Backing up

Just wondering what everyone uses to back up their work successfully?

I've just had a disaster where my computer has killed all my photos on my harddrive and my backup of the last 9 months has been corrupted - even the Apple Geniuses couldn't fix it.

I've lost all images of my work in the last year (not to mention holiday / family photos).

Heartbroken doesn't begin to describe it. I can't believe I've lost my portfolio I feel so freaking stupid.

I'm currently trying to put everything else I have onto an online cloud.

What do you do to avoid this sort of thing?

(please pass me a tissue as I weep quietly over my keyboard)

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Premium SupplierPermalink Reply by Peter Woolnough on January 11, 2012 at 20:35

Hi Dani,

I back up to 2 systems, one is an external hard drive and the second is i-sure this way hopefully i am covered.

I cannot imagine what it would be like to loose all that information

All the best getting sorted,

Peter

Permalink Reply by Dani Washer on January 11, 2012 at 20:40

Thanks Peter

It's horrific - am a bit overwhelmed with it at this second.

I-sure looks good value - even better than Dropbox or Sugarsync (and I like that the the price is in Pounds not Dollars!).


PRO MemberPermalink Reply by Mick Gammage on January 11, 2012 at 20:40

use one or more of the following on a regular basis

external hard drive

2nd PC on a network

laptop

cloud or similar on-line back up service

burn a CD

USB stick


PRO MemberPermalink Reply by Gary RK on January 11, 2012 at 20:45

Yep, know how you feel.

We use I-Sure through Barclays Bank (special deal). We also back up tactically to USB sticks after major work and/or attach to email and send to ourselves.

You never get bitten twice......


PRO MemberPermalink Reply by Nick @ NM Garden Services Ltd on January 11, 2012 at 21:00
I regularly backup to a network hard drive (Netgear ReadyNAS) which is in a different building to my office and hopefully won't be stolen/burnt in fire etc etc.

For the techie people it has two 1tb drives which are RAIDed together and mirror each other. This almost means it is backing up my back ups!

PRO MemberPermalink Reply by Phil Voice on January 11, 2012 at 21:01

You have my sympathies Dani. I did exactly the same thing not long after moving here to France.

I lost all of my work photos and photos of my children when they were young, not to mention photos of my home and garden in the UK. All images of our building work here were lost also.

In my case the mistake was all mine. A small speck of plaster got stuck behind a key and held it down. When I booted the machine A screen prompted me to do something and I just pressed OK. 

I now have an external hard drive and back up regularly.

I still have the hard drive of my old PC and although I have re-installed factory settings I am led to believe that the images are still saved somewhere on the disk and I will try at some stage to find someone who can explore if they are possible to retrieve.

Permalink Reply by Dani Washer on January 11, 2012 at 21:38

Oh god Phil that puts its in perspective - thank you for sharing that - what a magical day that'll be if you are able to retrieve them - I hope you do.

Thank you all for your advice - you're right I won't get bitten twice and this is exactly what I needed to know. Nick your back up of back ups sounds very very safe!

Mick - I'm considering all of those right now!

I'm well aware of how stupid I look so thankyou all for not being patronising.

Right - onwards.

Dx


PRO MemberPermalink Reply by andy@ Doughty Garden Maintenance on January 11, 2012 at 21:40

I too have learnt the hard way Dani, I lost many Gigabytes of photos, music, video's, documents. evrything i had was stored on the C drive of my computer. I had a virus problem which buggered things up, I had to re install the operating system which of course meant i had to wipe the hard drive, I almost cried as i pressed the key to begin formatting knowing i was losing so much information,

As Gary RK said you don't get bitten twice, I now back up on an external hardrive, I also have my main hard drive partitioned so I can store things on a partition which won't be formatted in the event of a reinstall.

Very important info i copy to a USB stick and i also email it to myself as an attachment so it is stored off of my system,

My condolences to you Dani, i Know exactly how you feel.

 

Permalink Reply by Daniel Gillings @ DC inc on January 11, 2012 at 21:44

Hard drive retrieval is a relatively simple process - the key is to NOT use it at all and access it via another system. If all is seems hugely lost you can recover vast amounts of data from specialist companies - I've done it many times it a former career life. You'd be looking at a cost of around £200 - but what price goes on photos.

I am with Virgin media for my broadband on a large speed tariff - as such that gives me unlimited backup which is an automatic process - if I update a file it is updated also - it is a huge relief to have that. I also use dropbox for my company folder, do the occasional backup to DVD or Blu-ray and mirror all my data to an onsite network drive.... I may be a little anal! :)

Permalink Reply by Alasdair @ TheGardenService Ltd on January 12, 2012 at 10:55

PRO MemberPermalink Reply by Paul McNulty on January 12, 2012 at 11:26

My hard-drive overheated and packed up recently, and everything was lost. A local independant computer guy got about 95% of it back though, he said it's possible to recover far more than you'd think. The way he put it, the Police can recover images from a hard drive despite offenders doing everything they can to destroy it; it's just about knowing how.

I have an external hard-drive as well, so most stuff is copied in two places. The trouble is the two are kept in the same house so a fire or burglary would lose everything. I back up critical stuff to a-drive, at least that's held safely on another continent!


PRO MemberPermalink Reply by Neal Barker @ Etesia uk on January 12, 2012 at 12:26

every thing would still be there some were on the disk as long as a compleate format was not done, you can find a couple of places online which offer recovery from the hard disk which might be worth a try.

after that i would echo other peoples comments and use a external drive for back up, this is isolated from you pc/laptop so if a virus / power problem or even user error was to wipe all data from your system you can reload from the ex drive.

also another thing you might want to do is use a 3rd party programe like norton ghost or something the same to create a system image back up every month atleast, this will give you the chance to stamp over any problems on your system, i use win 7 ultimate which dose this ghost image but i still use norton as a backup so if the main operating system is currupted im still coverd.

 

when it comes to backing up a pc there is no such thing as being paranoid and more is better

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