Spin-off: How do you back up a computer?

[leebee]

Reading of disneychrista's hard drive issues made me wonder: How does one back up a computer? I have a 5+ year old MacBook Air that was provided for me, new, when I started working for my current employer. I use it for both work and personal things and I've never backed it up. There's stuff on here that I wouldn't want to lose. How should I back things up?
@disneychrista I hope things work out and they can recover your data!

 

[Kathryn Merteuil]

Depending on how much stuff you want to back up, I would use external hard drives, or flash drives. I copied files to one external drive and stored "off site", and another to keep around the house.

 

[Bianca and Bernard]

Reading of disneychrista's hard drive issues made me wonder: How does one back up a computer? I have a 5+ year old MacBook Air that was provided for me, new, when I started working for my current employer. I use it for both work and personal things and I've never backed it up. There's stuff on here that I wouldn't want to lose. How should I back things up?

We have some things on a external hard drives and on flash drives, like @Kathryn Merteuil said. We also have things backed up on 'the cloud' aka OneDrive, and some things on Google Drive. I have pictures stored on my Shutterfly accounts as well.

 

[TippyThomas]

I use external solid state drives for backup now. I don't have a lot to backup but I don't want to lose what I do have.

 

[sam_gordon]

Depends on how much you have to backup and how much you want to spend.

The most basic is to have a duplicate of needed files on a second hard drive/thumb drive.
The next step would be have a third copy of the file on yet another drive, but this stays off site (if the facility with your primary and backup gets destroyed, the off site backup will keep your files).
The step after that would be to have a "cloud" backup. This can be OneDrive, Google, AWS, or many others.

Depending on how much you have will determine the cost and ease of maintaining.

 

[Jonnnyap]

@leebee , this is a great question, and other responses are good to use external backup disk drives or USB sticks. The OneDrive solution works well for all your files that you want to preserve. Additionally, since you have a Mac, Apple makes it super easy to backup the entire computer using their built-in feature "Time Machine." If you hook up an external drive (including a USB stick if large enough) with enough storage space, and then enable Time Machine, setting it up to use the external drive, then it will regularly backup your entire computer. Cloud solutions like OneDrive backup your files, but they don't back up settings or programs/apps. With Time Machine, everything is backed up automatically. So if the computer fails, you can plug in the external drive that Time Machine was using, and restore your old computer onto the new one. I've been using this for many years without any issues, and it's super easy to use (my requirement, which is why I use Mac computers). Hope this is helpful and you get your backup system up and running easily. Best wishes!

 

[Meriweather]

I only really want all my photos backed up and I use an external hard drive.
But I would put anything I want saved on one of those.

 

[Communicore1991]

@leebee , this is a great question, and other responses are good to use external backup disk drives or USB sticks. The OneDrive solution works well for all your files that you want to preserve. Additionally, since you have a Mac, Apple makes it super easy to backup the entire computer using their built-in feature "Time Machine." If you hook up an external drive (including a USB stick if large enough) with enough storage space, and then enable Time Machine, setting it up to use the external drive, then it will regularly backup your entire computer. Cloud solutions like OneDrive backup your files, but they don't back up settings or programs/apps. With Time Machine, everything is backed up automatically. So if the computer fails, you can plug in the external drive that Time Machine was using, and restore your old computer onto the new one. I've been using this for many years without any issues, and it's super easy to use (my requirement, which is why I use Mac computers). Hope this is helpful and you get your backup system up and running easily. Best wishes!

This is the perfect answer for a Mac user. If your Mac dies you can literally buy a new one, plug in the drive and Restore from Time Machine when setting up the new one and you'll be back on your feet.

I highly recommend people read about and implement the 3-2-1 backup strategy when it comes to their data. This post from Backblaze sums it up well: https://www.backblaze.com/blog/the-3-2-1-backup-strategy/

Backblaze is also a great backup tool for backing up your data to the cloud. For $70 per year you download an application that runs on your computer and the application does all the backing up for you. Then if your data was lost or your computer and external backup drive were destroyed in a fire or some other disaster, you can install Backblaze on your replacement device and download all your backed up data. I have Backblaze running on my family member's computers in addition to running regular on site backups with an external drive.

For more advanced users, you can use Backblaze B2 along with a backup application to further customize your backup routine and save money on long term storage. It's like a competitor to an Amazon S3 bucket. For example, I use B2 with Arq Backup for my Mac and pay about $3 per month in storage costs.

