Don't be me with your computer files

[Mr. Wizard]

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.

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. BAM god punished me.

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?

[Mr. Plow]

What are the best recommendations for cloud backup?

[ChiefsFanatic]

Originally Posted by htismaqe

I have so many horror stories from work. Just so you know, I work in IT operations now (used to be an engineer and then an architect).



In EVERY industry, data loss is a no-no. The amount of data-related regulations is staggering. Data retention and backup is not only a requirement, it's a separate practice in most companies now. It's simply too important.

Yeah, I know that data loss is a no-no in most industries. We can be audited by more than one government agency at any time, and our clients can initiate an audit at any time. Thankfully, we have only undergone one audit in the last 5 years.

We have actually been thinking about creating a new company that focuses just on data and file management & storage. It's not uncommon for us to receive around 100 requests a month for archived reports, because our clients had turnover and none of the new people know where their reports are, or they themselves experienced huge data loss.

We work with drug manufacturers, hospitals, laboratories, and compounding pharmacies that mostly make chemotherapy drugs. It's mind-boggling how many doctors, pharmacists, and chemicals engineers that are just terrible at simple administrative tasks like filing and storing documents properly.

My ex-wife works at a big architecture company, and they offer computer aided facility management for large companies, using CAD. She had a client that had several hundred employees, and they were spread out over something like 14 floors, along with a shit-ton of computers, monitors, printers, etc. So, when the company wants to know which floor and which desk John Smith works at/on, they call her. If they want to know how many extra monitors they have, they call her. When employees or equipment gets moved, they generate a report and send the changes to her, and she updates the CAD file.

And her company makes a lot of money for that service.

Sent from my GM1915 using Tapatalk

[htismaqe]

Originally Posted by ChiefsFanatic

Yeah, I know that data loss is a no-no in most industries. We can be audited by more than one government agency at any time, and our clients can initiate an audit at any time. Thankfully, we have only undergone one audit in the last 5 years.

We have actually been thinking about creating a new company that focuses just on data and file management & storage. It's not uncommon for us to receive around 100 requests a month for archived reports, because our clients had turnover and none of the new people know where their reports are, or they themselves experienced huge data loss.

We work with drug manufacturers, hospitals, laboratories, and compounding pharmacies that mostly make chemotherapy drugs. It's mind-boggling how many doctors, pharmacists, and chemicals engineers that are just terrible at simple administrative tasks like filing and storing documents properly.

My ex-wife works at a big architecture company, and they offer computer aided facility management for large companies, using CAD. She had a client that had several hundred employees, and they were spread out over something like 14 floors, along with a shit-ton of computers, monitors, printers, etc. So, when the company wants to know which floor and which desk John Smith works at/on, they call her. If they want to know how many extra monitors they have, they call her. When employees or equipment gets moved, they generate a report and send the changes to her, and she updates the CAD file.

And her company makes a lot of money for that service.

Sent from my GM1915 using Tapatalk

It's a new age in computing/IT.

You won't find many industries that aren't only storing massive amounts of data but using that data to make business decisions. Data science and analysis is HUGE business, one of the foundational disciplines in IT today.

[Buehler445]

Originally Posted by Mr. Plow

What are the best recommendations for cloud backup?

There are some recs in here. I pay for Office 365 for my business. It comes with 1TB Onedrive.

[htismaqe]

Originally Posted by Mr. Plow

What are the best recommendations for cloud backup?

I personally like Backblaze but I would just do some internet research and see what works for you.

[Al Bundy]

Originally Posted by htismaqe

External hard drives are actually cheaper than flash drives.

You can get a 4TB name-brand external HDD for $100.

A high-end 512GB USB3 flash drive will cost you $75 easy and it is:

1. not as fast as a HDD
2. not as reliable as a HDD
3. not as efficient as a HDD

For all of you using USB flash drives to backup important material - the USB connector is PHYSICALLY attached to the flash chip.

Simply inserting it into a USB port can break the drive and destroy your data forever.

I'm not trying to be a dick but I simply cannot stress enough not to use USB flash drives for backup. They're for convenience and portability but I've seen too many people burned using USB flash drives. USB flash drives always seem like a good idea until the first time you plug them in and they're not recognized because they broke.

I had a flashdrive break on me, luckily I had all that info on other flashdrives, but thank you for posting those links from amazon. Which one do you think I should order between the LaCie or ADATA?

