Saving Data From Your Computer

[slippery when wet]

Hello .

I wish to save data from my computer in case at any time it crashes, you know family photos/ other work that is irreplaceable,

I have always used flash/stick/pen drive to save data previously but have been advised to buy an external hard drive-what is the best as i have had conflicting advice?

Also what does 1TB/2TB mean when referring to external hard drives?

Many thanks for your help......slippery when wet

[manarak]

External hard drive is not enough to backup "irreplacable work".

First thing I would do is buy one of those:

http://www.icreatemagazine.com/reviews/review-sabio-storage-1tb-dual-raid-drive-dm2-pt/

and set it up in a RAID 1 configuration i.e. mirrored hard drives, so that one drive can fail without you losing data.

But this isn't enough for "irreplacable stuff".

Right now, there isn't much more you can do than to buy a second of these drives and mirror the contents there once more.

Nobody knows how long a Bluray Disk will hold the data before it decays, and if there will be reading devices in 40 years.

Obviously, the data will have to be transferred to newer datastores over time.

But one of these Sabios will be a good start, and don't underestimate the potential of users to make mistakes.

Read-Only files are your friends.

1TB means 1 Terabyte.

Approximatively the size of 220 conventional single-layer DVDs.

[Somtamnication]

My system is simple. USB drive for my text files and emergency recovery disk. External drive to have an image of my working drive.

Get a 1 TB drive to have multiple images on it. Google drive image, ghost. Many are free and very good.

[jybkk]

In my opinion, you don't need to save an image of your drive as it seems that what you want to protect is "standard" files such as pictures, video, office documents and so on.

Here's how I proceed:

1 - I make sure I know where my important documents are and that I always save them in the same place

2 - I setup a daily automatic backup (meaning copy) of the folders containing those files files on an external hard drive. You can follow this tutorial to do so: http://www.lifehack.org/articles/productivity/four-ways-to-automatically-backup-your-hard-drive.html

3 - I setup a cloud backup solution (files are saved on a server on internet) that protects me against theft of damage done to both the computer and the backup. I recommend 2 solutions:

• Dropbox: http://www.dropbox.com/ This one offers free storage for a few GB. This is usually enough to save things like office documents and presentations. It also allows you to easily access and synchronize these files on other devices (computers, mobile phone, etc...) and backs up every file as soon as they are modified. If you want more space you can pay for it.
• Mozy: http://mozy.com/ This one is interesting of backup of a high volumes of files. For example your pictures and videos or simply the whole computer files. It is pretty cheap and very easy to install. You can access to your files online (and restore them all or a selection).

Now, the worst that can happen would be that my house gets on fire at the same time as the cloud backup provider fails... That's pretty unlikely...

[Atmos]

the cloud solution is a good option - we were burgled April 2010 and lost all electrical/computer items etc including my external storage, usb sticks.

[krading]

Sorry to highjack this thread but I have problem saving music files from my laptop to a USB stick.

I have a MP3 player for the car that plugs into the cigarette lighter and tunes itself in through the radio.

I had no problem saving music files to an SD card for use in the player but when I try to load the files onto a USB something goes wrong and the stick sh!ts itself.

I've wiped the SD card and put it in a camera with no ill effects but I've got a few USB sticks that I don't need now that I save my stuff to an external drive and I was going to use them only for music.

Any ideas other than buy another SD and use the USBs for decorating my Christmas tree.

[slippery when wet]

Thanks for your replies.......

Just to add a little more info.....I just wish to save photos of my children, this is what I mean by irreplacable as you can never get these back once gone and perhaps a few documents in word...that is about it really.

Thanks...slippery

[manarak]

Sabio Raid 1 (or another brand)

[lopburi3]

Thanks for your replies.......

Just to add a little more info.....I just wish to save photos of my children, this is what I mean by irreplacable as you can never get these back once gone and perhaps a few documents in word...that is about it really.

Thanks...slippery

For that limited use uploading would be ideal and also having copies on a thumb drive or computer outside your normal home would give an added fallback. CD/DVD are not considered safe storage for long term by most people but nothing lost is making copies every year or so as additional safety.

[WebBangkok]

Get a good external drive that you can put somewhere and it does not move.

Dropped hard drives usually are no good.

USB stick are <deleted> up too easily in my experience, not something I would leave important documents on.

[astral]

Many users saved their names and other data with Sony................

I would not trust a Cloud.

Their relaibility, integrity and sustainablity has yet to be proved.

I trust my own backups, much as Somtamnication suggested.

For the burglary side, buy a safe, either screwed down

or too heavy to be carried away.

Not that expensive either and can be used to cameras, jewellry etc

[manarak]

Many users saved their names and other data with Sony................

I would not trust a Cloud.

Their relaibility, integrity and sustainablity has yet to be proved.

I trust my own backups, much as Somtamnication suggested.

For the burglary side, buy a safe, either screwed down

or too heavy to be carried away.

Not that expensive either and can be used to cameras, jewellry etc

It has to be a hell of a piece to be too heavy to be carried away.

