OT: what do you folks use to prevent losing your docs/pictures/videos on your computer?

[urbanrealtor]

my easiest solution has been to have the other house computer with like a 1tb drive or 2 and drag and drop the important directories over the house network.
Though for that size I would do it right before bed.

[afx114]

I’ve had a Maxtor 500GB external Firewire drive that has been great. It came with Retrospect Express backup software — it’s not amazing but does the job. I’ve had some issues in the past when the drive gets full and have to manually clean it up and rebuild the backup index, which can take hours on a 500gb drive. That’s been the only con.

Maybe look into Amazon’s S3 service. Cheap, unlimited in size, and redundantly copies across the cloud (off-site backups in case of catastrophe – house burns down, etc). Prices for S3 are $0.15 per GB-Month of storage used and $0.10 per GB of data uploaded. I’m sure those prices will be coming down over time as space becomes cheaper and cheaper.

I’ve heard that Jungle Disk http://www.jungledisk.com/ does a good job of automatic/incremental backups to S3. It’s only $20 for the software, which is way cheaper than any physical hard drive you can find. And your space is essentially unlimited and can grow as you do.

There is even a Firefox add-on that makes manually managing files on your S3 slice easy. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3247

[afx114]

I’ve had a Maxtor 500GB external Firewire drive that has been great. It came with Retrospect Express backup software — it’s not amazing but does the job. I’ve had some issues in the past when the drive gets full and have to manually clean it up and rebuild the backup index, which can take hours on a 500gb drive. That’s been the only con.

Maybe look into Amazon’s S3 service. Cheap, unlimited in size, and redundantly copies across the cloud (off-site backups in case of catastrophe – house burns down, etc). Prices for S3 are $0.15 per GB-Month of storage used and $0.10 per GB of data uploaded. I’m sure those prices will be coming down over time as space becomes cheaper and cheaper.

I’ve heard that Jungle Disk http://www.jungledisk.com/ does a good job of automatic/incremental backups to S3. It’s only $20 for the software, which is way cheaper than any physical hard drive you can find. And your space is essentially unlimited and can grow as you do.

There is even a Firefox add-on that makes manually managing files on your S3 slice easy. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3247

[afx114]

I’ve had a Maxtor 500GB external Firewire drive that has been great. It came with Retrospect Express backup software — it’s not amazing but does the job. I’ve had some issues in the past when the drive gets full and have to manually clean it up and rebuild the backup index, which can take hours on a 500gb drive. That’s been the only con.

Maybe look into Amazon’s S3 service. Cheap, unlimited in size, and redundantly copies across the cloud (off-site backups in case of catastrophe – house burns down, etc). Prices for S3 are $0.15 per GB-Month of storage used and $0.10 per GB of data uploaded. I’m sure those prices will be coming down over time as space becomes cheaper and cheaper.

I’ve heard that Jungle Disk http://www.jungledisk.com/ does a good job of automatic/incremental backups to S3. It’s only $20 for the software, which is way cheaper than any physical hard drive you can find. And your space is essentially unlimited and can grow as you do.

There is even a Firefox add-on that makes manually managing files on your S3 slice easy. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3247

[afx114]

I’ve had a Maxtor 500GB external Firewire drive that has been great. It came with Retrospect Express backup software — it’s not amazing but does the job. I’ve had some issues in the past when the drive gets full and have to manually clean it up and rebuild the backup index, which can take hours on a 500gb drive. That’s been the only con.

Maybe look into Amazon’s S3 service. Cheap, unlimited in size, and redundantly copies across the cloud (off-site backups in case of catastrophe – house burns down, etc). Prices for S3 are $0.15 per GB-Month of storage used and $0.10 per GB of data uploaded. I’m sure those prices will be coming down over time as space becomes cheaper and cheaper.

I’ve heard that Jungle Disk http://www.jungledisk.com/ does a good job of automatic/incremental backups to S3. It’s only $20 for the software, which is way cheaper than any physical hard drive you can find. And your space is essentially unlimited and can grow as you do.

There is even a Firefox add-on that makes manually managing files on your S3 slice easy. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3247

[afx114]

I’ve had a Maxtor 500GB external Firewire drive that has been great. It came with Retrospect Express backup software — it’s not amazing but does the job. I’ve had some issues in the past when the drive gets full and have to manually clean it up and rebuild the backup index, which can take hours on a 500gb drive. That’s been the only con.

Maybe look into Amazon’s S3 service. Cheap, unlimited in size, and redundantly copies across the cloud (off-site backups in case of catastrophe – house burns down, etc). Prices for S3 are $0.15 per GB-Month of storage used and $0.10 per GB of data uploaded. I’m sure those prices will be coming down over time as space becomes cheaper and cheaper.

I’ve heard that Jungle Disk http://www.jungledisk.com/ does a good job of automatic/incremental backups to S3. It’s only $20 for the software, which is way cheaper than any physical hard drive you can find. And your space is essentially unlimited and can grow as you do.

