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Online backups ???? #3080788
09/26/22 11:18 AM
09/26/22 11:18 AM
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TJP Offline OP
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I'm a bit of a novice in the area so I am hoping for a bit of advice.
I have a external hard drive setup but am not 100% sure it is set up properly. Also, knowing they can fail I set up an acct. with I-drive.
I later found out that they do not back up the "system" but rather just documents/ folders etc. that are non system related. OK
So then I opened another with Carbonite that supposedly backs everything up. Recently I keep getting notices that the weekly back ups are failing even though I have it set for daily. When I call support it' usually someone who can't speak english very well frown down

What I a trying to accomplish is When the system dies, I buy a new one and transfer all the files onto it. Not quite sure how that will work with Windows 11 as I am running 10. I have no issues with 10 but a new system will likely come loaded with 11. Obviously I know very little about this area. In the past i have gone to a small businessthattook care of my needs. However, they have now become a bigger businness and are focusing on corporate accounts frown So My idea is to not have to rely on an outside source. Any help ?
TIA beer

Re: Online backups ???? [Re: TJP] #3080805
09/26/22 12:00 PM
09/26/22 12:00 PM
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Andrewh Offline
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a few questions.

do you truly want a back up solution, or just copies of your files somewhere?

do you need off site backup? or was that just convenient?

how much data do you need to back up?

do you just want to pay someone to take care of your data? or would you do it yourself if it were simple?

what kind of budget?

Re: Online backups ???? [Re: Andrewh] #3080858
09/26/22 03:04 PM
09/26/22 03:04 PM
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Call me old school or non trusting but my backing up mainly consists of copying the files I don't want to loose to an external hard drive or second computer.
When something breaks I would rather do a fresh install of everything and hopefully speed things up a bit then copy back all the programs and bloated files that go along with them being used and probably updated over several years, That;s mainly for windows computers. For my imac I mostly let time machine do it's thing.

I don't like cloud backups trusting someone else with my files or that it'll all be there and work when I need them, plus sometimes it can be slow to copy back and forth,

Last edited by 5thAve; 09/26/22 03:06 PM.
Re: Online backups ???? [Re: 5thAve] #3080865
09/26/22 03:22 PM
09/26/22 03:22 PM
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Have you thought about the simple but very effective high volume thumb drive? No moving parts to fail and they work well as long as you do not misplace it.


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Re: Online backups ???? [Re: Mr PotatoHead] #3080874
09/26/22 03:50 PM
09/26/22 03:50 PM
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Originally Posted by Mr PotatoHead
Have you thought about the simple but very effective high volume thumb drive? No moving parts to fail and they work well as long as you do not misplace it.


thumb drives, sd cards and ssd's all fail at some point. Trust me, I have had several die over the years.
no moving parts doesn't ensure it won't become un-readable.
CD, DVD and blue ray also fail, just sitting on a spool.

Re: Online backups ???? [Re: Andrewh] #3080944
09/26/22 07:26 PM
09/26/22 07:26 PM
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I go by this method of 3-2-1 backups for my files and pictures. I use backblaze for my online backups.

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/the-3-2-1-backup-strategy/

Re: Online backups ???? [Re: Andrewh] #3080951
09/26/22 07:37 PM
09/26/22 07:37 PM
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CD, DVD and blue ray also fail, just sitting on a spool

Until the surface the media is burned on starts to flake off.

I backup things in two ways a newer HD and DVD-s. But I do use thumb drives and luckily have not been burned yet.

If in the cloud, isnt one just using the same we have all mentioned here?



Originally Posted by Andrewh
Originally Posted by Mr PotatoHead
Have you thought about the simple but very effective high volume thumb drive? No moving parts to fail and they work well as long as you do not misplace it.


thumb drives, sd cards and ssd's all fail at some point. Trust me, I have had several die over the years.
no moving parts doesn't ensure it won't become un-readable.
CD, DVD and blue ray also fail, just sitting on a spool.


