# How do you back up your computer? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 31, 2014, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-back-up-your-computer/680218 "2014-01-31T17:51:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Mr\_Quatro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/bc8723/32.png) [@Mr\_Quatro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr_Quatro)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2014, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-back-up-your-computer/680218/1 "2014-01-31T17:51:26Z")
Two fold reason for asking how you back up your computer … To pick up any hints and to remind you to do it often. I use one Corsair Stealth 64GB USB3 hand carry device (water proof and dust proof) I use one Seagate 1.5GB USB portable HDD and I had a SSD 250GB I installed in one computer, but forgot the log on password so I installed it on another computer as a back-up second hdd and wow it shows up with no password needed. I was lucky. Any tricks … I know to do it often, but sometimes I forget. I don’t know how I could ever do with out all of the pictures and documents and music contained on one small device. ---
**Author:** ![Twoflower](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/twoflower/32/22_2.png) [@Twoflower](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Twoflower)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2014, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-back-up-your-computer/680218/2 "2014-01-31T17:59:25Z")
Everything that matters lives on Dropbox. No further attention necessary. ---
**Author:** ![MLS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/919ad9/32.png) [@MLS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MLS)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2014, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-back-up-your-computer/680218/3 "2014-01-31T18:03:42Z")
Do you use the free version? ---
**Author:** ![TimeWinder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bcef8e/32.png) [@TimeWinder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TimeWinder)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2014, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-back-up-your-computer/680218/4 "2014-01-31T18:04:17Z")
Last line of defense: Backblaze ([www.backblaze.com](http://www.backblaze.com)) - unlimited (with some restrictions on file types and size) network backup for $5/month/computer. Secondary line of defense: I burn a BlueRay of the documents, photos, and iTunes library every couple of months and keep it at work. Primary: Time Machine to a local server on the Mac, a source control system on the PC (the PC’s pretty much just for games and programming, so most everything lives in the "cloud.') ---
**Author:** ![engineer\_comp\_geek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/engineer_comp_geek/32/504_2.png) [@engineer\_comp\_geek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/engineer_comp_geek)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2014, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-back-up-your-computer/680218/5 "2014-01-31T18:05:54Z")
I’m probably not typical, but I have a second computer that has copies of everything important on it. All of my files are also copied to an external drive which is usually powered off and disconnected (so a lightning strike might take out both machines but won’t hurt the backup files). I also have some files (mostly pictures) backed up to CDs. I copy everything manually. (which reminds me, I have a bunch of files I need to copy this weekend) My internet computer is also a separate linux box that isn’t backed up at all since it doesn’t have anything important on it. If it gets toasted somehow, I’ll just install linux on another box and use it instead. No biggie. ---
**Author:** ![beowulff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beowulff/32/542_2.png) [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2014, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-back-up-your-computer/680218/6 "2014-01-31T18:06:43Z")
I use a multi-tiered approach: 1. The entire computer is backed up with Time Machine, hourly. This allows me to retrieve earlier versions of documents and revert changes if need be. 2. All my photos are also backed up manually to DVDs and an external hard drive. 3. Critical documents that need to be shared among my devices reside on dropbox, so they are replicated on all the devices, and also backed up automatically by Time Machine. 4. Periodically (every 3 months or so), I make two bootable backups of the entire machine, and store one in my fireproof filing cabinet, and one in my safe deposit box. ---
**Author:** ![Twoflower](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/twoflower/32/22_2.png) [@Twoflower](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Twoflower)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2014, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-back-up-your-computer/680218/7 "2014-01-31T18:11:19Z")
> [@MLS](#): > > Do you use the free version? I pay Dropbox $100/year for the pro. I’m self-employed, and it’s a totally justifiable business expense. All of my files are on my desktop, my laptop, and accessible by iPhone and iPad. My desktop died suddenly a while back; I bought its replacement, set it up, signed into Dropbox, and was set. Total data loss= 0. ---
