Morning all, I’ve just been on the receiving end of panicky texts from the missus who’s laptop was having a meltdown (luckily now finally turning back on). It’s a 1 year(ish) old Dell Latitude so the machine itself should be generally fine, but I’m aware that she’s not doing much in the way of backing up material – oh and as she’s just about to qualify as a teacher her own laptop is also her work laptop.

I have some idea of what she should be doing, but figured this place is full of folk far more learned than I so would ask the question and do it properly. Currently she is using Office 365 and is (I believe) using the cloud to hold those documents, but I’m pretty certain that she’ll have a great many resources stored locally (and I know she’s about to get a massive pile of resources from a colleague).

Can anyone advise on best practice? As simple as a (decent) external hard drive doing a nightly backup? Or worth doing something more?

Thanks a lot,
Mashr

If there is already Microsoft 365 on the laptop check the OneDrive settings, should be able to set that up to sync and if there isn’t enough space then it’s about £50 per year for 1TB of storage from memory. Really simple.

Alternatively there is Google Drive Backup and Sync (I use it simply because I am in the Google ecosystem). If you want you can also use it to back-up other devices such as phones too. I am sure OneDrive is going to be the same, but with Drive you can alter settings to either just sync or sync and back-up which is useful (if the laptop was maliciously attacked, just having sync might result in loss of files). Of course having both doubles the storage required (as in there is a sync *AND* a back-up) but it is what I do.

Put all the documents in the cloud (I use Dropbox, but Onedrive or other systems should be fine).

If you poke around in the recovery options, Windows 10 still has a system backup that dates back to Win7. You can use this to create a backup on an external hard disk that will let you restore the operating system and all apps. I’m not sure if it’s still included with Win11, but it is there in Win10. There are plenty of explanations of that online if you google. Best to create a new backup each time you install a new app or there is a major update.

If the likes of OneDrive are well regarded then that’s perfect (think she’d probably prefer to keep it all under MS). I’m too used to company equipment that takes care of all these things for me.

Will have a look into the older style backup (used to do that for W7). She’ll rarely add apps, so it would be the major updates to keep an eye on in case a roll-back is needed

Thanks all

Anything I do that’s important is on onedrive – mostly so I can access it on any of my PC’s (and my phone) from anywhere.

I’ve got some photo’s stored locally, but that’s it – I should back them up really

As above, OneDrive absolutely with an O365 subscription. If she’s signing in to her laptop with an MS account it should do most of this for her anyway.

“Resources” is a weird one. If she’s getting “resources” from external sources do they need backing up at all when she can just get them from the same place again?

I’d may be temped with a USB hard drive as a secondary backup just for peace of mind if she’s of the ‘panicky’ persuasion.

She’ll rarely add apps, so it would be the major updates to keep an eye on in case a roll-back is needed

You can also create Restore Points to roll it back to an earlier configuration. Very useful if you have problems with automatic updates screwing up drivers.

“Resources” is a weird one. If she’s getting “resources” from external sources do they need backing up at all when she can just get them from the same place again?

You would think, but we’ve learned a lot about how different schools run things in the last year. The particular source on this occasion is retiring in June, so no chance of going back for a copy. I would imagine most of the stuff will be a standard MS file format anyway so again would be easily taken care of by OneDrive

She’s not of the panicky persuasion, going in to teach/present/whatever with a laptop that has just decided it doesn’t want to turn on is far from ideal. Obviously OneDrive wont fix that but at least she should be comfortable that everything is recoverable

If that’s a concern then portable media might be a good idea. If she’s got – at least – a copy of what she needs for that presentation on a pendrive then if her laptop does go bang she can just borrow one.

Cougar
Full Member

If that’s a concern then portable media might be a good idea. If she’s got – at least – a copy of what she needs for that presentation on a pendrive then if her laptop does go bang she can just borrow one.

Yup, definitely handy. Unfortunately when all the teachers are using their own laptops there isn’t always anywhere to borrow one from (the school situation in this country is absolutely bonkers, but thats a whole other thread)

(the school situation in this country is absolutely bonkers, but thats a whole other thread)

Mrs Dubs has a flash drive for her stuff. Being PE, they don’t have their own classrooms for GSCE and A level classes and the school network is a joke.

All her resources are PowerPoints, word docs and pdfs so doesn’t need a massive lot of capacity.

I encourage her to back it up weekly to school one drive account from home (where we have decent upload speeds), would be good if we could automate that (easily).

OneDrive all the way for me. Secure and safe. Has an online recycle bin as well just in case anything got deleted. Works out at £80 a year if you buy the annual subscription to Office365. Personally I wouldn’t touch systems like Dropbox, WeTransfer and so on as they have very lax GDPR policies and even worse security.