
Always Remember Family Backups - bgray
http://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/blog/archives/monthly/2010-04.html#e2010-04-06T19_36_56.htm
======
URSpider94
Agreed 100%, home PC back-ups are not optional in this day and age. Our home
computer contains pretty much the entire record of my 2-year-old's life in
photo and video. If we lost that to a hard drive crash, I'd never forgive
myself (not to mention what my wife would have to say).

With software like Time Machine, an on-site backup is nearly automatic, and
I've had an archive up and running on a separate server for the past two
years. My next step is putting together an off-site backup system, in case of
fire, burglary or natural disaster. My plan is to buy a couple of spare drives
and leave one at an out-of-state family member's house, rotating them out when
we visit for holidays.

~~~
jrwoodruff
As an alternative to you holiday off-site backup plan, you could checkout
backblaze.com. I haven't tried the service yet, but they offer unlimited
backup space for $5/mo.or $50/year. The only reason I haven't tried this is
I'm just not sure how long that initial upload would take, what with 500+ gigs
of stuff to backup :)

If you used to augment your full backup though, it would be a good last
resort, failsafe backup

~~~
sstrudeau
I've been using Backblaze. Love it. It's the perfect "I don't have to think
about it" backup system. Cheap. Off-site. No worrying about usage limits.
Automatic.

~~~
chime
Is Backblaze fast? I use Mozy and it really sucks. It's slow, the Windows app
takes FOREVER to show me my files and the web-interface is just plain bad. I'm
looking for an alternative but I don't want to switch to yet another app
that's just as bad.

------
stuff4ben
Idea for an enterprising entrepreneur: create an app that does a multi-
site/format backup. You decide which folders/file-pattern go to the cloud i.e.
Dropbox and which go to your external HD. I have almost 300GB of videos and
pictures of the kids that I don't want backed up to the cloud (too expensive
and too time consuming). However I also have ~500MB of text files, word docs,
tax forms (pdf's printed from Turbotax online) that would be perfect to backup
to the cloud since that wouldn't take any time at all.

Then this software would automate this so that anytime I add new
pictures/videos, it would automatically go to the external HD. Anytime I
create/update a word doc it automatically gets uploaded/synced to Dropbox.
Perhaps the backup software could watch certain folders and automate the
backups for me so I don't even have to think about it. Heck I might even pick-
up C# and learn me some Windows programming.

------
ja27
My wife and kids all have Dropbox accounts. I spent a little time training
them to save everything important to "My Dropbox" instead. Works great for
smaller stuff.

Maybe Dropbox needs a family plan?

~~~
FraaJad
Family plan is one of the best features in "CrashPlan".

------
jreposa
I've been putting off buying a Drobo (with Network share) for Time Machine
backups, but as a new father I need to get it ASAP.

Besides Drobo, anyone have other suggestions?

~~~
sreitshamer
You could try Arq <http://www.haystacksoftware.com/arq/>

It'll back up whichever folders you choose to your own S3 account, which is
very fast and reliable. It backs up and restores all Mac metadata corrrectly,
stores versioned backups (like Time Machine), fully encrypted, has drag-and-
drop restore, de-duplication, no limits on file sizes or drive types.

~~~
cperciva
It would be polite to identify yourself as the author of Arq when you
advertise it.

I often mention Tarsnap here, but I do my best to make sure that people
understand that I'm somewhat biased when I espouse its benefits.

~~~
sreitshamer
Good point, thanks! I'll definitely do that next time.

------
bcl
Currently I use a BackupPC system on the LAN to do nightly backups of all my
systems. My mac mini is backed up automatically via Time Machine as well, and
I do a nightly backup of the MacBook with SuperDuper. Setup of rsyncd on the
one windows laptop is a bit of a pain, but it works well.

My current concern is off-site backups. I have none, and need something. The
problem is that I can't backup the BackupPC pool (~700G of backups) and since
I'm horrible about determining what to save and throw away I end up keeping
everything. I think I'm hosed :)

------
andrewdavey
I just got an Acer Windows Home Server machine. It does complete machine level
backups of all the home/office PCs. I found it very easy to set up and has
given me piece of mind at last!

~~~
streety
I hope I'm wrong but it sounds suspiciously like all your backups are in one
physical location. You may well be protected against an individual drive
failing but what about a more calamitous event such as a fire or flooding?

~~~
icefox
So clearly I should rotate my backups between my three alternating sites and
have a whole system where...

No.

I think I would screw up. In fact I know I would screw up because when I used
to do that I would forget every few weeks and eventually I didn't bother
because it was _a hassle_.

Talking about backups are funny. We all like to talk about how we should have
a great system, but for the vast majority of people if they simply had one
automatic local backup they would be so much better off it isn't funny.

When my mom's pc died her super backup system (one hd at home one at work) was
months out of date. When my dad's mac hd died he got a new hd, and restored
from the Mac Time Capsule overnight. They both have macs now*

As much as I would like to advocate super backup solutions I feel that anyone
that actually has a local solution that is automatic and runs is way better
then someone who is preaching about making a more complicated backup solution.
When people talk about back solutions someone always comes along and says how
you _really_ need to have two solutions, one local and one remote. If even one
person doesn't backup at all because they tried to implement a dual backup and
found it too hard then the original person has caused more harm then good.

*For many reasons including the backup one.

~~~
streety
I agree entirely about the importance of backups being simple and automatic.

Where I disagree is with the idea that remote backups are more difficult than
local backups. Even ignoring all the people with only one computer at home,
for whom a local backup typically means a usb stick or CD/DVD, arranging off
site backups is now at least as easy as on site backups.

Granted if you're dealing with hundreds of gigabytes of data you may encounter
some problems but the vast majority of people are dealing with far smaller
amounts of data.

------
nishantmodak
I back-up most of my important files as an email attachment.

is it just me who does this way?

------
wallingf
Thanks for all the advice. I'll look into BackBlaze and a few other
suggestions today.

