Secondary backup drive in case of hard drive failure

[Accelerated Graphics]

I have a friend who's external hard drive quit yesterday, Lost all his personal photos, videos as well as a year of artwork.
What are others using as a backup drive? I found a cloud backup that is $5.00 per month.
I was told of a 2nd drive that everything saves to as a secondary drive along with the hard drive but the secondary drive is write only
and is password protected. Has anyone seen something like this

 

[2B]

we run several redundancies on all of the PCs in office, with the design computers getting the most

each computer is set up as a RAID 1, then there is a network NAS and finally we do offsite once a month for added reassurance

What you have described is a RAID configuration, look specifically at the RAID 1

 

[OldPaint]

at this time.........and with whats available.......i would make backup DVD.......and an external 1 tb hard drive. any of the important files..........on CD/DVD.......or high gig jump drives......these have really become affordable 240 GIG........$125.00............2 of these.....will give ya near 1/2 TB.........
iam not a fan of storing all my info "out there".........

 

[WildWestDesigns]

We use a NAS with a RAID 6 configuration.

I use Acronis to backup the OS drives and client files are stored on the NAS.

Nice thing about the RAID 6 is that you can actually have 2 hard drive failures and still be able to have your stuff. Now the 3rd one goes, that's not good.

Bad thing is when you go to replace or add a drive, that can take awhile to get everything back to where it needs to be.

 

[SignBurst PCs]

I hear of a lot of folks saving everything to a external drive and thinking that they are doing themselves a favor. Most of the external drives that I have come across are actually more failure prone than their internal counterparts. What makes more sense is saving everything to an internal drive and backing it up to an external drive.

I recommend building your own external drive out of a quality drive and a quality (actively-cooled) enclosure. Using this as the destination drive as part of a good backup routine can save you a lot of trouble when catastrophe hits.

Backup can be as simple or as complicated as you want. What I am describing is a relatively simple routine. Windows has a simple (but effective) backup application built in and there are numerous free applications out there as well. SyncBack is a free one that comes to mind.

As mentioned above, a good NAS solution with an offsite backup is great if you have more than one computer accessing the files. It is a little more expensive to setup, but a great solution and has many benefits.

 

[WildWestDesigns]

Windows has a simple (but effective) backup application built in and there are numerous free applications out there as well. SyncBack is a free one that comes to mind.

Both of those actually did not work at all with my Qnap. The process would fail after about 70% complete. Now this was with Win 8 and even today's up to date firmware for the Qnap. Now, that could be a failing of the Qnap, I don't know. That's why I actually use Acronis. Syncback would actually be sooooooo slllllooooooowwwww, that I would terminate it.

Now on Win 7 machines, the Windows backup utility was fine, but not on Win 8. At least for my setup.

 

[SignBurst PCs]

Both of those actually did not work at all with my Qnap. The process would fail after about 70% complete. Now this was with Win 8 and even today's up to date firmware for the Qnap. Now, that could be a failing of the Qnap, I don't know. That's why I actually use Acronis. Syncback would actually be sooooooo slllllooooooowwwww, that I would terminate it.

Now on Win 7 machines, the Windows backup utility was fine, but not on Win 8. At least for my setup.

The backup utility in Windows does seem to like some destination drives better than others. I have run into this in both Win7 and Win8.

I personally don't care for the Win8 backup utility. However, the Win7 backup is still in Win8 if you know where to look and that is what I prefer to use.

As far as SyncBack goes, I haven't used it a bunch, but I do recall the first backup taking a while. It would really depend on the amount of data you are trying to back up.

 

[CanuckSigns]

We have a total of 10 PCs in our shop, the only thing on them is programs, all files get saved to our server, which is just a computer with 2 big HDD's in it, they mirror each other and if 1 fails, we can just buy a new one, pop it in and it will automatically sync with the other HDD.

The server gets backed up to Carbonite continuously throughout the day. About 2 years ago we had a fire at our shop, we managed to get the server out, but there was smoke damage to it, I lost about 25% of our files. However since I had the carbonite backup, I was able to buy a new computer and download all of my files (all 165 GB) to the new server in a matter of 2 days. while I was doing that, I was still able to download individual files that I needed from their website, so my downtime was zero.

I can't stress enough how important it is to do offsite backups, we used to use external HDD's and swap them out once a week and take them home, so we only were ever a week out of date if something were to happen, however you get complacent and once a week turns into once a month, turns into twice a year.

I don't know why some people stress about having their information stored offsite, we're not banks, we are sign shops, none of our data is really all that interesting or valuable to other people!

 

[SignBurst PCs]

I don't know why some people stress about having their information stored offsite, we're not banks, we are sign shops, none of our data is really all that interesting or valuable to other people!

Offsite backups are very important. Fire, flood, and theft can thwart any onsite backup routine. If you are backing up to an external source (onsite), rotate at least two separate drives at least weekly and take the drive that is not currently connected to an offsite location.

My biggest problem with offsite backup is the time it takes to get the files up there. Yes, if you are only looking at a couple hundred GBs worth of data, it may not be a huge deal. However, if you are looking at several TBs, it is a different story.

 

[WildWestDesigns]

The backup utility in Windows does seem to like some destination drives better than others. I have run into this in both Win7 and Win8.

