Backing up a PC

[BoBoBREWSKI]

Is it a good idea to only plug in and power up the external drive when I do a back up? To prolong the life of the drive so its not always on/running?

 

[Denny Crane]

If it's connected to your computer and it is hit by lightning or a power surge, it will travel through the cable to your drive. On or off.

If you are only using it for backup, then ideally plug in and power on only to back up.

The ideal is to keep a backup off site (in the cloud somewhere). Like dropbox.

 

[BoBoBREWSKI]

Thanks

 

[EL PRESIDENTE]

I keep mine always plugged in (or connected). It doesn't matter all that much. Turning it on and off probably hurts the drive more than leaving it on constantly.

I want my backups to be as current as possible and continuous with multiple save points. Plugging it in and out just is a recipe for forgetting to do it then having it crash and you lose important docs.

 

[Denny Crane]

I keep mine always plugged in (or connected). It doesn't matter all that much. Turning it on and off probably hurts the drive more than leaving it on constantly.

I want my backups to be as current as possible and continuous with multiple save points. Plugging it in and out just is a recipe for forgetting to do it then having it crash and you lose important docs.

Modern operating systems spin down drives to save energy.

He asked what was best.

You describe something good enough. Perhaps.

In any case, the first rule if backups is that you never know how really good yours is until you need to use it. The world is full of stories about backups not working.

Dropbox for the real win, USB drive for big data you can ultimately live without.

 

[EL PRESIDENTE]

I use dropbox but I also have a complete offsite backup service (Crashplan). The thing with Dropbox, especially when you're sharing drives, people will delete shit. Also, I was trying to free up space in my phone and cleared some Documents and Files settings and it randomly deleted a bunch of random shit all over my dropbox in multiple file locations. It was a bitch to get it all back. I tried to do a simple restore to undo everything that was deleted that day but each deletion was a separate event (thousands of files) and tech support was non-existant. I backuped whole folders from crashplan which worked a lot better.

 

[MarAzul]

A thumb drive works well these days to transport stuff from one machine to another. I have mirror images of data on multiple machines instead of backups.
I just back up the C drive for each system and keep the C drive small, usually less than 8G, so a thumb drive will transport the backup to another machine
which would be used to rebuild the C drive if needed.

 

[BoBoBREWSKI]

1201 Computer Repair said I'm going to have to take it to the next level experts. They couldnt get any data off the drive. The guys at 1201 are really nice, recommended.
http://www.1201.com/

 

[EL PRESIDENTE]

I already told you they'll have to send it to a clean room if you want everything back.

:MARIS61:

 

[BoBoBREWSKI]

Ya ya, you did Mr Smarty Pants!

 

[mobes23]

Has anyone used carbonite cloud backup? It seems like a good idea, but curious to know if it works in the real world.

 

[EL PRESIDENTE]

I use Crashplan which has been fine. Its cheaper than carbonite if you have lots of big files and multiple computers.