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Would rather have 3 or 4 single large drives dotted around than them all in a NAS enclosure in RAID, which for domestic backup purposes, is pointless. IMO, YMMV etc etc.
... which is precisely why I asked the question, yes. 😁
RAID has a time and a place, even in a domestic setting, but backup isn't generally one of them.
I still use ccleaner - it's a handy one stop shop for file cleanup (windows clutter and browser junk in one handy press of a button, uninstalling apps (seems slicker than windows add-remove programs), disabling start up apps. Drive wipe I've found handy too on occasion.
Basicaly a collection of handy utilities in one convienient interface.
potentially dangerous in over-zealous hands.
It has a free space or entire drive wipe utility, so I guess that could go badly wrong if you're not paying attention to what you are doing.
Potentially the registry cleanup tool? I just ran it and it just flagged basically the mess left over from unistalling stuff that windows leaves behind.
So everything it flagged can get in the sea anyway. Aruguably I'm not really gaining much if anything using the registry cleaner part, but hey.
I still use ccleaner... I’m not really gaining much if anything
Correct. The rest of your post is redundant. (-:
run your OS on one disk and all your programs on another. I have resolve on one drive (program drive), files on another (HDD) and I render to an SSD. put what ever programs you want on your system.
Correct. The rest of your post is redundant. (-:
That was in specific reference to the registry tool, as I'm sure you realise 😉
**Notes diary. Cougar and I agree on some things** 😀 😀
Under the "Other Suggestions" category if win 10/11 is new to you the CTT youtube channel may be of interestas a general looksie into some settings and where to find them etc and tools to do changes that are otherwise annoyingly timewasting to do.
Naturally have a backup, and check for version compatability and updates if you go ahead with any of the debloat stuff, used it several times and it does make a nice quiet system with the occasional compromise, eg disk indexing is a hog on drives but you loose some search functionality, ( but I know where stuff is mostly)
none of this may be useful to you or make a lot of difference on a high spec machines performance
Well it has arrived and I have done the boot up and update everything. I am about to start installing stuff but not Ccleaner or AVG. It has come with MCAfeee installed which might be a trial in which case I won't continue it.
c:\windows is the SSD
d:\data is the HDD
I shall install everything on C until space becomes an issue.
Most noticeable thing so far is that it appears silent and if it wasn't for the glass side and the insides lit up like a disco, I wouldn't be sure if it was on*
*okay, the image on the screen might be a give away but you know what I mean
I think we need an 'argue about what constitutes data backups' sticky thread. Not maligning any of the thoughts and recommendations on an often overlooked and misunderstood topic but most IT / PC threads on here tend towards an argument about backups like some sort of Godwin's Law.
Please uninstall McAfee. Do it now and save yourself trouble.
A general rule of thumb is tat anything that the laptop comes pre-loaded with that is not Windows, is bloat designed to part you from your cash.
I think we need a ‘
argue aboutwhat constitutes data backups’ sticky thread
FTFY 😛
glass side and the insides lit up like a disco
Do you have the option of returning it and getting an adults computer? 😉
Remember, he's a YouTube influencer now. He needs the flash gadgets for when he is streaming.
files get accidentally deleted
I agree generally that yes, multiple backup solutions are useful, but a point of order - if you accidentally delete something on OneDrive you can get it back. Or if you overwrite something e.g. delete half a document. It versions everything, including folders. If you delete a file and want it back you go to the version history of the containing folder and you can get it back that way.
Also, I wouldn't bother with Libre Office. MS Office 365 is miles better and because you get 1TB of cloud storage with it, for about the price of 1TB storage on its own, it's effectively free if you wanted the storage anyway.
Just installed DaVinci and was about to go for Libre Office when Molgrips stops me. Hmmm, don't think I need the storage - not sure if it is backed up properly 🙂 - so it is a cost with only the benefit of being a bit better. Open Office has served ok so far so I guess I will start with Libre Office and see how I get on. I assume I don't have to use a bad French accent when typing in it
Libre Office is free. Office 365 (applications) is not. Office Online is free. Do you use it often enough to require local apps?
run your OS on one disk and all your programs on another.
Don't do that.
Chrome - Tick
Gimp - Tick
DaVinci - Tick
McAfee - Uninstalled
Libre Office - Tick
Open Office has served ok so far so I guess I will start with Libre Office and see how I get on.
They are, essentially, the same product. The difference is that Open Office is pitching at corporates who require the ability to buy support contracts, Libre Office doesn't care about such things so is developed more aggressively and thus usually more feature-rich.
