Don't be me with your computer files
 

:mad::mad: I just lost all of my computer data dating back 20 years. Long story short I had it BACKED UP on a 2tb portable hard drive which I dropped. It's trashed. 2 different sysops looked at it. I can send it to the company and pray but that bill starts at $1000.00 They took it apart and its running but the arm is scratching back and forth across the disk. No light comes on and it is not recognized by any computer I plug it into. 20 years of taxes, personal files, small business files and lesson plans and lessons from my 30 years of teaching welding - gone.:mad::mad:

Truthfully I had it backed up on my computer c drive which had to be re-imaged.
My though was, it gets re-imaged, I copy everything back, now I still have two copies. :deevee:BAM god punished me.:deevee::deevee:

Don't be me, back that stuff up twice. I would do it on "the cloud" but know little about it. Mr. Wizard is wrong again!

PS is the cloud a good idea for an old dog like me?

I know a place in Delaware that might be able to have a gander...

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That's why you have to backup your files on a floppy disk

Yeah, I put all my important spreadsheets and stuff on my desktop and copy my desktop from time to time on a spare usb. Which reminds me I need to do that. Sorry that happened to you. You'll find that life still goes on though.

I still have a DVD burner but yeah, it's been a couple years since I did a real backup. Of course, i have taxes, etc. all printed on paper and in a filing cabinet but lots of photos could be lost over the past couple years.

e-Hoarding: Buried Alive

Dude.

Always back everything up AT LEAST twice.

I actually do hourly -> daily -> weekly -> monthly rollups to two different destinations, one of which I keep in a fireproof safe.

I'm worried I'll lose all my contacts stored on my phone if I drop it in the lake. How can I back that up???

yeah, spare USB is a better idea, I've been considering a networked drive with scheduled backups but just haven't done it.

Guys,

You can buy 4TB of storage in the size of a cigarette box for less than $100.

Don't use DVD's, USB flash drives, or anything like that.

Buy two external hard drives and use them both.

I used to have a NAS when I had a lot more machines to backup but now I just use external drives.

Of course, I'm on Mac so Time Machine does the heavy lifting for me.

Please tell me you don't have a flip phone still.

How much would it cost. I am willing to try, just not gonna drop $1000.00 for them to start and then $50.00 per hour plus parts. I would but I got kids in college man.

But a USB is the size of one cigarette.

If you get a subscription to office 365 it gives you a 1TB One Drive Account. It acts like a file on your computer but is stored in the cloud.

On the farm we use dropbox because we had dropbox before one drive existed.

That's where it's at my man.

ROFL No but I'm not computer smart!

They're also slower, more limited in both size and file system options, and wear out. Flash chips have a limited life and can fail when you least expect it, losing all of your data.

A good mechanical drive is cheap and potentially last for years of continuous writes.

I did, thats the point

I you have an iPhone with an Apple account or an Android with a Google (or Samsung) account, you should be able to set up your contacts to backup to the cloud automatically. In fact, your phone should be setup that way by default.

Is the cloud a good idea?

The chances of them being able to recover your data is really small.

Very few of these data restoral techniques are worth the cost.

Still have my trusty 250MB Iomega zip drive.

Depends on what you are looking for and what you are storing.

You can store files and photos on Microsoft's cloud if you're on Windows, it's built in but I'm not sure how much storage you get.

Some services, like Amazon only allow unlimited storage for photos.

Most cloud plans cost money per month if they're standalone, like Backblaze or iDrive.

The big benefit of cloud backup is you don't have to worry about a disaster. If your house burns down or gets wiped out by an earthquake, you won't have to worry about it.

I'm old fashioned in a way that feels like using that shit gives microsoft or whoever runs that cloud has access to all my info.

ROFL

Dude, your phone is connected to the internet. They already have access to that data in transit if they really want it.

Most online services encrypt your data at rest and some of them don't even have a means to decrypt it without your intervention.