I personally don't care for the Win8 backup utility. However, the Win7 backup is still in Win8 if you know where to look and that is what I prefer to use.

That I wasn't aware of, but that does make sense.

As far as SyncBack goes, I haven't used it a bunch, but I do recall the first backup taking a while. It would really depend on the amount of data you are trying to back up.

The only Win 8 machine that I have at this time is the tablet (I used an USB 3 to Ethernet adapter to do the backup). I had figured that it was due to the initial backup, even though it was basically a clean computer with CS6 Master Suite and Wilcom as the only programs, but the Acronis upload was far faster in it's initial backup (I really only do full backups).

The server gets backed up to Carbonite continuously throughout the day. About 2 years ago we had a fire at our shop, we managed to get the server out, but there was smoke damage to it, I lost about 25% of our files. However since I had the carbonite backup, I was able to buy a new computer and download all of my files (all 165 GB) to the new server in a matter of 2 days. while I was doing that, I was still able to download individual files that I needed from their website, so my downtime was zero.

I can't stress enough how important it is to do offsite backups, we used to use external HDD's and swap them out once a week and take them home, so we only were ever a week out of date if something were to happen, however you get complacent and once a week turns into once a month, turns into twice a year.

I don't know why some people stress about having their information stored offsite, we're not banks, we are sign shops, none of our data is really all that interesting or valuable to other people!

Mom has been using Carbonite for years and she likes the service.

On my Qnap, I actually have it setup to do an offsite backup, but it's to another one of my NAS setups.

I'm a firm believer in having a "mixed bag" approach to data storage, but it's more about control in my case. I think most of your offsite cloud storage facilities will allow download of XXGB and for anything after that, it's an additional cost for retrieval or something along those lines. That would be my one main concern with that. That might have changed or I might have read those terms/conditions wrong, I don't know. But that's just my take on it, but I do believe in some type of offsite storage solution.

 

[CanuckSigns]

I'm a firm believer in having a "mixed bag" approach to data storage, but it's more about control in my case. I think most of your offsite cloud storage facilities will allow download of XXGB and for anything after that, it's an additional cost for retrieval or something along those lines. That would be my one main concern with that. That might have changed or I might have read those terms/conditions wrong, I don't know. But that's just my take on it, but I do believe in some type of offsite storage solution.

I can't speak for all offsite companies, however Carbonite does not charge extra for retrieval after a certain # of GB have been downloaded, the business plans are based on how many GB of storage you need, you can upload and download as much as you want, as long as you don't go over your total storage.

I know Carbonite offers a service where if you need to, they will FedEx overnight you a HDD with your files on it already, so you don't have to download anything.

 

[eahicks]

We use Backblaze, online backup. Works great. Don't know the cost, but it has saved our butt many times. Especially if you overwrite a file you didn't mean to...just log on, find the previous saved file, and download it. We could lose the entire customer files drive here and download it all to a new drive. IMHO cloud/online backup IS the safest and most reliable.

 

[Accelerated Graphics]

What plan is anyone using for carbonite? Looks like the entry business plan is only 250 GB

 

[Techman]

Google Drive is FREE. I use it all the time. Wonderful service.
Use it with chrome and it is just like another hard drive

 

[CanuckSigns]

Google Drive is FREE. I use it all the time. Wonderful service.
Use it with chrome and it is just like another hard drive

Explain how you use google drive to back up a computer in a reliable manner?

 

[rjssigns]

I may be the odd one out. At this point I'm looking for a used data safe inside of which I'll install a Drobo. Right now our current backups are in a fire safe that has run out of room.

Have to look into Backblaze and Carbonite also.

 

[Techman]

Explain how you use google drive to back up a computer in a reliable manner?

Google using chrome with drive.. and you will find the answer grasshopper. Sync is so easy..

 

[The Vector Doctor]

Google Drive is FREE. I use it all the time. Wonderful service.
Use it with chrome and it is just like another hard drive

Only up to 15gb. Any more than that and you must pay

 

[Techman]

Only up to 15gb. Any more than that and you must pay

Per account.
One can have like 30 accounts,
15 gigs of photos is about 20,000 photos.
Who has an inventory of 15 gis of about 20,000 photos????

Why not look for positives and avoid the negatives?

A pot of stew has a lot of ingredients. One doesn't throw out the whole stew over the peas.

 

[The Vector Doctor]

Per account.
One can have like 30 accounts,
15 gigs of photos is about 20,000 photos.
Who has an inventory of 15 gis of about 20,000 photos????

Why not look for positives and avoid the negatives?

A pot of stew has a lot of ingredients. One doesn't throw out the whole stew over the peas.

That sounds complex. How are you able to back up your drive over multiple accounts? Or are you selectively sending files to the various accounts on your own?

The negative is that it does not sound like a reliable way to back up an entire hard drive and be able to restore properly. I don't want to have to keep track of more than one cloud drive. I have 2 right now for various purposes and it can get confusing knowing where I keep certain files. I cannot imaging having that many different accounts to have to login to, passwords, etc and then also knowing where everything is at.

$4-5 a month is not that bad to have it all in place using a tested true backup website

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