Google Drive and Dropbox would be worth a look.
Google offer 15Gb of storage for free.
Ok - it is now installed.
Just need to work out how to get all the files I want off the old machine. I guess I need to connect that back up, boot up and move the files to OneDrive or something and then copy them back down. I can't find the external hard drive I thought I had
if you accidentally delete something on OneDrive you can get it back
Only within 30 days. I have had friends who have tried to get things back but only realised that they were accidentally deleted after this time and were screwed.
I have my backups set thusly; backup one is a mirror of my workstation. I created a new file, it backs it up, I delete it, it removes it etc. Backup 2 saves 10 iterations of edited files and does not delete files I delete from my workstation. Backup 3 is OneDrive.
Relying on someone else's computer as a single point of backup be it your mates or Bill Gates' is just asking to lose stuff. I refer again to the Adobe thing and Apple lost a load of people's photos etc once, Amazon had a failure - it happens and if that is your only copy of the file...
Imagine waking up to the following email:
Dear Valued OneDrive user
My sincere apologies but due to an undocumented feature in our new secure backup software unfortunately some user accounts were deleted and are irrecoverable. I regret to inform you that yours was one of these accounts.
By way of an apology I will be upgrading you to OneDrive Premium so you can enjoy a whole 1Tb of storage for 3 months free of charge.
Love Bill
This is pretty much what happens in these cases. And it does happen. Infrequently yes but you are utterly and totally screwed if it does and that's where your files are and you have no other proper backups.
A single cloud backup, or worse, a single version of a document stored on OneDrive because that's were Office stupidly defaults to, is no backup at all.
You can do what you want with your data however it is not backed up if OneDrive is all you use...
Don’t do that.
why not?
Just need to work out how to get all the files I want off the old machine.
Open old PC, remove hard drive. Open new PC and connect old hard drive. Copy files. You could even leave the old hard drive in as a back up point...
So before I start pulling the machines apart, can we confirm what I am looking to stick where.
I can probably identify the HDD in the old machine. I assume there will be a ribbon cable going to it. I pull the drive and ribbon from the old machine.
In the new machine I put the HDD inside and connect the ribbon. The pictures below show the view through the window. The top picture shows the pretty lights and the bottom picture shows what is in the dark below the GEFORCE RTX lump.
What goes where?
move the files to OneDrive or something and then copy them back down
If you have the same Microsoft account on both machines you shouldn't need to copy anything anywhere, it should sync with OneDrive and download on demand / according to settings.
why not?
Because why would you?
So before I start pulling the machines apart
See HDD1 / HDD2 bottom right of that second photo.
But I wouldn't do that. Sync both with OneDrive.
Nothing on c:\documents is syched at the moment and` I started to copy to Googledrive and there was a 7 hour expected duration. This made me stop and consider the physical disc move.
I assume the duration will be the same each way and regardless of Googledrive or OneDrive.
I could let it upload tonight and download tomorrow but was hoping for something quicker
Actually Nick,
I can't do it tonight, but do you want to do this over a Zoom call / remote session at some point?
Nothing on c:\documents is syched at the moment and` I started to copy to Googledrive and there was a 7 hour expected duration. This made me stop and consider the physical disc move.
So you don't currently (on the old machine) have it syncing with OneDrive? Initial upload will be horrific on an ADSL connection.
Take another photo where it says HDD1 but showing further to the right.
That would be great but might not work well as the old and new computer only have one keyboard, mouse and screen between them so I have to crawl under the desk and plug/unplug to switch between them, also my webcam died at the weekend.
Thanks for the offer but I think it would waste too much of your time.
I will just try synching the accounts as you suggest. It is mostly a load of old videos and photos that wouldn't be fatal to lose.
Alternative option. Cheap USB stick or even cheap external HDD (you can use it for back up later) and copy to that then across to the new machine?
run your OS on one disk and all your programs on another.
Don’t do that.
Agreed, have windows and all your apps installed on the faster drive.
The secondary, slower drive you should typically use just for storage, documents, video, audio, other media files.
As the secondary drive is an old, slow HDD, apps installed there will be slower to launch and operate.
This is pretty much what happens in these cases. And it does happen. Infrequently yes but you are utterly and totally screwed if it does and that’s where your files are and you have no other proper backups.
Wait, if One Drive is a *backup* then this has to happen at the exact same time that your drive fails or your laptop is stolen etc. Since both things are pretty unlikely, then the likelihood of both things happening at the same time is the product of both probabilities which is very very unlikely.