That sucks

good news though you can probably re-download all that porn again

I hate to disagree but flash drives are bulletproof. External hard drives are NOT.
They can't take any punishment at all. I dropped this one 6" and its done????
I know my job requires alot of moving around from computer to computer but Never again.

I would LOVE a flip phone like my old nokia from 2o years ago. Bulletproof

Flash drives aren't bulletproof. That's just the thing. It's really easy to break the solder on the flash, making it useless. Plugging them and unplugging them over and over can actually lead to them breaking. They also have a limited number of writes before they're just worn out. Flash drives make for decent file storage but they suck for actual backups.

If dropping an external HDD is that big of a problem for you (I've personally never dropped one myself but I don't generally carry them around either, that's what flash drives are for. :)), get a protected one.

Several companies make external enclosures covered in silicone or other materials to make them drop and shock-proof.

PLEASE post a link! My job teaching over 100 kids in a huge welding shop with CNC capabilities is hard as hell on technology.

I finally got my old VHS tapes digitalized. Very happy seeing the kids 1st Christmas, 2nd birthday party etc.

There are several companies that will get data even off a physically broken hard drive.

I back up the most crucial files on a 500GB thumb drive. Then full backup to an external hd. Backup all photos from phone and computer to Amazon for free.

I backup via Time Machine and I have my data in a RAID. As I understand it, a RAID means that there are 2 drives that appear as one and when the computer saves to the RAID, it saves to both drives at the same time. I have them encrypted and use a VPN.

Sounds good, but .... a friend of mine had his office burn down and he said he had no off-site backup. I think about that every 6 months and resolve to do something about that but then forget about it for another 6 months or so.

That sucks man but I've got one even worse. I lost 20 years worth of porn because my external drive failed and I didn't back it up. 2TB worth. You ever seen a grown man cry?

Don't be me with your computer files.

Sounds like the beginning of a late night infomercial.
The one right before male stamina pills

I’ve broke them before. It sucks.

:eek::eek:gross:eek::eek:

I sent a mechanical hard drive off for data restoration many years ago and got it all back. A few drips of coffee shorted the hard drive. Non-heroic means we’re ineffective in recovering the data.

https://www.backblaze.com/backup-pricing.html

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You can probably find most of the pron you lost on the web. You'll be ok.

Use Carbon Cloner software...it can make a bootable back-up complete with your OS. If your main HD fails...you can simply plug it in and are good to go. Replace the failed drive and reverse the cloning process.

Dont like Time-machine as you cant get back up and running immediately.

I have 18TB of G-tech drives...which all have a cloned back-up.

There is nothing worse than kicking yourself for not addressing this...after it happens.

Honestly, if the read arm scratched the platter, then you're ****ed. Sorry. No recovery place is going to bring back that kind of damage. They usually recover data due to failed read arm or other failure that still results in all the data platters being preserved. They can then remove the platters, and install them into a working drive. Data is scattered across multiple platters, and it's all interconnected by a bit mapping sequence. If one platter is damaged, it's just a jigsaw puzzle of corrupted bits.

My advice is to always maintain a physical backup as well as a cloud backup. External drives fail as well. Cloud backup is redundantly secure. There's lots of free services like boxdrop.com, box.com, OneDrive, etc. That usually gives you ~5GB of free cloud storage. If you pay a small ~$5 monthly fee, you can usually upgrade your cloud storage to ~50GB. Cloud services are safe and secure.

Nah, flash drives are certainly not bulletproof. I've seen more fail than I could keep count. Not just from drops and mishandling either. Just flat failure.

Flash media tends to have an advantage, because there aren't any moving parts. So you're usually more protected against drops and bumps. But they still can fail just the same. Too much heat, overvoltage, undervoltage, and sometimes just for the **** of it.

Double backups in different locations!

3-2-1 principle

3 copies, 2 locations, working from 1.

1 set of files are your working files, at your primary location. Then another backup copy at that location. Then, a third copy at a different location (can be cloud). Backblaze as mentioned is the most user friendly.