 

[SueInBoston]

Apple makes it real easy. I just sync to iCloud. it is subscription but this one I don't mind paying for. My doc folder and photos are automatically synced to the cloud and available across all my devices. I do have an "Important Stuff" folder that I also back up manually on a hard drive and store at my aunt's house.

 

[disneychrista]

Thank you @leebee for this spin off. I have been looking at this myself. I don’t have anywhere off site to store so I’ve been looking at cloud storage. I’d love something that is done automatically.

 

[fla4fun]

I don’t have a lot of documents that need to be backed up, so those are on a flash drive and anything that isn’t a potential privacy issue, I also email a copy to myself and don’t delete the email. Photos are saved in entirety on two separate laptops and my iPad Pro at the moment, although I have been looking at an external drive to add to the mix due to the ages of my devices.

 

[CdnCarrie]

I don't use my work computer for anything but work (and checking the DIS on breaks...).
All my work is networked. Huge organization. No back up needed by me.

As for home I have very little I would need to back up - some is in the cloud (pictures) and others on a USB key. Or else I print out a hard copy.

 

[loves to dive]

Hubby is in IT security so we have backups on top of backups. On my work computer I have an external hard drive. On my laptop it has an auto backup to one of his servers and also to a cloud account. His work laptop and computer backs up to his server, to the company's backup servers and to the company's cloud backup. His personal laptop backs up to his server and to a cloud account.

 

[Cannot_Wait_4Disney]

CW4D presents EZ answers to EZ questions.

How do you back up a computer?

Slide it back. You can even say beep beep beep while doing so if you like.

 

[DLgal]

Just a note to anyone using external hard drives for backing up files:

Store the hard drive in a fireproof/waterproof safe, that you keep locked. Otherwise it's vulnerable to being destroyed or stolen.

 

[EACarlson]

The biggest question is what are you afraid of happening to it? If you're just afraid of the drive dying, get something like https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01LQQHL4...ide-us-1729820895235389000-20&geniuslink=true You plug it in, set up the software and it's backs up automatically. If you're worried about theft or environmental destruction you either need to keep a copy off site or pay to keep everything online.

 

[_19disnA]

For any type of back-up I would first start off by considering the amount of data you are talking about as well as how long you actually want to keep it. Some people keep everything just like having a file cabinet full of papers you no longer ever need. Sometimes, you would be better off deleting old files of things that are obsolete and then back-up the things you want to keep. External devices are readily available (and cheap) which allow you to easily store a LARGE volume of data. I would keep the back-up somewhere else that isn't your home so something like a fire or flood won't ruin everything. A bank safe deposit box is also a good place to keep the back-up files since it will obviously be at a different location.

How often you do a back-up would depend on how frequently data is being updated and the volume of updates. I am not a fan of online/cloud back-ups since those things can get hacked and/or if the company doing the storage happens to go out of business, you might not be able to retrieve your data.

 

[longboard55]

I use google drive, easy to use and pretty cheap. I have had issues with external drives that were sitting around a couple of years. I tried micorsoft cloud but at least back then was not good at saving folders.

 

[tvguy]

Well, I have a 17 year old desk top and a 10 year old Google tablet, so part of this year's tax refund will go for a new desk top.
My wife has a laptop, so I guess I do have a backup, but the desktop is our primary computer still. It still works fine other than the fact that more and more things are or will no longer be supported. Such a waste. I can get every part for my 1965 Mustang, but I can't get a Chrome browser that my operating system will support.

 

[sam_gordon]

For any type of back-up I would first start off by considering the amount of data you are talking about as well as how long you actually want to keep it. Some people keep everything just like having a file cabinet full of papers you no longer ever need. Sometimes, you would be better off deleting old files of things that are obsolete and then back-up the things you want to keep. External devices are readily available (and cheap) which allow you to easily store a LARGE volume of data. I would keep the back-up somewhere else that isn't your home so something like a fire or flood won't ruin everything. A bank safe deposit box is also a good place to keep the back-up files since it will obviously be at a different location.

How often you do a back-up would depend on how frequently data is being updated and the volume of updates. I am not a fan of online/cloud back-ups since those things can get hacked and/or if the company doing the storage happens to go out of business, you might not be able to retrieve your data.

The problem with an offsite backup is updating the backup becomes a pain. I'd love to have a network RAID (probably at least 1 if not 4 or better). It won't help if the house is destroyed, but solves the "hard drive" failing problem.