Let's talk about computer back-up strategies

In My Humble Opinion
1

I have a bunch of files on my laptop that I’d rather not lose. I currently have an external USB drive that I plug into the laptop every now and then onto which I copy all of my documents and photos. Because I am prone to procrastinating this task, it is not a great system for me. I am also not copying any system or program files.

I would like to automate my backups (for two laptops, in fact) into the cloud. I don’t mind paying a modest monthly fee. I am looking for a solid, set-and-forget solution that would backup daily.

Recommendations?

Thanks,

mmm

ETA: Uh-oh, maybe this belongs in IMHO?

ETA2: A quick glance at Wirecutter shows that they recommend IDrive. Anyone have experience with IDrive?

2

If you have a Windows computer, you also have “One Drive”, which is Microsoft’s backup solution. Create a One Drive account. One Drive will automatically back up all of your files. You can sign into any other on line computer on the planet, sign into One Drive, and see all of your files. Backups are real time. I can create a file on my laptop, walk over to my desktop, and it will be there. I can edit it, walk back to my laptop, open the file, and see the edited version.

I also have an external drive that I do NOT keep constantly plugged into my desktop. That way, if my system is hijacked by ransom ware, my external drive isn’t encrypted as well. I can reconstitute my machine, then plug in my external drive, and access my files. It is a back up to my back up, so to speak. Also, every 6 months, I back up all my files to a hard disk which, if it is not abused and stored properly, should last many decades. Yep, I’m a bit paranoid.

Note: Flash drives are volatile memory. They can fail. Don’t ever let a flash drive be your only source of file access or file backup.

3

Oddly enough, I just cancelled my OneDrive account before writing my OP.

My Googling told me that OneDrive, while useful, is not really considered a backup tool. This is because it only backs up documents (not program files or settings) and, if a document is deleted from one device, OneDrive’s sync feature deletes it from everywhere (i.e. the cloud), so it is gone.

I’ve decided I need something more robust.

mmm

4

For seeking recommendations, yes. Moving.

5

I have been using Backblaze for some years now.

It takes days to do a first upload, then sits quietly in the background uploading all of the changes you make. It will back up your machine and any mounted drives.

The cost is quite reasonable, maybe a hundred a year or less.

They hold a 30 day history, so you can log in and grab files from the past 30 days. If disaster strikes you can either download everything at a very slow pace or have them mail you a hard drive which you either keep or ship back when you are through with it.

That serves as my safety net, besides my automated backup jobs that copy stuff to my NAS and other places.

6

There is no cloud. It’s just someone else’s computer.

That “someone else” — as has been pointed out to me the last time I made this point — may be running industrial-strength security protections and redundant backup strategies, and the computer they’re letting you copy your files to may be in a chilly dry dustless room. But it means the place your backups are going is somewhere you may need your current computer to get to. And the internet has to be up and you have to be on it. And their terms of service may change, especially if you aren’t paying for it (or much for it) now. And even if they’re a solid and dependable service today doesn’t mean they won’t merge or sell out to a company that harvests and sells your data.

I am personally of the opinion that everyone should have both of the following strategies in place and use them concurrently:

• You should have an external storage device similar to the one you boot from. You should install software that will make automatic unattended backups to it. Bootable backups. Backups that let you buy an identical computer, install the backup drive (as need be — Macs will boot from an external, PCs if I recall correctly aren’t fond of that but will boot from a bootable drive if it’s installed as your internal), hit the power button, and have an experience indistinguishable from the computer you backed up. Software recommendations: Windows has Macrium Reflect which I can verify is able to do this; it can even back up your Lenovo PC and create a bootable drive to run your Acer on, although you’ll have to download and install some drivers and fix some preferences and settings). On the Mac side, I’m fond of Carbon Copy Cloner.

• You should also, separately, back up your important files “to the cloud” but the best cloud is a stretch of the cumulus that you have SFTP access to, so that from a different computer, if you have the credentials, you can download it or any individual portion of it, that the structure of the backup mimics your folder and subfolder hierarchy. You should also back up your entire HD “to the clould” as a downloadable disk image, in a format that is established and not proprietary to the “cloud”. These processes can also be automated but I’m not in a position to recommend software or paid services since I am not compliant with my own advice here. I have FTP space as part of my web domain package and I FTP my most important files there manually, and as you’ve pointed out, that’s a strategy dependent on not forgetting to do it.

7

I think you should also have a backup computer. It will have the primary software you regularly use and the files will only be updated every few weeks and the computer will be less powerful. But when your primary computer goes down you will be able to do much of what you can do now; it will allow you to research the cause of the breakdown; it will allow you to order a replacement computer.

8

I have three external drives:

The main one at home, which I update once a week

One in my car, which I do every few months

One at a relative’s house, which I update when I visit a couple of times a year.

And my main computer, of course. My thinking is to never have all of those drives in the same physical location. I keep a folder on my computer listing files that have been changed and need to be backed up when I plug in one of the external drives. I’m fairly disciplined about this, so it works for me.

I’m not too concerned about creating a bootable solution for a hypothetical new computer. I don’t mind losing settings or programs temporarily - I just want to safeguard my files.

Also, I’m distrustful of cloud solutions. Although I do have some information sent to myself through email services which serve as my catastrophic backup. I even have an index card in my wallet with coded login / password credentials in case I lose my phone.