[ToxSocks]

Originally Posted by Buehler445

There are some recs in here. I pay for Office 365 for my business. It comes with 1TB Onedrive.

That's what we use here too. Im still a little old school in that my mind just wants to save everything to the HD so im still adjusting to saving to the cloud.

We're starting up a motorcycle centric side business and i'm currently building a Shopify store for it and the cloud based stuff has been really convenient. What use to involve transferring of files via USB looks more like this now:

Go to shop, take picture with cell phone

Upload pictures directly to cloud via app

Go back to office, open cloud, edit pictures in Adobe and save to adobe cloud

Go home, open Adobe Cloud and finish edits. Save to Adobe Cloud, save to OneDrive Cloud.

Gone are the days of plugging your phone in, drag and drop pictures, save work to USB stick, forget USB stick at work/home

[htismaqe]

Originally Posted by Detoxing

That's what we use here too. Im still a little old school in that my mind just wants to save everything to the HD so im still adjusting to saving to the cloud.

We're starting up a motorcycle centric side business and i'm currently building a Shopify store for it and the cloud based stuff has been really convenient. What use to involve transferring of files via USB looks more like this now:

Go to shop, take picture with cell phone

Upload pictures directly to cloud via app

Go back to office, open cloud, edit pictures in Adobe and save to adobe cloud

Go home, open Adobe Cloud and finish edits. Save to Adobe Cloud, save to OneDrive Cloud.

Gone are the days of plugging your phone in, drag and drop pictures, save work to USB stick, forget USB stick at work/home

OneDrive you should be able to map as a folder/drive within Windows so you can use it just like a location on your local hard drive.

If you're dealing with pictures, that's the best part of cloud, especially if all your devices are on the same cloud ecosystem. There's no "moving" to it, they're just there.

[htismaqe]

Originally Posted by Al Bundy

I had a flashdrive break on me, luckily I had all that info on other flashdrives, but thank you for posting those links from amazon. Which one do you think I should order between the LaCie or ADATA?

Personally, I would go with the Lacie because that's my personal preference.

However, looking at the reviews and the cost, I would tell YOU to go ADATA.

[ToxSocks]

Originally Posted by htismaqe

OneDrive you should be able to map as a folder/drive within Windows so you can use it just like a location on your local hard drive.

If you're dealing with pictures, that's the best part of cloud, especially if all your devices are on the same cloud ecosystem. There's no "moving" to it, they're just there.

It is, that's how i use it.

But i have this habit of opening the file folders in my HD and saving there (as ive been doing for years) instead of opening/saving the SAME EXACT files i transferred over to the OneDrive.

I need to get into the habit of using the OneDrive folder every time.

[Al Bundy]

Originally Posted by htismaqe

Personally, I would go with the Lacie because that's my personal preference.

However, looking at the reviews and the cost, I would tell YOU to go ADATA.

I just ordered the ADATA, thank you.

[Demonpenz]

You can't be as dumb as me. When I worked at a photo shop some kids gave me a USB to make pictures of their recently deceased grandma. I took the usb stick and threw it in the river. **** kids

[DaFace]

Originally Posted by htismaqe

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.

Not QUITE true. It does 30-day versioning and up to a year if you pay extra for it. The problem is that if you delete something and don't realize it for 30 days (or a year), you're screwed.

I do a hybrid. I use Dropbox for day-to-day stuff and then just manually back it all up to a different drive once in a while.

[Shiver Me Timbers]

Originally Posted by Mr. Wizard

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.

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. BAM god punished me.

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?

Wizard thanks for the post. I just checked my back up settings and found it was only backing up once a week. Changed it to 11 pm every day.
Sorry for your "loss" but you might have helped me save some bacon

[htismaqe]

Originally Posted by DaFace

Not QUITE true. It does 30-day versioning and up to a year if you pay extra for it. The problem is that if you delete something and don't realize it for 30 days (or a year), you're screwed.

I do a hybrid. I use Dropbox for day-to-day stuff and then just manually back it all up to a different drive once in a while.

It's not part of the base package. I would strongly recommend anybody that wants to use DropBox frequently go ahead and pay for it. So many extra features and so much more storage.

The free service would be a lot more useful if it weren't so limited. In a way, that's Apple's problem - I use iCloud to sync/save my contacts and stuff but I have to backup my own photos because I have well over 50GB of pics and movies and don't want to pay extra when I could spend that money on an actual cloud backup service like Backblaze.