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To hell with it, this old man is headed for the cloud. I have been in the same job for 31 years, tweaked my job about 15 years ago due to burnout and been happy since. EXCEPT they are always asking us to learn something new. Nothing new in teaching, either you can teach or you cant. Well now Im gonna learn something new dammit.

https://www.dropbox.com/individual?c...98d9384c4bcb4L

You can thank me later.

One of the inventors of Dropbox used to be a ChiefsPlanet regular....then he became a billionaire and doesn't have time for us anymore.

I have used a few Lacie drives and really like them.

https://www.amazon.com/LaCie-Rugged-...02&sr=8-4&th=1

But there's tons of them out there, just look for "shock proof external HDD".

This one has almost 5000 positive reviews.

https://www.amazon.com/ADATA-Waterpr...xpY2s9dHJ1ZQ==

Depends on the type of RAID. RAID 1 is indeed 2 drives replicated one to the other.

Keep in mind that RAID is for uptime in case a drive fails. It's not really for backup. If your RAID controller fails or something similar, you will have a hard time recovering your data because the individual disks are RAID and not in a readily-readable format.

Drops of coffee is a bit different than the armature scratching the platter, which is what he described.

Not true.

You can restore from an external Time Machine drive in a few minutes, depending on the amount of data, just like you can with Carbon Copy Cloner and other imaging software.

In addition, you can boot from a Time Machine backup in a pinch.

Dropbox is not a backup solution.

If you go cloud, you might still want a portable drive. The cloud is great for sharing files and storing backups offsite but it's not always accessible and available in a pinch.

Why? [/donger]

It takes 3 hours+ to clone my 2 TB boot drive. With a Carbon Cloned boot...its as fast as turning your computer off/on...just plug in your copied drive. That's key to me..no time lost. Once it's cloned...it just updates the new files since the previous time. I think it's a great method.

Does Time Machine clone your OS too...in case of total drive failure? If you have total drive failure...you would still have to replace the drive first. A 2nd cloned drive is plug and play...and allows you to work while finding a new drive.

I had to time machine a laptop for a friend...this was a few years back...and remember thinking this method sucks.

I buy a new drive...clone my computer...then put it back in the box in the closet.

Yeah, Time Machine is a disk image. You can restore to a completely new drive, just like you can with Carbon or Acronis.

And no, you can't swap drive like that, although that's something you could do with Disk Utility if you really wanted to.

The benefit of Time Machine is that it's a differential backup, file history, and a disk image. And it's built in the MacOS and just works.

It's really only for backing up or sharing files.

It doesn't do version updating/history or anything that a true backup solution does.

OK

Like I was a saying...you cant run your computer FROM Time Machine. It's a good safety net...but you will be out of commission for an afternoon. That's
the benefit of having a bootable clone...probably a wise decision to do both.

LOL

Sorry about that.

Dropbox is for STORING and sharing files. It keeps a copy of a single file at a single point in time.

A good backup solution can keep a version history and a change log of individual files, allowing for point-in-time restoral.

Also, a good backup solution backs up more than just productivity and media files, allowing you to truly "pick up where you left off".

I have two machines (4 actually, 2 Macs and 2 PC's) so being able to restore instantly really isn't really a big deal for me.

But yeah, for most people having both would be ideal. The image for instant restoral and the Time Machine for files and stuff.

I don't back up my travel photos because if I lose them then I have an excuse to go back.

That's stupid and pointless though. You don't want to run your computer from your backup copy. I mean, you could absolutely make a bootable clone from a Time Machine backup. At that point it's not a backup copy though. You've now got duplicate images that don't sync.

You can take a Time Machine backup and clone it to an external drive if you want, and then boot from that. But your criticism doesn't make a lick of sense on its own.

You're definitely correct. But I don't get the sense that the OP needs versioning of files. Maybe I'm wrong, but I wanted to make sure he knew the difference.

