# how do you backup your home computer? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [March 19, 2003, 7:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-backup-your-home-computer/162499 "2003-03-19T07:45:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![curwin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f05b48/32.png) [@curwin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/curwin)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2003, 7:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-backup-your-home-computer/162499/1 "2003-03-19T07:45:12Z")
Right now I copy my email, address book, documents, and other files once a month to a CD. I have EZCD Creator, but it doesn’t have any backup function, so I need to enter the files in from scratch every time. I don’t do business at home, so I don’t need a daily backup - although losing recent email would be quite lousy. What do you do? ---
**Author:** ![yosemite](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/3ab097/32.png) [@yosemite](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yosemite)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2003, 7:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-backup-your-home-computer/162499/2 "2003-03-19T07:48:49Z")
I back up via CDR as well. I used to have a little utility that would back up emails in Outlook Express (it was a Mac version, I’m sure there’s a PC version too). I now use OS X’s Mail and I don’t know how to back that up. I need to do that. ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2003, 8:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-backup-your-home-computer/162499/3 "2003-03-19T08:03:47Z")
Besides frequent backups of data files (only) to CD or tape or floppy (yes, floppy for small files!), I make an entire image of my hard drive on an identical hard drive periodically. After making the image, I rotate from 3 hard drives (easy to do with plugin “mobile racks”) and use the last copy for future work. If the system crashes, plugging in the previous drive gets me immediately back in time. I know of no way to back up all configured Windows system files while the system is actively in use, which seems like a huge weakness in the whole concept. If someone knows how this can be done without shutting the system down, and in a fashion that allows complete restoration, I sure would like to know about it. Especially if can be done by the unsophisticated user, all of which seem unprotected at this time. Meanwhile, the image backup is pretty darn good for me. ---
**Author:** ![Geek\_Mecha](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/ecae2f/32.png) [@Geek\_Mecha](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Geek_Mecha)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2003, 8:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-backup-your-home-computer/162499/4 "2003-03-19T08:14:36Z")
I also back up on a CD-R, usually every 1-3 months. ---
**Author:** ![Mort\_Furd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Mort\_Furd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mort_Furd)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2003, 10:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-backup-your-home-computer/162499/5 "2003-03-19T10:49:26Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Musicat \*I know of no way to back up all configured Windows system files while the system is actively in use, which seems like a huge weakness in the whole concept. If someone knows how this can be done without shutting the system down, and in a fashion that allows complete restoration, I sure would like to know about it. Especially if can be done by the unsophisticated user, all of which seem unprotected at this time. Meanwhile, the image backup is pretty darn good for me. You can’t, at least not without expensive backup software - and even then it doesn’t always work. Piss on Windows. Give me dd or cp and Linux any day. ---
**Author:** ![welby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/d78d45/32.png) [@welby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/welby)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2003, 12:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-backup-your-home-computer/162499/6 "2003-03-19T12:49:04Z")
Daily differential backup to tape, full backups weekly. GHOST images of each hard drive are also backed up to CD. I store a lot of crap on my computer, and run several servers for testing and learning. I break stuff all the time, so it’s easier for me to just GHOST and restore data from tape. I’m a computer geek and total freak though. ---
**Author:** ![fusoya](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ecccb3/32.png) [@fusoya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fusoya)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2003, 12:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-backup-your-home-computer/162499/7 "2003-03-19T12:58:20Z")
Every month or so I make about 4 CD’s of backups of stuff that I acquired or updated within that time. And every couple of months I alway back up ALL of my important, irreplacable stuff (digital camera photos, email, creative work etc) since CDR’s tend to fail within a couple of months (yeah, the companies SAY they’ll last for 200 years, but my CD’s seem to get scratched pretty easily so it’s always nice to have extra, newer backups). I’ve never been into the whole tape drive thing, so I don’t use it. If I have something REALLY important that I don’t trust to CD’s, I always make copies to each of the 4 harddrives in my computer. I’ve had harddrives die instantly on me before, so it’s always good to know that I’ll still have the file on a separate, working drive. ---
**Author:** ![Scarlett67](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scarlett67/32/7387_2.png) [@Scarlett67](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scarlett67)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2003, 1:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-backup-your-home-computer/162499/8 "2003-03-19T13:50:28Z")
I’m self-employed, so this is an important issue for me. I’m on my third tape drive. I love the whole concept of automatic unattended backup of my entire drive – it’s saved my bacon more than once. Full backup on Sunday morning, differential backups on all the other days, two tapes that rotate weekly plus one spare. We don’t really have a handy place to store off-site, so I just stick 'em in our home safe, which is in a pretty secure place, and hope for the best in case of disaster. In the event of a bad crash (or a new computer), I don’t even try a full restore – I just do a clean install of software and restore the data. Yeah, it’s time-consuming, but I like the control. The full drive backup ensures that I didn’t miss something I might have forgotten in a manual backup. I also have important files (utility installers, patches, archived data) on CD-RW. Nice to use those CDs to install stuff on my laptop or someone else’s computer. Just recently I bought a 64MB USB flash drive that’s been great for grabbing daily files, transferring to laptop so I can work on the couch, etc. ---