With IT strategy, you cannot make it perfectly reliable, you just weigh up the probability of disaster (all your options failing), the impact of the consequences of a disaster, and the faff/expense of mitigating it further.
Now, OneDrive's auto sync feature (forget what it's called) where it downloads files on demand and erases them when you exceed the pre-allocated local storage exposes you to only having one copy. And general users aren't likely aware of this which is a risk. But there's likely to be more than one physical copy at Microsoft's server farm anyway. So it's up to you if it's worth doing another backup or not.
Yep it's just personal risk management really.
I don't have a paid for back up solution, what I do is;
Have a drive in the PC with the important stuff on, like anyone else.
Have an external drive with a copy of that data, manually updated via copy/paste when I decide I need to update it.
Any important actual documents take up a tiny size and they are also backed up on google drive (free) and I email them to myself (hotmail), also free. so thats kind of a freee cloud solution.
That's pretty basic and safe, but each persons situation is different.
In business, you might want to look at 2 or 3 mirrored file servers that are physicaly hosted in different countries, so in the event of a rebellion, or a nuclear war, etc, you have all your bases covered as much as they can be.
I will just try synching the accounts as you suggest. It is mostly a load of old videos and photos that wouldn’t be fatal to lose.
I suppose if your end goal is to use cloud storage anyway, there's little practical difference between uploading from your old PC or physically moving the drive, copying to the new one and then uploading from there instead.
I have a way simpler process which removes all the challenges and worries from back ups.
Live for the moment in bliss with no future worries or concerns from the past. If everything you have is taken from you then you are simply free to choose what new to collect.
If you truly do not care* then you have the joy of a carefree existence.
*You also have a high probability of life changing accidents as caring about the consequences of actions are also of no relevance - at least if I am the case study for this upon which you focus.
Wait, if One Drive is a *backup* then this has to happen at the exact same time that your drive fails or your laptop is stolen etc.
I have many files backed up that are not on my workstation that I still may need at some point in the future. Photos being the main thing and they are the files that the majority of people I think care most about but the situation is the same for other files and documents too.
So the scenario is this. Over time you change phones, by a new computer, lose stuff etc. For person A their photos though are backed up on their hard drives. They are also backed up on OneDrive. They may not however be present on the new phone, new computer etc.
Person B only has their photos backed up on OneDrive.
Both lose their OneDrive account. Only one can get their photos back...
My solution for phone photos is to have my phone dump the photos to OneDrive and then OneDrive syncs back to my PC which then syncs to the external drives.
My sister has lost all her first child's early photos through exactly this scenario.
I use idrive cloud backup, its about 40 quid for 5tb. Took a few days for my initial backup, but that was a lot more data than was strictly needed, but would be more convenient than reobtaining from other sources.
Of course, but the basic calculation is still probability vs impact vs effort.
Also you cant' always rely on cloud storage, company I used to work for had stuff on rackspace and UKfast amongsts others, depending on how much the customer wanted to pay.
UKfast took themselves down a few years back, someone cut through a powerline during adjacent building work and it took the whole thing offline, not for long but long enough to cost thier customers £££££££
https://www.theregister.com/2017/12/12/pickaxe_cuts_through_cable_kos_ukfast_datacentre/
Now you'd think a 'datacenter' would have UPS battery arrays and deisel generators in the event of a power cut, the shitstorm that caused was so funny.
My sister is really quite upset that she has no photos of her child from birth to 18 months old and it could so easily have been avoided.
Setting up an external hard drive at home and have either Acronis or Aomei plod away completely invisibly in the background is as trivial as setting up OneDrive. The other big danger of OneDrive is, if you leave the default settings as they are, is that you have no local copy at all which is really stupid.
I remember a company building a 'secure' computer room which was bomb proof and had UPS etc. Unfortunately the power went down during a maintenance period and the automatic locks to the computer room were on the main building power and not the secure UPS. Even though they could get a safe, secure power supply to the room, they couldn't get in and had to just watch the batteries drain and the entire European computer system for their business die for about 14 hours until they could get the correct power to the correct places in the correct sequence.
Made more embarrassing as this was 2 days after the global unavailing of their uninterruptable solution.
It was called titan but from that day on it was referred to as Titanic for going down as it did
@WorldClassAccident - that is brilliant. Almost as good as the recent events of Facebook managing to lock itself down entirely for a number of days to the point staff couldn't even access their own buildings to start fixing shit 🙂
People have mentioned various 'automatic' backups. For me, at least one copy should be offline. If you get a malware infection and don't spot it, you'll be overwriting clean files with infected ones, similarly if ransomware locks up your system, it may find your backup and lock that.