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Re: Online backups ???? [Re: Mr PotatoHead] #3080959
09/26/22 08:02 PM
09/26/22 08:02 PM
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sort of.
it is still a hard drive on a server somewhere.
but when I did server stuff, it was something like 14 hard drives on a raid 5 array, with a hot spare.
literally 3 hard drives could fail before you lost data, or I guess 2 while it was rebuilding.
generally the red light means that drive was on its way out and I had a drawer full of replacements, with some replacements in transit.
So I had at least 2 spare drives per array sitting in a desk drawer waiting for a red light to pop.
plus critical servers were on tape backup every night with tapes rotated out.

so you are paying for someone to do all the backup work for you so they are responsible for losing data instead of you juggling all the parts yourself.

could they still screw up and lose your data, sure.
and I am sure they have disclaimers in their contracts to absolve them of all wrong doing if it happens.
but theoretically it would have to be some serious disaster to lose it all, or some one screwing up pretty hard core.
of course the less you pay, the more likely they could lose it.

I do several levels of backup/ copies.
some of these things aren't considered backups in the real world, but work for my personal stuff.
I have a spare drive internal to the machine that I run sync toys2 on every night. so all my files get backed up there from the main drive it sits on.
I have a NAS running a raid array, that can lose 1 drive, and still not lose data, with a hot spare in the box, it also has sync toys2 using it as a mirror.
I have a second NAS that everything from the first NAS copies to when it gets new files.
once a year or so, I burn everything again on blue ray in case an old copy got messed up.

NAS, drives, burner, etc. I probably have nearly 3k in backup gear.
that is about 5 tb of storage capacity, but only using about half of it.

IT can get expensive or you can do it pretty cheap. just depends on what you are trying to accomplish.
2 is 1, 1 is none. lol.

Re: Online backups ???? [Re: Andrewh] #3080981
09/26/22 08:55 PM
09/26/22 08:55 PM
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TJP Offline OP
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Originally Posted by Andrewh
a few questions.

do you truly want a back up solution, or just copies of your files somewhere?

do you need off site backup? or was that just convenient?

how much data do you need to back up?

do you just want to pay someone to take care of your data? or would you do it yourself if it were simple?

what kind of budget?


I'd hope for a complete online back up including operating system.

I'd prefer offsite in she event of a fire, tornado etc.

Current C drive shows 238 GB (I think)

I'm assuming if offsite, I have to pay ?

Would do it myself if it were simple

As cheap as possible wink

I do worry about offsite being hacked work

thanks for your questions and possible input beer


Re: Online backups ???? [Re: TJP] #3080998
09/26/22 09:47 PM
09/26/22 09:47 PM
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You don't really need to back up the operating system. But you should consider something like an Icloud backup for your data for the simple reason that should your house burn down your files will be safe. But I can understand where this would raise trust issues with the tinfoil hat crowd

Re: Online backups ???? [Re: Stanton] #3081037
09/27/22 07:50 AM
09/27/22 07:50 AM
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so Idrive does do what you want.
but you have to go to the first paid tier level to get the operating system backed up.
You don't get enough space for the free version.
typically your operating system is going to suck up close to 100GB of space or more.
free tier only gives you 10gb.
that would be enough normally for just files and such you want to back up, but not the OS.

what you want to do is get an initial back up of the entire drive by making an image of it.
this gives you a base line that they can store.
then do the incremental backups. so it stores any changes to the machine after the base line.

if the machine dies and you can repair it then you can reimage the drive with the base line image and then restore the incremental backups to get all your data back.
That is how it is supposed to work.

in real life, that machine is probably not worth the money to fix. since you would have to pay someone to fix it.
If it were mine, I would probably have the spare parts to bring it back, but knowing it was on its last legs, just to get my data off of it.
But I also have the skills to restore that image to a different machine, and continue from there if I wanted to. That is not an easy thing to explain, so suffice it to say if your machine dies, the operating system image isn't really useful.
so as a poster said above, you really should only care about the changed files.
what will happen is you get a new computer and recover the files you used, not the operating system.

