Backing up your PC and all your past work

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Doug_FL

Well-known member
Joined
Dec 25, 2011
Posts
45
Location
FL
In the past, when I worked for an organization, supporting users and maintaining their info system. As far as backing up individuals PCs, we instructed
them to save important files and unfinished work, to the main server. If their local machine crashed, we would then just replace that PC. The user would
still have all files, if they saved em on the server.

Then we would reload the PC, if it was worth saving. The hard drive would be reformatted and the OS and all programs reloaded. This would get rid of
any and all problems. What I see happening today, with backing up using an image, is you're possibly saving the problem, or part of the problem, that
is the reason the PC had issues in the first place. As opposed to a totally fresh start. I'm not sure, that kind of backup is such a good thing!

If I'm missing something, please let me know.
 
I am a fanatic about backups. I don't do a disc image of the OS, I only back up my data to many different places.  I always mail a current copy of my backup to myself at my mailbox in Vegas so it is not with me. If the OS crashes or I want to reinstall it I use the recovery discs I made at the time I bought the laptop to reinstall the OS and then install my programs and data from my backups. I don't back up the installed program, I back up the exe file. Since I never allow malware or virii on my system I rarely have to reinstall anything.
 
I use dropbox to back up my work files (www.dropbox.com).  I also have a portable hard drive that I do a back up to, once or twice a day.  This gives me an off-site and an on-site backup.
 
Operating systems are pretty darn stable these days.
If you have an image of when it worked, that is invaluable IMO. My time is not free. It takes a long time to reinstall all the stuff I have gathered and use.
I use images to back up systems that:
1) are critical
2) I know will be a huge pain to get put back together
3) are on a user's computer who can be a real nitemare to hang around with :D

Data always goes on a server, that gets backed up to another server, in another town. I sleep well.
 
One advantage of using image plus incremental backups is if there is a problem, you can revert to any point in time for which you have an incremental snapshot.  My backups consist of a full image on the 1st of the month and nightly incrementals throughout the month.  I can then either restore the entire system to any date in the past 2 months (I keep 2 months of daily backups available) or any specific file(s) from any of those daily snapshots.

That's only a small part of my overall backup schema, but is the most important and most used.
 
To back up my files, I simply created an email account with gmail.  I email the files to myself at that account and it is like a virtual filing cabinet.  I can access the files from any computer anywhere, which has saved me more times than I can count.

I also use memory sticks to back up files, I have external hard drives, but really, emailing the files to that email account (which I've never given the address to anyone) is the easiest way to do it.  Also, I teach online classes and get a lot of viruses (student humor) and I go through computers fairly often, the email back up system makes accessing the files easy, but it also makes it easy to get them onto the new computers.

One of the problems with backing up files is most people keep their backed up files in the same location as their computer.  If there is a fire, you lose everything.  They say back up files and put them in a different location.
 
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