Computer geeks! Need your advice.

[MikeyC]

So, I recently had a son and now I have tons of photos and videos on my laptop that I would be DEVASTATED if I lost. I'm thinking it's time to start backing up my computer.

The backup method I'm thinking would work best for me is a consumer level network attached storage (NAS) device. Right now I'm looking at a Seagate 1TB GoFlex Home drive. It's $130 on Amazon. The reviews are mixed, but it seems most people who complain are either technology inept or using the drive in very complex manners. I just want something that will connect to my home wifi network and back up files. I don't need/want to stream videos to a Xbox or anything like that.

So, anyone have any thoughts recommendations?

[Eleven]

For backup, plain old CD/DVDs have worked for me forever. I go the redundant route. Every couple months I burn a new one. It's simply a matter of dating them with a sharpie and keeping them in a stack.

[Mugen910]

Calling someone a geek and then asking for their help ...smart....:D

[Springsman]

Whatever you do, don't rely on just one thing...if you rely on that one device...chances are it's going to fail sometime....use it and also burn data dvds or buy a separate smaller external hard drive and put a second backup on it... yadda x3....otherwise you are still going to have a single point of failure.

[AD720]

That NAS would work fine for what you want to do. But like Scott said redundancy is KEY! Put your photos on the NAS, burn them to DVD's and put copies of the DVD at your parent's house, friend's house, safe deposit box.

Also, hard drives are cheap so put them all on another cheapy external drive and stick that in the safe deposit box or friend's house too. http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=5581079&CatId=4230


Photobucket pro costs a couple bucks a month (like literally $2 bucks) and offers unlimited photo storage, accessible from anywhere. You can set your albums to private and you have essentially a digital locker for your photos.

Dropbox or box.net is a bit more expensive but can work for your photos and videos.

[Chingas]

Calling someone a geek and then asking for their help ...smart....:D

Exactly.



I have way too much to put on DVD's. Even duel sided bdray wouldn't be practical. There is a nice feature with online backup. You never have to deal it unless you get ****ed. At which point, you access your files and download them back to your "fixed" computer. Sure that could take days with 1000's of Gigs but you don't have to sit there either and keep feeding another DVD in there.

Now as for NAS. Yeah. That's BadAss but it's local and has no redundancy. It's just another external mirroring your internal HD. In the past I used to install 2 identical HD's in my machines to act as a mirror backup. Worked great bit just simply needed more and more room.

I went the external route until it was ridiculous to run anything but incremental backups bit even at that it was spread thru multiple discs.




Bottom line. If your under 50 GB to backup, DLDVD are your best option. If you're 50-500 GB an external is a good choice. 500+ seek an online farm to house your backups.

[mosesbotbol]

Just email the photos to yourself via gmail or hotmail and you'll have a back up. Zip the photos into logical groups first.

[jledou]

Mozy and Carbonite are two online (cloud) services that will backup files across the internet. They are a paid service but accessible from multiple computers and they are off-site and redundant.

[Brutus2600]

As others have said, but redundancy is the name of the game.

For my personal backup, I have everything on the computer I'm using. Then every month or two I make a backup on an external drive. I also have ANOTHER identical external drive that I copy that drive onto.

I haven't done this yet, but ideally you would take that second external drive and put it somewhere else. Say at your parents house, at work (if it's secure), or a bank lock box. That way if your house ever burned down you still have all your data backed up.

Yes, it's inconvenient, but it will reduce your risk of losing your data to a very very small percentage.

You should also consider the media you're using to backup your data.

CD/DVD's can go bad, but if you keep them out of sunlight, heat, and keep them unscratched, they'll last a long time.

Hard drives can last anywhere from one week after you bought them to years and years. I've had hard drives die within a month of buying them and others that have worked for close to a decade. Consider them disposable items though, and that they will need to be replaced every couple years and never rely on just one copy.

Solid state media (SSD hard drives or thumb drives) don't have any moving or mechanical parts like regular hard drives do and can't be scratched like CD/DVD's can, but these can still get corrupted. Thumb drives are so large and have come down in price so much now days that if you have a small enough amount of data (<64gigs of data) it's quite easy to make a couple of quick copies of your data on these and have a quick and convenient backup available.

[Blueface]

I have two of the drives you refer to.
I keep one at home, hidden and one at my dad's home.

Why hidden? Think of thieves and an easy item to grab.
Why second at dad's? Thieves, fire, etc.

Call it nuts but I have now had two crashes in the past.
Also, while moving, a friend lost a box of photos on me.
I am tired of losing precious images and have found this system of mine to be very effective, with no external servers to rely on.

[Brutus2600]

I am tired of losing precious images and have found this system of mine to be very effective, with no external servers to rely on.

Yeah, call me a paranoid control freak, but I don't want to rely on any online backup, email server, or any external server for my data. I just see it as too risky if I somehow lose access to my account or the company goes under or their servers and backups get jacked up. This way it's only myself that I rely on to make sure my data is backed up and safe.