There is even a Firefox add-on that makes manually managing files on your S3 slice easy. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3247

[CAwireman]

You can look at backing up to tape.

http://www.overlandstorage.com/US/products/externaldrives.html

If cost is a concern, using DL DVD’s for backup may continue to be the best bang for the buck for offline backup.

You can mix and match:
1 TB HD locally == backup to => external 1 or 2 TB HD ==backup to==> DVD or Tape.

If you are extremely concerned about the data, have you considered the need to store it somewhere else other than your home?

How far down the the rabbit hole do you want (can you afford $$) to go?

Happy computing

[CAwireman]

You can look at backing up to tape.

http://www.overlandstorage.com/US/products/externaldrives.html

If cost is a concern, using DL DVD’s for backup may continue to be the best bang for the buck for offline backup.

You can mix and match:
1 TB HD locally == backup to => external 1 or 2 TB HD ==backup to==> DVD or Tape.

If you are extremely concerned about the data, have you considered the need to store it somewhere else other than your home?

How far down the the rabbit hole do you want (can you afford $$) to go?

Happy computing

[CAwireman]

You can look at backing up to tape.

http://www.overlandstorage.com/US/products/externaldrives.html

If cost is a concern, using DL DVD’s for backup may continue to be the best bang for the buck for offline backup.

You can mix and match:
1 TB HD locally == backup to => external 1 or 2 TB HD ==backup to==> DVD or Tape.

If you are extremely concerned about the data, have you considered the need to store it somewhere else other than your home?

How far down the the rabbit hole do you want (can you afford $$) to go?

Happy computing

[CAwireman]

You can look at backing up to tape.

http://www.overlandstorage.com/US/products/externaldrives.html

If cost is a concern, using DL DVD’s for backup may continue to be the best bang for the buck for offline backup.

You can mix and match:
1 TB HD locally == backup to => external 1 or 2 TB HD ==backup to==> DVD or Tape.

If you are extremely concerned about the data, have you considered the need to store it somewhere else other than your home?

How far down the the rabbit hole do you want (can you afford $$) to go?

Happy computing

[CAwireman]

You can look at backing up to tape.

http://www.overlandstorage.com/US/products/externaldrives.html

If cost is a concern, using DL DVD’s for backup may continue to be the best bang for the buck for offline backup.

You can mix and match:
1 TB HD locally == backup to => external 1 or 2 TB HD ==backup to==> DVD or Tape.

If you are extremely concerned about the data, have you considered the need to store it somewhere else other than your home?

How far down the the rabbit hole do you want (can you afford $$) to go?

Happy computing

[nostradamus]

Costco has a 1TB external hard drive (the western digital myBook) for $168 with firewire + usb2. Fry’s has a 1TB for $140 but it’s USB2 only. I have the one from costco, it works just great.

Don’t buy LaCie disks.

I have 2.5TB total on all my drives and keep redundant copies (high definition video, hi-resolution photos) on them. I back up by hand only (I too don’t have good experiences with backup software).

Memory sticks are getting cheaper and cheaper, here’s a 1GB usb flash memory for 95 cents. link

It’s almost worth it to get a dozen or so of those with labels to back up stuff.

[nostradamus]

Costco has a 1TB external hard drive (the western digital myBook) for $168 with firewire + usb2. Fry’s has a 1TB for $140 but it’s USB2 only. I have the one from costco, it works just great.

Don’t buy LaCie disks.

I have 2.5TB total on all my drives and keep redundant copies (high definition video, hi-resolution photos) on them. I back up by hand only (I too don’t have good experiences with backup software).

Memory sticks are getting cheaper and cheaper, here’s a 1GB usb flash memory for 95 cents. link

It’s almost worth it to get a dozen or so of those with labels to back up stuff.

[nostradamus]

Costco has a 1TB external hard drive (the western digital myBook) for $168 with firewire + usb2. Fry’s has a 1TB for $140 but it’s USB2 only. I have the one from costco, it works just great.

Don’t buy LaCie disks.

I have 2.5TB total on all my drives and keep redundant copies (high definition video, hi-resolution photos) on them. I back up by hand only (I too don’t have good experiences with backup software).

Memory sticks are getting cheaper and cheaper, here’s a 1GB usb flash memory for 95 cents. link

It’s almost worth it to get a dozen or so of those with labels to back up stuff.

[nostradamus]

Costco has a 1TB external hard drive (the western digital myBook) for $168 with firewire + usb2. Fry’s has a 1TB for $140 but it’s USB2 only. I have the one from costco, it works just great.

Don’t buy LaCie disks.

I have 2.5TB total on all my drives and keep redundant copies (high definition video, hi-resolution photos) on them. I back up by hand only (I too don’t have good experiences with backup software).

Memory sticks are getting cheaper and cheaper, here’s a 1GB usb flash memory for 95 cents. link

It’s almost worth it to get a dozen or so of those with labels to back up stuff.

[Author]

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