QOTD: How Often Do You Backup Your Data?

[alvine]

i do it every week

 

[WheelsOfConfusion]

Not as often as I should, to be frank. Last time I backed up the desktop was in the middle of February. Fortunately I don't have a lot of movies or games, so it's a simple drag-and-drop affair after arranging files by date, and then replacing my backed up FF bookmarks file with a new one.

 

[shovel]

Home gaming PC's, never...
The kids Work/UniPC's, working data monthly, archive yearly.
Laptop's - maybe yearly.

Work PC's: I work both at home & the office. Every time I leave one site I synchronise my working data to a USB stick, then resync that to the other site when I get there. At the office, I have daily data synchro to an external USB HDD, which every week backs up to another external USB HDD.
Once a month I back up the latest data to DVD's - 2 sets, one set stays at work, the other lives at my home.

Every 6 months I ghost drive images to another external 1TB HDD which is stored offsite.

Im finding that most PC's when not used for games/video/music archiveing don't require much backup space & a 1TB external USB/ESata HDD is a good cheap solution.

 

[motarola2]

i backup my info daily

 

[PLATTERMAN]

Once a week at a minimum, 2 copies made to externals, unplug 2nd copy drive.

 

[computabug]

renee9001, WTF, seriously?

I have multiple copies of important files (my dad's business) synched around my network on different machines that he uses, not sure if that's considered backing up or not... I wanna get a NAS or at least a dedicated computer/server to raid 1 all the important stuff, but my parents tell me it's a waste of money >> they were like "What?!?!" when I told them that RAID1 only gives them 1 drive's worth of storage space. My mom associates hard drive capacity and memory capacity with processing speed T_T lord help me I need to move out of this hole asap

 

[Orion1024]

If a file is important, I immediately copy it over to a second drive. If a file is critical, it gets two copies onto two separate drives (one external). Also, before and after any system changes I Ghost the boot partition and keep my three most recent images. Imaging is absolutely critical IMO.

 

[inferno65]

I do a nightly back-up of all my data to an external USB drive using Vice-Versa. Once a week I swap the external drive with an identical one I keep away from home at my office. If the house burns down, I'll lose at most 1 week of data.

 

[baddad]

I have raid 5 for all my files and as soon as I make a change or save a new file it backs it up to an external drive, I use ViceVersa Pro 2.

 

[blader15sk8]

Never and I am sure I will regret it very deeply one day.. but I have had good luck with drives not failing (knock on wood..)

 

[cjl]

I use Norton Ghost to make a complete disk image weekly to my secondary internal hard drive. Important files are also on an external drive.

 

[baudelier]

Every Day at noon. I use Second Copy 2000 to perform automated incremental backups to a 1 Terabyte Hard drive in an Athena Power 3 in 2 hot swap SATA/SAS mount. Every 2 months or so I'll perform a manual full backup to clear out any obsolete files.

 

[Guest]

I agree with the others above. RAID is NOT a backup solution. As for me, I have a external USB hard drive that backs up select folders and data every night. In addition to this, I have a NAS box running a mirrored RAID set that has files on it. These files are a mixture of stuff I don't care if I loose the entire drive and copies of stuff that is being backed up to the USB drive. Then, just to be safe, I use iDrive and backup the same stuff that goes to the USB drive. This way the same data is backed up offsite somewhere in case of a natural disaster or the like. These backups are done every night. They go pretty quickly since there isn't much that changes on a day to day basis....except for earlier this week when I finally got around to encoding 50GB of home videos...

 

[mmarzett]

every friday. full backups.

 

[okibrian]

Each time my PC will no longer boot or when it is making that funny clicking sound I slave it and back up what I can. I'm just playing. Once a day to a NAS.

 

[maigo]

Not often enough, but I've got enough harddrives not to lose everything... baring a fire or major electrical incident

 

[anamaniac]

Extremely rarely.
I've backed up my music before, and currently have all my torrents (from a month or so ago) stored on another computer.

I've used Widows recovery a few times now, but other than that, it's just a reformat for me. Everything I lose can be gained back again thanks to the internets. =D

 

[ahslan]

dont back up enough...i back up all my important files and school work from my laptop to 4gb flash drives I have, but I really need to purchase a bigger external hard drive in order to fully back up my desktop and my laptop...I only have a 250gb external and I currently have a 500gb+200gb in my desktop and 60gb on my tablet notebook...I do have a full back up of my desktop using Macrium Reflect Free edition, but I should probably update it since its about 5 months old...i really need to figure out a simple and easy way to backup my stuff...

 

[zebow2002]

For my personal docs @ home I have a 100GB online backup account where I backup 21 GB in a weekly incremental scheme. I also have a less frequently used backup to HD.

 

[randomizer]

I don't.

 

[nickul]

i never backup my files... i also hold them on a RAID 0 made out of 2 old and moody 80gb hdds, that sometimes go crackle and pop, but i never backup my files..

LIVING ON THE EDGE BAABBYYY!!! WOOOOO!!!!

 

[nickul]

i never backup my files... i also hold them on a RAID 0 made out of 2 old and moody 80gb hdds, that sometimes go crackle and pop, but i never backup my files..

LIVING ON THE EDGE BAABBYYY!!! WOOOOO!!!!

 

[mpriester]

Absolutely no RAID or any other "inside the PC" drive is a place for a backup. You have false sense of security.
When the PSU fries and overvolts the system your drives will all be toast.
I have seen this more than once. Get a backup drive external with its own power source or backup remotely (online)

Some systems for homeowners I use Genie-Soft Backup Manager Pro and usually do mirrored uncompressed backup to an external HD. It is easy for them to browse thru the files to see if it is working.

For Servers I use Acronis, and do Differential Backups. Acronis will let you look through the files even in compressed format. Acronis will also let you restore to disimilar hardware.

 

[f-gomes]

I never backup. I have a RAID5 at my home PC, don't really need to backup, as the probability of having 2 hdds failing at the same time is very small.

 

[f-gomes]

In addition to the RAID5 redundancy, I sometimes copy the most important stuff to an external hard drive (maybe 10 times an year). Never lost any data in over 10 years.