And organized burglars will bring some equipment to break the wall the safe is fastened to.

Better hide the safe. Inside the floor/ground is a good place, unless everybody knows about it.

And good points about the cloud. I don't trust it at all, I think it is an open invitation to hackers and to abuse by insiders, not to mention abusive search by government agencies.

[JSixpack]

It has to be a hell of a piece to be too heavy to be carried away.

And organized burglars will bring some equipment to break the wall the safe is fastened to.

Better hide the safe. Inside the floor/ground is a good place, unless everybody knows about it.

Yawn. The farangs in Thailand aren't able to hide anything from Thai women.

Besides, burglars can just force one at knifepoint or gunpoint to reveal the safe and open it--as happened a few years ago to the owner of a Pattaya go-go, w/ loss of 2 million baht.

And good points about the cloud. I don't trust it at all, I think it is an open invitation to hackers and to abuse by insiders, not to mention abusive search by government agencies.

Hackers and gov't agencies and whoever can enjoy downloading and working on your encrypted files until the sun cools and dies, so what? For example:

http://news.techworld.com/security/3228701/fbi-hackers-fail-to-crack-truecrypt/

They wouldn't bother wasting the CPU cycles. Hacking you and searching your files, given your level of knowledge and expertise, would be trivial to accomplish via other methods.

[lopburi3]

The OP is talking about family photos. Not national security issues! An off-site cloud storage is the fallback to local storage on some form of media and to me is totally logical. The chance that your HD computer drive fails and local backup is bad and off site being destroyed at the same time is very slim indeed.

[JSixpack]

The OP is talking about family photos. Not national security issues! An off-site cloud storage is the fallback to local storage on some form of media and to me is totally logical. The chance that your HD computer drive fails and local backup is bad and off site being destroyed at the same time is very slim indeed.

Exactly.

[astral]

It has to be a hell of a piece to be too heavy to be carried away.

And organized burglars will bring some equipment to break the wall the safe is fastened to.

IME most burglars are opportunistic.

My safe stands about 60cm high and it takes 3 strong guys to lift it with the door removed.

Getting a good grip with the door in place is much more difficult, plus the door weighs quite a bit.

[Chicog]

Sorry to highjack this thread but I have problem saving music files from my laptop to a USB stick.

I have a MP3 player for the car that plugs into the cigarette lighter and tunes itself in through the radio.

I had no problem saving music files to an SD card for use in the player but when I try to load the files onto a USB something goes wrong and the stick sh!ts itself.

I've wiped the SD card and put it in a camera with no ill effects but I've got a few USB sticks that I don't need now that I save my stuff to an external drive and I was going to use them only for music.

Any ideas other than buy another SD and use the USBs for decorating my Christmas tree.

Perhaps something more descriptive than the "stick sh!ts itself" might help.

But in the meantime, a lot of those MP3 players for the car do not like NTFS format. If that's the problem, reformat it to Fat32.

[justsumhelp]

I have to agree with all the people that mentioned the cloud option, its very convenient and with services like dropbox you can setup it to watch certain folders and automatically upload new items into the cloud, plus you can share the folder or selected folders with friends, family, etc.. so they can see what you have uploaded without the need to send all the pics via email.

[manarak]

as long as it's just family pics and similar, cloud is fine.

if you want to store business related stuff, files containing sensitive information, etc. avoid the cloud.

[lopburi3]

Believe for poster with mostly photos Google Picasa is a good and perhaps free (or very inexpensive) answer.

https://www.google.com/accounts/PurchaseStorage?hl=en_US&pli=1

[manarak]

Believe for poster with mostly photos Google Picasa is a good and perhaps free (or very inexpensive) answer.

https://www.google.com/accounts/PurchaseStorage?hl=en_US&pli=1

Thew whole cloud stuff also depends on transfer speed.

I got almost a terabyte of private pix and movies, and the recent increase in resolution of pics and movies don't help either.

But my children look great in Full HD !

[JSixpack]

as long as it's just family pics and similar, cloud is fine.

if you want to store business related stuff, files containing sensitive information, etc. avoid the cloud.

No, actually the cloud can be a superior, perhaps even a critically important, backup solution--among others--for business related stuff, files containing sensitive information, etc.

And certainly a lot more convenient for those daily or weekly incremental backups than digging up a safe buried in your yard . . . .

[manarak]

as long as it's just family pics and similar, cloud is fine.

if you want to store business related stuff, files containing sensitive information, etc. avoid the cloud.

No, actually the cloud can be a superior, perhaps even a critically important, backup solution--among others--for business related stuff, files containing sensitive information, etc.

And certainly a lot more convenient for those daily or weekly incremental backups than digging up a safe buried in your yard . . . .

convenience kills security

[justsumhelp]

Once again to mirror what JSix said, If your worried about security just encrypt your files before you upload them to the cloud. If on windows useTrueCrypt. And for ubuntu users here is a good tutorial albeit dated for seemless and automatic encryption and syncing to dropbox http://pragmattica.w...-automatically/