For what it's worth, you can absolutely leverage dropbox to do automated Windows system backups of whatever desired folders/data you choose: https://help.dropbox.com/installs-in...omputer-backup

Dropbox Business even allows for versioning with a 10yr retention policy...

I recently sent a hard drive off to get everything recovered, including my entire music collection. It cost me a thousand bucks.

For that price I could have just not been a dipshit and had iDrive backing everything up to the cloud for TWENTY YEARS ($50/year for 5 TB).

Don't be a moron. I won't be going forward.

doesnt everything just back up on the cloud if you use a microsoft laptop? automatically?

Man...you just cant help yourself trying to make everything a personal attack.

Some of us dont want to wait an afternoon while we clone from TM...I will never have a down computer for more than 3 minutes due to drive issues.

I also wont be sending all my personal information to a 3rd party cloud vendor...people can trust them if they want but I dont like signing off on a corporation having a clone of my computer.

If Biden had my method...he wouldn't have had his computer compromised.

Also having a bootable external drive means I can run my computer set-up in different locations...

I havent run a Mac desktop from it's internal drive in 8 years...I use G-tech externals.

Google drive bruh

You are not actually doing a backup though. You're simply running your OS from an external drive. That's why your strategy doesn't make any sense. You can't do a Time Machine backup to an active boot drive. That's a fact.

Regardless, a 200GB Time Machine backup on SSD takes about 30-45 minutes to restore. I know because I've done hundreds of them on every different model of Mac available.

Also, the idea of 3rd party cloud vendors accessing your private data is laughably dumb. If you knew the first thing about how the encryption worked, you'd realize how silly you sound.

Yeah, Google Drive should also give you 10GB free, and you can configure Google Drive to do automated OS/select data backups as well.

https://fossbytes.com/backup-hard-dr...and-sync-tool/

I'd still recommend getting an external like the one htis referenced above for local backups regardless....

Yeah...just like Mac programmed a back-door into their OS.

I have a 2 TB boot...so that makes your 30 minutes retrieval about 5 hours in my case. I back up every few weeks...unless I'm in the studio. That's why I said TM would be good to use in conjunction.

If your internal computer drive tanks...and you dont have a bootable OS external...youre shit out of luck. Many times the conflict could be resolved...

Back door into their OS? LMAO... OK, bud.

No, you're completely wrong. But we're way off topic now, and this is the last I'm commenting on your goofy ass. Good day.

Maybe I should rephrase...you're shit out of luck for the next few hours...and that's if your internal drive was just corrupted and hasn't failed.

Another option for comparison...

Box.com gives you 100GB of cloud storage for $5/month: https://www.box.com/pricing

They also offer Cloud backup of whatever data you want: https://www.box.com/cloud-backup

And also offer file versioning for an additional fee if you need that: https://support.box.com/hc/en-us/art...ersion-History

I have accounts with Dropbox, Box.com, OneDrive, and GoogleDrive. I probably use Box.com the most because I have an unlimited quota with them via work and can use that from any location or device. But their throughput is kinda lousy sometimes. Especially with large files. Dropbox is probably the best in terms of performance from all devices, but they are the most expensive for storage, and I only have a free account. GoogleDrive has crazy good performance for me, but mostly because I have Gigabit GoogleFiber at home. Which includes a free TB of online storage which is crazy fast for everthing, but only available to GoogleFiber customers. Without GF it wouldn't be worth the price. MS OneDrive is meh.

Always remember...nothing is free.

I don't know if anyone said this yet, but redundancy, redundancy, redundancy.

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Has anyone insulted/er, consulted Clay on this. He spoke of reclaiming data off a customer's HDD

That's another benefit of having a bootable external...you can use it to wipe your internal drive in case of it needing repairs.

At this point you can get a Seagate portable for $50 bucks..and a Carbon Cloner trial is free...duplicate your drive and put it on the shelf...set a calendar alert to update.