Randy Cassingham's Blog

Posted by Eric, Vernon Hills, IL on May 15, 2009:

As someone else already mentioned, I use mozy.com for online backups. They give you 2GB of space for free and for a few bucks a month you get unlimited space.

Also for those who worry about security, there is an option to encrypt your backup locally before it is uploaded, with a key only known to you.

I pay for my main computer to have unlimited space and use a free account on my secondary machine (in addition to local backups of important files).

They keep 30 days worth of incremental backups too which is very useful when you save over a file and then wish you could "undo" it to get the original back.

Posted by Larry, San Jose, CA on May 16, 2009:

And then there was the time when my hard drive crashed in the middle of a large backup of months of source code on a program I was developing. You can never back up too soon. It cost me hundreds of dollars (1987 dollars) to recover the files 15 seconds at a time by a recovery company. I now use Carbonite, after having used a personal backup server for years. I accept that backups need to be automatic (for me).

Posted by Cristy-Portland OR on May 17, 2009:

You are emphasizing what I have said for years. So many people have saved documents, photos, etc on their computer and eliminated the paper that clutters up their surroundings. I have run my computer with dual harddrives for years and weekly back up my emails and monthly back up my primary hard drive to my secondary hard drive. But the worry of a house fire has had me looking into on line data storage systems.

Thanks for the heads up reminder!

Posted by Greg (Chicago) on May 17, 2009:

Now, I've seen a lot of talk about online storage, but I've never used it as any kind or primary backup. I have stuff in photobucket, but it's not anything I would rely on, since anything could happen. Granted, anything could happen to any other kind of backup, but third party applications not run by me isn't something I would consider. Is that kind of thing really an reliable option?

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I'd think so -- usually. I'll bet they all have "no liability" clauses in their user agreements, though, since anything can happen ...and usually does. -rc

Posted by Harvey, Commack, NY on May 18, 2009:

Having been an IT professional for 30+ years I too know the importance of backups. I have my home PC backed up automatically at 2am every day. Once a week I do a full backup and I do incrementals the other 6 days. I keep 2 full backups. The reason for this is what do i do if there is a crash while doing the back up and today's backup is overwriting last week's. I would have nothing. I have 6 files for my incrementals, MONDAY, TUESDAY, etc. This week's Monday overwrites last week's Monday. At worst I lose a day's worth of work.

Posted by Jim Lyles, Holly, MI on May 20, 2009:

I've been backing up my home computers for years. I used tape drives for awhile, then switched to DVDs, but now I use an IDE/SATA-->USB cable kit to back up to hard drives. The cable kit allows me to buy cheap internal hard drives, which I hook up as external drives temporarily via the cable kit. When I'm not backing up to them, I keep them stored away, out of sight. I have three backup hard drives that I rotate between, and I always keep the most recent one at my work building. (Yes, I agree that an offsite back up is critical.) I do these back ups every month or two.

Meanwhile, I also do a daily backup of current working files on a 16 Gb flash drive, which allows me to also carry them easily between my work and home computers. There have been a number of cases in which I've accidentally deleted or trashed a file I was working on, which I recovered from with minimal pain thanks to my trusty flash drive.

The flash drive, cable kit, and 3 hard drives represent an investment of less than $300. I think it was money well spent.

This whole back up routine might seem a nuisance, but I was really glad I'd done it when someone broke into our house years ago and stole our computer. I'm utterly amazed at how many people (the vast majority, it seems) have absolutely no backup plan at all. If you are one of them, then for heaven's sake (or rather, your data's sake) stop in a local computer store on the way home today and buy a 500 Gb hard drive (less than $100) and a cable kit ($25) and back up your home computer TODAY. Don't put it off!

Posted by Tim, Australia on May 30, 2009:

Surely you know, Randy, that there are two kinds of user: those that HAVE experienced major hard disk failure, and those that are GOING TO experience major hard disk failure. You've just moved from one group to the other! Congratulations for making the move as smooth as possible.