Re: Online backups ???? [Re: Devil] #3081038
09/27/22 07:54 AM
09/27/22 07:54 AM
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Originally Posted by Devil
I go by this method of 3-2-1 backups for my files and pictures. I use backblaze for my online backups.

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/the-3-2-1-backup-strategy/


My son (who has a BS in Computer Network and System Administration) set me up with a Synology dual drive housing with 2 SSD drives. One drive acts as the shared drive for our 3 office computers, and files are stored there for access by all. that drive backs up immediately to the second, identical, drive in the housing giving me immediate onsite backup. I've had the primary drive fail (still in warranty), and with a few clicks was back up and running. The second drive backs up to BackBlaze in the cloud (their servers). If I understand correctly, BackBlaze keeps copies of all of the files by date. You pay them to store your files, and you have to pay them for retrieval. I think one time we needed a specific file and the cost was a couple of dollars. In the event of a total loss (fire, tornado, etc.), you can contact them and pay to have all of your data put on a drive and overnighted to you anywhere in the US. Basically I have on- and off-site backups and if I get there and the building is gone this morning, I can go buy 3 new laptops and hardware and be in business tomorrow.

Re: Online backups ???? [Re: nuthinbutmopar] #3081111
09/27/22 12:05 PM
09/27/22 12:05 PM
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thanks to all that responded. After thinking it through with your suggestions /comments, I really don't need the OS but rather everything else.
Silly question,
Would that everything else include things like printers, drivers and anything else outside of the OS (windows 10 in this case)?
thanks again beer

Re: Online backups ???? [Re: TJP] #3081115
09/27/22 12:12 PM
09/27/22 12:12 PM
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Originally Posted by TJP
thanks to all that responded. After thinking it through with your suggestions /comments, I really don't need the OS but rather everything else.
Silly question,
Would that everything else include things like printers, drivers and anything else outside of the OS (windows 10 in this case)?
thanks again beer


Nope, generally the OS will pick that up on setup. All you need is what's called a home folder in Linux, documents, photos, videos and downloads if you want.


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Re: Online backups ???? [Re: 3hundred] #3081125
09/27/22 01:08 PM
09/27/22 01:08 PM
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yeah, that isn't normally needed anyway.
most OS"s from windows 8 on included a lot of standard drivers.
printer installs would have to be done again on the new machine.

Really you are looking to keep anything you downloaded, created, or changed.
mostly work stuff would be word, excel, power point etc.

software that creates save files that you need would need to be included.
like turbo tax or quick books.
you would probably need to standardize where you save those things so the system knows to back them up, but that is a guess since I don't use it.

Re: Online backups ???? [Re: Andrewh] #3081327
09/28/22 06:47 AM
09/28/22 06:47 AM
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I use external hard drives for photos and documents. Sometimes I just throw them on there in the main back up folder I created and sometimes I organize them a bit better. I figure at least hey ones tossed in the main folder are there in case something happens. I manually copy and paste them before deleting them off the computer. I had some old family photos my grandpa gave me on CD's and I had them all added to the external hard drive I had. Then the hard drive wouldn't connect one day. The port where the USB went to communicate the computer was bad. Best Buy wanted $300 or something ridiculous to attempt to fix it or transfer data and no guarantee it would work. I took the cover off and rigged it so it would hold a connection long enough to dump it onto my computer. Then I got 2 more external hard drives and backed it up to each of those. I now have 2 external hard drives that are different brands, same capacity, and hold my files. I figure what are the odds of both going at the same time? Was scary losing photos that were that old and all the work my grandpa put into backing them up since they weren't digital when he did it.

Re: Online backups ???? [Re: MI_Custumz] #3081331
09/28/22 07:15 AM
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and that is why I have 4 copies at any given time of critical stuff.
can't get kids pictures back if the hard drive dies. so I have 4 independent copies so no 1 failure or 2 will take me out.







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