Why do you all waste your time and money to backup “in the cloud?”
Go out and buy a 2 TB external hard drive. Plug it into your computer. If you’re using Windows 7, set up a back up (Control Panel > Backup and Restore). If you’re using an Apple product, set up the time machine.
This keeps your personal information local to you and it doesn’t eat up your Internet bandwidth.
Yes, we have a 2 terabyte drive in the back and wirelesssly back up with Time Machine all day long. Makes more sense than relying on someone else.
Don’t forget to periodically archive your files onto some kind of hard media, such as DVD, then store those archives somewhere besides your house. This is in addition to your backup. You’ll probably never need the archives, but if a catastrophe strikes, you’ll be glad you made them.
I used to use a seagate external 1TB mirrored drive for backups.
Then some disgruntled employee at seagate pushed out a firmware update. Turned it into a brick.
No solution is perfect and the cloud is very good at some things. These tools back files up as you make changes to them and don’t require you to do anything.
“Go out and buy a 2 TB external hard drive. Plug it into your computer. If you’re using Windows 7, set up a back up (Control Panel > Backup and Restore).”
That is a good suggestion. And if you want to go cheaper, buy a USB storage device such as Sandisk Cruzer which costs $12-24 depending on capacity. It protects your data by using a password to access whatever is stored.
You can then use Window’s Explorer to backup files or use more sophisticated software. I use a program called EF-Commander since it shows me two panels of from and to folders or devices. It is a takeoff on the Norton Commander.
In my own case, very few important files change on a daily basis, so I backup mainly my MS-Money files. That is a life saver for me because of it’s ability to project cash flow months in future.
How would you mitigate fire or theft if everything is local?
I sure hope you guys have multiple external hard drives and are rotating a backup offsite.
This keeps your personal information local to you
That's exactly what you DON'T want when the house and neighborhood burn down.
-- former lead Software Administrator, Fortune 500 Company