9

Yeah, this is a pretty good point. I have all my passwords and account login info saved to a paper document that I update and print regularly. Everything else would be pretty easy to get back up to speed if necessary.

mmm

10

Can you get last week’s copies of your files? If not, it doesn’t protect you against either accidentally deleting the wrong thing or malware, both of which are at least as likely as physical damage to your device.

I use the mac’s built in time machine for basic backups, and also pay (probably too much, there are cheaper options than what I’m using) for an off-site “cloud” backup. I suspect it would be very painful to restore from the cloud, as i have a huge amount of stuff on my computer. But house fires and robberies happen.

The time machine is also nice when i get a new machine, as it will “restore” everything that’s still compatible to the new hardware.

11

The industry-standard advice for backups is called ‘3-2-1’ - that is, you should maintain:
Three copies of anything you care about losing
Two of them should be on different media (or in practice that means different machines these days since there aren’t so many media choices)
One of them should be offsite

I have a small Synology NAS that lives in my network - it has most of the functions of a small server without most of the administration headaches. The shared folders on the NAS are set up to appear as ‘network drives’ on my computer.
Anything I want to back up, I copy into the backup drive. A task on the NAS automatically uploads a copy to the cloud - I was using OneDrive for that, but I hit the storage limit (and also I’m trying to get away from Microsoft products) - so now the NAS uploads to cloud storage provided by BackBlaze.

You almost certainly already realise this, but a salient point here is that if you work this way, you have to accept the risk of losing up to a few months of work - if some catastrophe destroys your entire house, including the original file and the main external drive. I mention this only because this is a choice to be made when setting up backups - decide on your risk appetite.

I only back up my most important stuff using the 3-2-1 regime - that is, stuff I could not bear to lose such as family photos and important documents, and finished work that is my livelihood.
I have a lower tier of backups for stuff that I want to archive in case maybe I want to go back to it, but if it were lost, I would not cry for long - for this stuff, I just have two external copies in different places in the house (one of which is a fire safe) - because there is too much of it (like 50TB) to pay to store it in the cloud.

That’s only true of synchronised folders. It’s entirely possible to create additional folders on OneDrive and put stuff in them, and it will stay there as long as your OneDrive account exists.

12

And here i thought my 1.5TB was a lot to backup.

13

I use Backblaze as well and like it for the set-it-and-forget-it aspect. But my Documents, Photos and Desktop folders are stored in Microsoft OneDrive. I have both an at-home computer and a travel one and like that those folders are available on either.

14

Brief bit, then long bit:

Find a cloud provider with client side encryption and archival backups. Get some local software (does Windows still have builtin backup software?) to automate backups to your local external drive, and will remind you to perform those backups.

Much longer part:

Lots of good points already. Yes, the data should exist in three places.

The working copy on your laptop, and the backup on your external drive are two places. You should use a cloud system as the third, to get that third copy physically separated from the other two.

I can’t recommend a particular cloud provider, but find one with client side encryption. That means the data is encrypted before it leaves your computer, and is not decrypted until it returns to a computer you control. The downside is that you must manage the password to decrypt your data. If you lose it, your data is gone.

I do not consider things like OneDrive, Google Drive, and Dropbox as backups. (They can be part of a backup solution, but that requires additional software.) They are just replicates of your working data, which is not a backup. The vast majority of file restores I do for people are because they deleted a file they want, or want to recover the original after making changes. Delete a file from your laptop and it gets deleted from OneDrive. (Yes, there are trash cans and such, but trash cans are not archives.)

Having a quick way to restore your computer to a working condition is great, but is going to take additional effort. Is that an important feature to you? The drive in your computer dies. You get a new one, install it, boot the recovery tool and reload it, and your up and working very quickly. If that is an important feature, then look for it in backup software. Your local copy should be able to fully restore your computer.

If all you care about is protecting your documents, then don’t worry about that feature. It is going to add complexity and take up additional space.

15

I’ve been using IDrive for a couple of years. It works fine. Within the last 6 months I replaced both my computer and my wife’s, and in both cases I restored the IDrive backup to the new computer with no issues. I’ve also occasionally restored individual files from the IDrive backup. The UI is straightforward and I have no complaints.

16

I think that, for many people now, that “backup computer” is their phone.

17

This is a good idea, but I think it depends on the computer and what you use it for. If you’re doing stuff that requires a high performance system, there might not be any point having a lower spec machine in mothballs, if it can’t do the job (and if it can do the job, it’s a waste to have a high spec machine sitting in storage quietly going obsolete before it’s ever used in earnest).

I’ve got various low spec machines that I can use for daily stuff like email and online shopping but if my video editing rig goes down, I’ll just need to deal with that - my preparation for that eventuality comprises:

  • Put some money aside for the day it becomes necessary to buy a new machine fast.
  • Document now, the minimum viable software build, so I can just run up a new machine is short order
  • Backup now, my licence keys, custom scripts, essential assets, etc.
18

That reminds me of another point. Backups should be tested periodically, to ensure any automation is still working, to ensure the files in the backup are actually usable and also to maintain and exercise the methods of getting things back, should you ever need them in a pinch.

19

When I was switching to a new work computer, I took photos of the desktop, toolbar and the Start Menu shortcuts so I could reproduce the look as much as possible.

20

Funny thing about that: On my previous computer, there was a backup system to the external drive built into the OS, but whenever I tried to test it, it didn’t work. Later, when that computer failed, I got a new one, and was bummed about my lost data… until I discovered that it was all still tucked away on the external drive. So apparently, the backup was working, and it was just the recovery from the backup that (for some reason) didn’t work on the old computer (but did on the new).