**Author:** ![Anonymous\_Coward](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/94ad74/32.png) [@Anonymous\_Coward](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anonymous_Coward)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2003, 2:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-backup-your-home-computer/162499/9 "2003-03-19T14:20:06Z")
I’ve got my eye on a used 5 slot DLT library with a DLT4000 drive. Extreme overkill but really cool :). Each tape will hold 40 gig compressed, so if I fill it up I will never have to swap tapes. Everyone that backs up your data, do you do offsite storage? I keep my CDR’s locked up at work in case my house burns down. ---
**Author:** ![Urban\_Ranger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/e9c0ed/32.png) [@Urban\_Ranger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urban_Ranger)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2003, 4:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-backup-your-home-computer/162499/10 "2003-03-19T16:01:47Z")
SCSI RAID1 with a couple of Ultra160 HDDs on my main computer, and tape backup on my server. I should do offsite backup one of these days. ---
**Author:** ![lno](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a8b319/32.png) [@lno](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lno)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2003, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-backup-your-home-computer/162499/11 "2003-03-19T16:26:33Z")
I have very few files on my home computer that are important enough for me to backup. I stash copies on my laptop, on a ftp server downtown, and another at Linkoping University in Sweden. My space on the Swedish server has been filling up very gradually over the past ten years - it’s occasionally fun to sift through what I’ve stored there and see how my coding skills have waxed and waned in the past decade. ---
**Author:** ![handy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5a626/32.png) [@handy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handy)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2003, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-backup-your-home-computer/162499/12 "2003-03-19T16:27:02Z")
Cdrs were free or almost free for me, I have stacks of them so i just backup to them when I have enough data or consider the data I have important enought to backup. I also backup onto a dvd whole directories when they are large enough. A cd only takes about three minutes to backup 600+megs of data & it’s practically free. 🙂 I throw out free cds & keep the spindle just for storage sometimes. ---
**Author:** ![Triss](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Triss](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Triss)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2003, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-backup-your-home-computer/162499/13 "2003-03-19T18:12:16Z")
[NewTech InfoSystems BackUp Now](http://www.ntibackupnow.com/default.asp) Works like a charm for me. Not that expensive, either. I usually need between 4-6 CD-RWs but I don’t back up either drive fully. The NTI program makes it absurdly easy and just writes the changes to the files which makes the back-up take about 10-20 mins. Of course you do have to set-up the back-up jobs first, and the first write takes several hours. But after that it’s a breeze. ---
**Author:** ![Skelji](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b38774/32.png) [@Skelji](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skelji)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2003, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-backup-your-home-computer/162499/14 "2003-03-19T18:50:07Z")
I download a lot of music (freely distributed jamband stuff), and as soon as I get 650-700 mb or so, I burn it. At around 20 cents for a blank cd-r, it’s cheap insurance. I also have a separate folder where I keep all of my save files, data docs, downloaded jpegs and crap I want to keep, and back that up to a cd-rw every week. Once a month or so I burn it to a cd-r, along with my e-mail folders. My most frequently changing file is my bookmarks file, but that’s easy enough to copy to a floppy every couple of days. ---
**Author:** ![Ethilrist](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ethilrist/32/4604_2.png) [@Ethilrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ethilrist)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2003, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-backup-your-home-computer/162499/15 "2003-03-19T19:03:06Z")
I don’t. Well, somebody had to say it… ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2003, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-backup-your-home-computer/162499/16 "2003-03-19T19:10:06Z")
Back up my data only, either on floppy, or on my Yahoo briefcase. I especially like Yahoo, since it means the data is stored off-site in case of a _real_ disaster. My files are valuable and irreplaceable, so I think it’s the way to go. And you can’t beat the price. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2003, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-backup-your-home-computer/162499/17 "2003-03-19T20:10:50Z")
Anybody using DVDs to back up yet? It seems like the next logical step; if you’re using a handful of CDs for one drive or system, the whole thing might fit even better on a DVD. And the retail price of DVD-R blanks is now under a US$. ---
**Author:** ![lovelyluka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f475e1/32.png) [@lovelyluka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lovelyluka)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2003, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-backup-your-home-computer/162499/18 "2003-03-19T20:17:24Z")
back…up…? ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2003, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-backup-your-home-computer/162499/19 "2003-03-19T20:26:35Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Ethilrist \* > \*\*I don’t. > > Well, somebody had to say it… \*\* Mark my words, you’ll be sorry! It’s not a question of IF your system will fail, but WHEN. Nothing has a MTBF of infinity! And when it does, will it have zero impact on your life? ---
**Author:** ![handy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5a626/32.png) [@handy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handy)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2003, 10:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-backup-your-home-computer/162499/20 "2003-03-19T22:21:50Z")
Another alternative is a external USB 2.0 HD which are pretty practical & super duper fast. This makes a whole copy of the HD. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-backup-your-home-computer/162499.md?page=2)