**Author:** ![Rhythmdvl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/85f322/32.png) [@Rhythmdvl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rhythmdvl)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2014, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-back-up-your-computer/680218/8 "2014-01-31T18:18:29Z")
We have a home office with Macs and PCs. We have several hundred GB of files, far too large to economically save to the cloud. All our work is done/stored on an NAS device with two mirrored drives (RAID 1). That device is backed up nightly to another NAS, also with two mirrored drives. Both devices are in the basement. Our theft-proofing is based on the idea that who the hell is going to comb through so much obvious junk in the basement to find a tiny, blinking box? The office itself (and the den, kitchen, etc) have obvious electronics and valuables. In case of monster attack, we keep the two devices in opposite corners of the basement, counting on the destruction leaving one corner relatively unscathed (or unscathed enough to allow for data recovery). All personal data (photos, etc.) is held and similarly backed up—two drives in the main machines backed up (via Acronis) to a basement-located NAS. ---
**Author:** ![Reply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reply/32/15952_2.png) [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2014, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-back-up-your-computer/680218/9 "2014-01-31T18:26:01Z")
TLDR: Don’t do it yourself, leave it to the pros. If your data isn’t super sensitive, cloud backup options are easiest. I really love Dropbox and use it for most things, but Office 2013 (or whatever they call it these days) also works very well with Microsoft SkyDrive, using it as the default save location, so that your documents are online from the moment you create them. Or if formatting doesn’t matter, you could just wean yourself off local document storage altogether and create everything in Google Docs. The thing is that these big companies invest a lot, lot more money and technology into data redundancy than you can ever hope to. It also makes sharing, collaboration, and version control a lot easier. If you’re worried about Internet failures, you can additionally back the stuff up onto your own hard drives, but the failure rates on even the best hard drives are far higher than what any of those companies have experienced so far. Local backup should supplement, not replace, online backups (again, unless your data is very sensitive). ---
**Author:** ![JerrySTL](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e274bd/32.png) [@JerrySTL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JerrySTL)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2014, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-back-up-your-computer/680218/10 "2014-01-31T18:26:15Z")
At home I have a 3 TB USB3 external hard drive. I use EaseUS ToDo software to back it up at least once a week. I also keep a 1TB USB2 hard drive at work. I use it to backup my home files about once a month. That way if my home burns down, I still have most of my files. I also use this drive to backup important work files and take them to my home computer. I also keep some important files on my USB thumb drive. I keep sensitive data on an encrypted volume using AAA FreeOTFEExplorer. ---
**Author:** ![Reply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reply/32/15952_2.png) [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2014, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-back-up-your-computer/680218/11 "2014-01-31T18:27:46Z")
> [@Rhythmdvl](#): > > We have a home office with Macs and PCs. We have several hundred GB of files, far too large to economically save to the cloud. > > All our work is done/stored on an NAS device with two mirrored drives (RAID 1). That device is backed up nightly to another NAS, also with two mirrored drives. Both devices are in the basement. > > Our theft-proofing is based on the idea that who the hell is going to comb through so much obvious junk in the basement to find a tiny, blinking box? The office itself (and the den, kitchen, etc) have obvious electronics and valuables. In case of monster attack, we keep the two devices in opposite corners of the basement, counting on the destruction leaving one corner relatively unscathed (or unscathed enough to allow for data recovery). > > All personal data (photos, etc.) is held and similarly backed up—two drives in the main machines backed up (via Acronis) to a basement-located NAS. What happens in a fire/flood/earthquake/hurricane? ---
**Author:** ![MLS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/919ad9/32.png) [@MLS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MLS)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2014, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-back-up-your-computer/680218/12 "2014-01-31T18:34:19Z")
I just now downloaded Dropbox, and I see one problem already. It wants me to move all of the files I want to back up into a special folder on my computer. This messes up my library hierarchy and will also mess up various applications that are going to look for them in the original location. Or I can copy them, which means using up a ton of my own disk space. Or am I missing something? ---
**Author:** ![Revtim](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/revtim/32/1042_2.png) [@Revtim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revtim)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2014, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-back-up-your-computer/680218/13 "2014-01-31T18:34:24Z")
My documents are trivially small, so I could simply archive them and email them to me if that’s all I backed up. But I have a many-gig music collection, plus several gig personal photo collection I need to backup as well, so I use Carbonite. I think it’s also like 5 bucks a month. ---
