Backing up my hard drive

[Husker Red]

I need to back up my hard drive. Primarily I'm concerned about my digital pictures, financial information, Word files, and my music collection. I'm probably talking about less than 100 gig of info.

 

I was planning to get an external hard drive like this Western Digital 500 GB unit but shopping for a drive has made me realize how little I know. I'm wondering if USB 2 is good enough for my purposes or should I consider firewire or ethernet connections? (I have both available) Maybe I should consider one of the online back up storage sites? Maybe it's such a small amount I can just back up by DVD?

 

What's a good solution for a small time user like myself?

[Woodie]

DVDs = 9gigs at most (dual-layer), more commonly 4.6gig (single layer)...so for 100 gigs of data, not very scalable. Decent for medium length storage, up to about 10 years or so.

 

External HD is good for capacity, and speed to recover...however, it's got moving parts, so not good for long-term storage.

 

I would suggest a two-part strategy: use both!

1. Copy to the external HD (which cable you use is generally not important in the performance for a home user) on a regular basis.

2. Archive a second copy to DVD, and store them somewhere else. (Like in your desk at work, or your summer home, or something like it) Archive once a month or so, depending on how many photos you're willing to lose.

 

YMMV...and this advice was worth what you paid for it.

[Boffin]

I use multiple hard drives for backup of data, plus I use smugmug as a backup for my photographs, I just wish I could upload RAW to them, rather than only JPEGs.

 

In the UK many ISPs are offering online backups and I believe there are a few commercial offerings out there as well. With the exception of financial and identity related data, I would consider googling for one of those as well

 

Andy

[Bob Palin]

I operate a triple backup scheme, DVDs, USB hard drive and online. Not only that I make 2 DVDs and store one at another location.

 

Circuit City has a pretty good deal on the 500GB MyBook ($110)

 

For online storage I use Amazon S3 with the free S3Safe application ( download from here )

 

The first link for S3Safe has links to all the information about Amazon S3, it's the cheapest online storage I've found unless you have your own web host with lots of space to spare.

[velomoto]

So long as you use a "data check" utility after making your archive, then speed and compatibility become the only two differences in using any of the various connection methods.

 

I agree with the sentiments regarding DVD's being a PITA for large amounts of data. Unfortunately there are no inexpensive tape backup systems available - as archaic as it may seem tape still is the ideal media for long term archive.

 

That said one could get a 500 GB drive and make two volumes to create an archive now and an archive later. Another option would be to get a (relatively) inexpensive RAID-1 setup which creates a mirror (duplicate copy) of the HDD. With RAID-1, if one drive fails or loses data, then the data is obtained from the other drive and the bad drive is replaced.

 

The bottom line is that all media are susceptible to failure and complete data loss. The question is how valuable is the data to you, or rather how much are you willing to spend (time + $$$) to protect the data? FWIW, you're not alone. Hollywood is spending a fortune to archive digital data. It turns out those old movie reels store much more compactly and easily than the digital data.

[Pilgrim]

I signed up for Carbonite for $50 a year back in January and I'm very happy with it, so far. I haven't had to do a full recovery, but going back to chase a few things has been easy.

 

It's a streaming backup that you can suspend if you wish, if it appears it's slowing things down - sometimes (but not always) it does. It turns itself back on after 24 hours.

 

The initial back up took four or five days as it uploaded during dead time on my machine. Since then, it's been transparent and, allowing for upload time, always up to date.

 

Kim Komando likes it and I'll go along with anything she says.

 

Pilgrim

[Husker Red]

Many thanks for the suggestions. I think I'll get the external drive for single copy of everything, plus make DVD backups of the really important stuff. Now I've just got to remember to regularly DO the back up.

 

Michael

[BULLman]

Many thanks for the suggestions. I think I'll get the external drive for single copy of everything, plus make DVD backups of the really important stuff. Now I've just got to remember to regularly DO the back up.

 

Michael

 

This one has auto backup!!! $139 @ Circuit City