[mosesbotbol]

First question to you should've been "How big is the total size of the files you want to back up?"

[MikeyC]

First question to you should've been "How big is the total size of the files you want to back up?"

Currently it's a small amount of data. I just checked and the pictures & videos are only 4GB. My wife likely has more data to store and I'm sure I could find some work files to back up as well. Also, I would anticipate the photo and video amount to sky rocket as my son gets older.

Also, cost and convenience are a factor. I'd like something that I setup once and the backups are done on a regular basis automatically. I don't want to sit at my PC burning disks if I don't have to.

Also, I'd like to say "computer geek" is a term of endearment. ;)

[Blueface]

Currently it's a small amount of data. I just checked and the pictures & videos are only 4GB. My wife likely has more data to store and I'm sure I could find some work files to back up as well. Also, I would anticipate the photo and video amount to sky rocket as my son gets older.

Also, cost and convenience are a factor. I'd like something that I setup once and the backups are done on a regular basis automatically. I don't want to sit at my PC burning disks if I don't have to.

Also, I'd like to say "computer geek" is a term of endearment. ;)

With my grandson at three, I am now up to 40gb in photos alone, plus add videos.

For ease, the drive you describe works awesome.
With my Mac, when I connect it, it backs up latest changes automatically.
You can also go with Apple's time capsule and not only an awesome router but also an automatic back up hard drive.

[chand]

I dropped a nearly-full 1TB Seagate drive a foot or so and it did nothing but click after that. Nice storage solution foiled by my own clumsiness.

[Blueface]

I dropped a nearly-full 1TB Seagate drive a foot or so and it did nothing but click after that. Nice storage solution foiled by my own clumsiness.

I don't think that was in the manual under features.:D;s

[Neens]

I would go with external hard drives like the others have said. Easyer to use and very portable. Also in your price range you can get around 3TB worth of storage. Some of them even come with free net backup. I love the Western Digital line, been using them since I started building systems about 15 years ago. I have never had one fail to last at least 7 years with 12 being the longest running HD.

[hammondc]

I use carbon copy and copy a direct image of my HDD every sunday morning at like 3am. Then a copy of that goes to a another HDD

[tenbaseg]

My wife has 120gb+ of pictures in her library. I have automated backups that run nightly. I swap out between two 1TB external drives. Worst case scenario is that I only lose something incremental.

My biggest concern is that nothing is off-site. What I need to do is to bring it over my MIL's to just have them separated.

[JaKaacH]

Here is a good deal on a USB powered 1TB TOSHIBA USB 3.0

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822149191&nm_mc=EMC-IGNEFL012111&cm_mmc=EMC-IGNEFL012111-_-EMC-012111-Index-_-ExternalHardDrives-_-22149191-L0E

[chand]

I don't think that was in the manual under features.:D;s

What do you mean it not a feature. :sh I thought that soothing clicking sound it makes when it is on was one of those white noise sleeping devices. Learn something new eveyday. :r

[mosesbotbol]

You could buy a drive that will fit everything once a year and move it off site.

[kgoings]

Currently it's a small amount of data. I just checked and the pictures & videos are only 4GB. My wife likely has more data to store and I'm sure I could find some work files to back up as well. Also, I would anticipate the photo and video amount to sky rocket as my son gets older.

Also, cost and convenience are a factor. I'd like something that I setup once and the backups are done on a regular basis automatically. I don't want to sit at my PC burning disks if I don't have to.

Also, I'd like to say "computer geek" is a term of endearment. ;)

Get a RAID enclosure; you'll have to buy hard drives to fill it. RAID can mirror, stripe, or mirror and stripe your drives so you have redundancy and do not have to worry about losing our data because of a drive failure. If you fill up the drives you buy, you can always upgrade the drives.

Computer Geek is a compliment...

[mosesbotbol]

Get a RAID enclosure; you'll have to buy hard drives to fill it. RAID can mirror, stripe, or mirror and stripe your drives so you have redundancy and do not have to worry about losing our data because of a drive failure.

You'll need at least 3 drives for redundancy and can only store as large as the smallest drive.

At the cost of storage prices, an annual SD, Flash, or HD copied and stored away could be cheaper. Inevitablly, you want off site storage if you truly want you data protected. Anyplace you can see out your window is not off site.

[Sauer Grapes]

I use a RAID NAS, but even then you need to back the RAID up with an external you can store at another location so you have a backup in case of fire or theft. The RAID only protects again a hard drive crash, as there is an exact copy on the other drive and you can just replace the crashed drive and it automatically duplicated the good drive onto the new one again.

[St. Lou Stu]

Calling someone a geek and then asking for their help ...smart....:D
Well... is he wrong? :D

I use a 1TB usb drive that I back up files to. I also store them (pictures) on google's picasaweb.

Zippit Bao. :)