**Author:** ![Twoflower](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/twoflower/32/22_2.png) [@Twoflower](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Twoflower)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2014, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-back-up-your-computer/680218/14 "2014-01-31T18:39:26Z")
My entire folder hierarchy of documents lives inside the Dropbox folder. If yours are intermixed with other files, that would make it clumsier. ---
**Author:** ![Reply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reply/32/15952_2.png) [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2014, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-back-up-your-computer/680218/15 "2014-01-31T18:47:02Z")
> [@MLS](#): > > I just now downloaded Dropbox, and I see one problem already. It wants me to move all of the files I want to back up into a special folder on my computer. This messes up my library hierarchy and will also mess up various applications that are going to look for them in the original location. Or I can copy them, which means using up a ton of my own disk space. > > Or am I missing something? Nope, that’s their deliberate design paradigm. If you don’t like that and would rather keep your current organization, other cloud backup options exist that can do that… maybe look into Carbonite, Mozy, JungleDisk, Syncplicity, or just google around. To elaborate: This behavior annoyed me at first too, until I adjusted my thinking to just put everything worthwhile into Dropbox and organize it into folders there. The downside of this is that, yes, like you see, there’s going to be some initial pain in reorganizing all your files. The upsides are that: 1. It greatly simplifies multi-computer syncing/backup, because your Dropbox hierarchy is the same everywhere, whether you’re accessing it from your desktop, laptop, work computer, tablet, phone, whatever (if that matters). You don’t have to worry about remapping folders between computers. Of course, this doesn’t matter if you don’t use more than one device. 2. It makes it very clear to you what is being backed up and not, so that whenever you save something outside the Dropbox, you think to yourself “Ok, is this unimportant enough that it can live outside?” 3. It doesn’t back up unnecessary things, only what you put in there as the user. Whole-system backups that lazily backup every single file on your computer use a lot of unnecessary disk space and also cause issues if you ever need to restore them on another computer, because then it’ll try to overwrite the applications, settings, drivers, etc. on that new computer. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2014, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-back-up-your-computer/680218/16 "2014-01-31T18:50:25Z")
I have a Western Digital external 3 TB HD I plug into my laptop when it’s at home. Laptop drive has two partitions, and on Mon Wed and Fri it backs up the drive with the OS (bootable backup, by the way), while on Tu Th and Sa it backs up the other partition. ---
**Author:** ![Rhythmdvl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/85f322/32.png) [@Rhythmdvl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rhythmdvl)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2014, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-back-up-your-computer/680218/17 "2014-01-31T19:17:41Z")
> [@Reply](#): > > What happens in a fire/flood/earthquake/hurricane? See “in case of monster attack.” It’s our hope that the attack/fire/flood/earthquake/blood/frogs/lice/flies/etc. won’t be so severe that \*both \*corners of the basement will be so decimated as to preclude data recovery. We pay a little more on our homeowner’s insurance for the office coverage, which I believe (makes me want to double check) includes several grand for data recovery services in case of calamity. Our long-time issue has been that we never leave the house on a daily–or even weekly–basis, so there’s no place to leave off-site backups. Now that HDD prices are so low, we’ll probably follow \*\*beowulff \*\*a bit—pick up a couple TB drives and swap them in and out of the safe. ---
**Author:** ![Procrustus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/procrustus/32/2994_2.png) [@Procrustus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Procrustus)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2014, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-back-up-your-computer/680218/18 "2014-01-31T19:35:34Z")
My work computer is backed up automatically. I don’t know how or where. Hope it’s done right. At home, no back up. I’m not sure there is anything important except photos. ---
**Author:** ![CaptMurdock](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/captmurdock/32/11736_2.png) [@CaptMurdock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CaptMurdock)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2014, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-back-up-your-computer/680218/19 "2014-01-31T20:00:19Z")
I use both Dropbox and Google Drive for simultaneous backup, and iBackup for archiving. I also burn DVD about once a month. ---
**Author:** ![running\_coach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/running_coach/32/15836_2.png) [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2014, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-back-up-your-computer/680218/20 "2014-01-31T20:34:13Z")
I just give mine a gentle push. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-back-up-your-computer/680218.md?page=2)