memory card) but I’d prefer not to have to remember to do it.

MS Synctoy looks like it might fit the bill if I had somewhere to sync it to.

IS it possible to rent a small chunk of storage (~1TB) somewhere?
<wonders if it’s something my ISP provides?>

Dropbox

Google does 1Tb for $50/Month So probably not there yet.

Have a look at Dropbox or Google Drive for most stuff pics etc and important docs.

Busy uploading 15gb of Pics to Google Drive using the Picassa web albums. Very simple just runs in the background. Dropped all My Docs into the google drive folder too. Mostly for on the go access but back up too.

After that look at NAS either a single drive or pair in an enclosure. Plugs into your router and backs up to there. Just remember these fail too.

I’ve used Carbonite for years. It’s $60 per year and you can completely forget about it once you’ve installed it

Network attached store device?

Basically a hard drive which plugs in to the back of your router.

Accessible by all devices on the network based on the permission model you set up.

Depending on how much you need the data, you can set them up in a raid configuration so the data is copied on to another back up disc.

I’ve got one set up in a raid configuration, basically copies all the data on to a secondary disc.

I went down this route when I ripped all my music to disc.

Hope that helps.

A NAS isn’t really a backup is it, even if its got RAID. Its just storage on a network with some redundancy to protect against hard disk failure.

You would still need to back up your NAS.

I’ve used Carbonite for years. It’s $60 per year and you can completely forget about it once you’ve installed it

+1 for Carbonite, unlimited storage off site, easy to recover and upload, just tag the folders you need to save, all done automatically every time files are changed.

Wow Carbonite does sound good.
Maybe a bit ‘too good to be true’!

I was looking for about 700GB which is horrifically expensive on most sites (hundreds per year).
Have you tried those kind of amounts on Carbonite?

A quick read on some forums and it seems that you get throttled after about 35GB. 3-4GB/day max (which is probably just about enough to be honest), but I wish they’d be more explicit before I pay.

Edit: Here’s a link to their info page:
http://carbonite.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/partner/carbonite/a_id/1440/default.php/session/L2F2LzEvdGltZS8xMzQ0NTk1NDkwL3NpZC80Qng5RGszbA%3D%3D

Back stuff up onto CDs. Oh, wait, they came from CDs in the first place… 😛

If you’ve ripped CDs lossless then putting them on the ‘cloud’ on things like Dropbox etc. will take an age, but do-able. If they’re all small MP3 files chuck ’em up, or get a DVD burner.

Thing with NAS, external HDDs etc. is if you do get a virus or corrupt a file it’s often gonna take out the backup too.

Wow Carbonite does sound good.
Maybe a bit ‘too good to be true’!

I have 195GB at the moment with no problems at all, it will take a long time to do the initial upload, I think up to 2 weeks was quoted somewhere, but after that only the changed files are uploaded so much quicker.

I joined before they had the different levels of cover, haven’t gone into the terms and conditions, perhaps I should..

Sounds like you are just the right side of the 200GB throttle.

Sounds like you are just the right side of the 200GB throttle.

Just noticed I’ve got 12.5GB pending, so that will take me over.. But as my PC is left on for quite long periods I’m not sure the throttling will make a lot of difference..

Can you do me a favour – can you post back in this thread when you’ve done a couple of updates after the 200GB limit – let me know what it’s like.
Still interested.

Synctoy is known to have its bugs – do a Google.

I’ve been using Easus Backup for a few months and it’s awesome (and free).

Can you do me a favour – can you post back in this thread when you’ve done a couple of updates after the 200GB limit – let me know what it’s like.
Still interested.

Will do…

Not sure Carbonite will back up an external drive?

http://www.carbonite.co.uk/help-me-decide/carbonite-backup

Does that mean it won’t backup and external drive full stop, or does it mean you have to have a PC connected and switched on for the backup to work? If the latter then no issues, if the former then 🙁

A NAS isn’t really a backup is it, even if its got RAID. Its just storage on a network with some redundancy to protect against hard disk failure.

You would still need to back up your NAS.

It is if it’s a copy of your data via rsync or something.

+1 Carbonite, but I only really backup the stuff I wouldn’t want to lose in a fire like family photos etc. .. covering music/films as well, it might be worth looking at a NAS in a different firezone – I run a power line LAN extension out to the garage for an internet feed in there (useful when buying brakes from Rose Bikes :-)) and a bit of backup.

Can you do me a favour – can you post back in this thread when you’ve done a couple of updates after the 200GB limit – let me know what it’s like.

Well its not doing too good.. I left it on all night after your post and it still hadn’t gone over the 200GB, Its now got to 197GB with 21GB remaining (I’ve added some more stuff to upload)

I’m not sure how accurate the total GB is as at one point it went down to 175GB

It is VERY slow to upload to Carbonite, my upload speed is 3,000kbps so its not slow..

You don’t say what type of computer it is that failed. I know my Time Capsule did a VERY good job of saving my data when I spilled Lemsip all over my MacBook – just got the new one from M&S Insurance, plugged it in, told it about the Time Capsule and came back a couple of hours later as though nothing ever went wrong…

Backups every hour for 24 hours, every day from several days and then weekly ones for as long as the internal disk can hold.

Rachel

3,000Kbps = 375KB/s.

200GB = 209,715,200KB.

209715200KB / 375KB/s = 559240s = 155 hours to upload. About six and a half days.

I think, anyway.

Right – so it looks like the £41.95 a year buys you just less than 200GB.
It looks like the software is pretty nice though.
Thanks for the reports.

Crashplan are good. No throttling that I’ve seen, we were doing the initial upload for a few computers on a family account and must have moved 500GB or so in the first month.

I pay $119 a year, and that covers unlimited backup for up to 10 machines. A single computer is $50 a year.

What I really like is the ability to have different backup targets, and also host backups for others (you only pay when you put stuff on Crashplan’s own servers). It means you can have a local backup to an external drive (so nice quick restores if you need it) as well as online, or even host an “offsite” backup on a mate’s computer.