So I'm really thinking I need to start backing up my data. My main Mac it always running out of space because of the nearly 200gb of iTunes stuff I have. This isnt really that much of an issue, but I find myself always deleting movies and stuff I otherwise wouldnt. Also, I've been having increasing fears of HD failure, so I would love to backup my entire disc in general. So I've come to the conclusion I have three options: Get an external drive dedicated to media: Maybe the cheapest, but not safest. I could get an external drive, maybe 1TB, and just use it as a second local drive. Local setup: Would be a lot faster for backing up my data, auto increment selected folders, could even do a disc image with my OS settings in case shit craps out. Online backup: Would be really convenient, auto-increments selected folders(media, pictures, homework, dev, etc), safer than local(someone robs me, I still have all my data), plus I could get to my homework and work anywhere. The biggest drawback is I dont plan on upgrading to cable for a while, so with DSL it would take FOREVER. What do you guys use to backup your data(and why did you choose this)? Are there any other options I should consider?
Local, because you have the most control over it and HD's are so cheap now days. Make two copies to a local USB HD and store them in separate locations and your golden.
This is a nice solution. Apart from this, if you want to back up work or personal information (in case it is very important) and have them safe in case of robbery you can backup in some high density format media and keep it in a secure lockbox in a bank (but well, that might sound too drastic ) I believe you'll do fine with RAID + external, and you can also plan a backup schedule, to make it easier to mantain the backup. I used to have a daily backup plan for some important folders and files with normal backup on Mondays, incremental on Tuesdays and Thursdays and differential on Wednesdays and Fridays.
I'm agreeing with the local people, but wanted to add another note. Online can be unsafe too. Someone gets access to your account then there goes your data. Then there's the always connected problem for an online storage. If you don't have internet for some reason (I know with my provider it's a frequent experience...) then you can't access your data.
Till your house burns down. Online all the way specialy with services that encript your data before uploading.
Heh, well let me be more specific. You'll note that I said store each backup copy in a different location, but naturally I mean off-site. I see no problems with a safe deposit box like ASSEMbler suggested.
I have everything saved on my hard drive then I run SyncToy once a week or so to backup certain folders to an external drive.
Yeah but thats not great either. For one if you backup to HD you have to go to the safe deposit and come home backup and go back or use two drives. (One you take home to back up one you leave with the current back up. Then next time you take the one from home with new backup and swap with the old backup and so on) Plus safe deposit boxes arent all that common and cheap here compared to America.
Why the hell backup media? who cares if you loose music & movies? these can be redownloaded within a click. Drawback backupping media local or external is it's a huge amount of data and it's totally worthless. External online backup or external drive for your important documents/school work etc is easy to maintain, it's small enough to send online no matter how slow your line is and you don't need TB's of HDDs to back it up. Buy a NAS with RAID and you can also keep backups of your media, and in case you are paranoid of somebody robbing you keep a backup of your documents online some place.
Maybe the content of your HDDs are worthless to you, maybe you can find all your media again with a click. Neither of these are true for me.
I am not talking about the occassional hard to find album/movie/clip/vid or whatever you mean, as I can't imagin this taking up all the space because how much rare stuff can you own? Clearly if it's a movie you recorded yourself/digicam/photos stuff whatever if very important and needs to be backupped properly no doubt! But as the TS mentioned he was worried about this movies, now I took the liberty to guess these are just plain movies and not personal stuff.. which in my eyes can almost always be replaced. Fair enough your occassional classic or asian movie or whatever may be hard to find again, but is it really that important to keep a digital copy of something you have seen already?
I guess that depends on whether you like rewatching things, which I often do. Apologies if I came across as condescending in that last post btw, I didn't mean it to. Anyway, I'd be genuinely horrified if I lost all my media. Typically I'll have the DVD if it's something easily found (like Aliens or Platoon or whatever), but I've got stacks of stuff I've downloaded from websites, ripped from YouTube, found on some obscure Russian FTP etc that I can guarantee has never seen DVD release. Same goes for my music collection, it would take a massive amount of time to re-rip/find and download just the chiptune and VGM stuff, to the extent I even could, and there's also plenty of MP3s in there that I've paid for one way or another over the years. Aside from anything else I'm not about to sort out "stuff that I would be sad about if my HDD dies" from "stuff that I don't really care that much about" so it all gets archived. I suppose I should point out that I've got basically a decade's worth of data, and I still want to retain that. A lot of the earliest, as you mention, is nostalgia - early digital camera pics, crappy music my mates made on their SB Live cards back in the day - but there's no easy cutoff point. A 1TB drive is cheap enough that I don't care about waste, anyway.
I upload all my HD video files, photos, music and so on to my dreamhost account since I have unlimited space and bandwidth but I'm always worried in case they have an accident with my data. To be honest there is no real safe option so it's best to make at least two copies of important stuff. One local and o e online Yakumo
Media collections/replaceable stuff: HDD content list stored in a safe (backup'ed) place. cmd => x: => "dir /A /B /S >x:\output.txt" The 'file sharing search engine' of choice will do the rest. Data I don't want to lose: RAID and 2 or 3 copies on other HDDs. Data I can't afford to lose: crypted container files, stored on every one of my HDDs and USB flash drives (that's not too bad by itself, Convar even recovered the data from the WTC HDDs...not cheap though), plus online backups via Multiupload. Over time I've come to appreciate recovery files, especially .par2. They've saved my ass on important files many many times by now. File corruption is your enemy and only you can prevent it.
