[Hatfield]

> your data is scattered in some proprietary format

This is a really good point. I had been using Ghost, and Ghost was unable to recover my data. I will never again use a backup system that stores the data in a proprietary format. I don’t even care about compression. Disk space is cheap. That’s one of the nice things about SyncToy, the files are stored in their regular format. I can plug the external HD into any computer and read my files.

BTW, I also have a Mac, so I let Time Machine backup that machine. Since I’m still new to the Mac and don’t fully trust Time Machine yet, I have my Mac files mounted over the network by the PC, so those files also get backed up with SyncToy in addition to Time Machine. Can never be too safe!

[Hatfield]

> your data is scattered in some proprietary format

This is a really good point. I had been using Ghost, and Ghost was unable to recover my data. I will never again use a backup system that stores the data in a proprietary format. I don’t even care about compression. Disk space is cheap. That’s one of the nice things about SyncToy, the files are stored in their regular format. I can plug the external HD into any computer and read my files.

BTW, I also have a Mac, so I let Time Machine backup that machine. Since I’m still new to the Mac and don’t fully trust Time Machine yet, I have my Mac files mounted over the network by the PC, so those files also get backed up with SyncToy in addition to Time Machine. Can never be too safe!

[Hatfield]

> your data is scattered in some proprietary format

This is a really good point. I had been using Ghost, and Ghost was unable to recover my data. I will never again use a backup system that stores the data in a proprietary format. I don’t even care about compression. Disk space is cheap. That’s one of the nice things about SyncToy, the files are stored in their regular format. I can plug the external HD into any computer and read my files.

BTW, I also have a Mac, so I let Time Machine backup that machine. Since I’m still new to the Mac and don’t fully trust Time Machine yet, I have my Mac files mounted over the network by the PC, so those files also get backed up with SyncToy in addition to Time Machine. Can never be too safe!

[Hatfield]

If you’re using a PC, you should check out SyncToy. It’s a free application distributed by Microsoft, and I find it useful for doing backups. It checks for changes, so it only copies stuff that needs to be copied. You configure it by selecting folder pair(s) to sync. For backups that means specifying a folder on your C drive and a backup on an external hard drive. It can be configured to ignore file deletions so if you accidentally nuke a file on your main drive, the file will still exist on the backup drive. It’s easy to use, you can set up as many folder pairs as you like, and it runs pretty quickly.

I have a pair of external hard drives, one I keep at home and one I keep in a safe deposit box. Every month I swap the drives. So I always have a full backup at home, and I have an offsite backup copy that’s no more than a month old.

This level of paranoia arose from having a HD crash. I almost lost about two weeks of invoices. I was able to recover my old data, but I learned my lesson.

[Hatfield]

If you’re using a PC, you should check out SyncToy. It’s a free application distributed by Microsoft, and I find it useful for doing backups. It checks for changes, so it only copies stuff that needs to be copied. You configure it by selecting folder pair(s) to sync. For backups that means specifying a folder on your C drive and a backup on an external hard drive. It can be configured to ignore file deletions so if you accidentally nuke a file on your main drive, the file will still exist on the backup drive. It’s easy to use, you can set up as many folder pairs as you like, and it runs pretty quickly.

I have a pair of external hard drives, one I keep at home and one I keep in a safe deposit box. Every month I swap the drives. So I always have a full backup at home, and I have an offsite backup copy that’s no more than a month old.

This level of paranoia arose from having a HD crash. I almost lost about two weeks of invoices. I was able to recover my old data, but I learned my lesson.

[Hatfield]

If you’re using a PC, you should check out SyncToy. It’s a free application distributed by Microsoft, and I find it useful for doing backups. It checks for changes, so it only copies stuff that needs to be copied. You configure it by selecting folder pair(s) to sync. For backups that means specifying a folder on your C drive and a backup on an external hard drive. It can be configured to ignore file deletions so if you accidentally nuke a file on your main drive, the file will still exist on the backup drive. It’s easy to use, you can set up as many folder pairs as you like, and it runs pretty quickly.

I have a pair of external hard drives, one I keep at home and one I keep in a safe deposit box. Every month I swap the drives. So I always have a full backup at home, and I have an offsite backup copy that’s no more than a month old.

This level of paranoia arose from having a HD crash. I almost lost about two weeks of invoices. I was able to recover my old data, but I learned my lesson.

[Hatfield]

If you’re using a PC, you should check out SyncToy. It’s a free application distributed by Microsoft, and I find it useful for doing backups. It checks for changes, so it only copies stuff that needs to be copied. You configure it by selecting folder pair(s) to sync. For backups that means specifying a folder on your C drive and a backup on an external hard drive. It can be configured to ignore file deletions so if you accidentally nuke a file on your main drive, the file will still exist on the backup drive. It’s easy to use, you can set up as many folder pairs as you like, and it runs pretty quickly.

I have a pair of external hard drives, one I keep at home and one I keep in a safe deposit box. Every month I swap the drives. So I always have a full backup at home, and I have an offsite backup copy that’s no more than a month old.

This level of paranoia arose from having a HD crash. I almost lost about two weeks of invoices. I was able to recover my old data, but I learned my lesson.

[Hatfield]

If you’re using a PC, you should check out SyncToy. It’s a free application distributed by Microsoft, and I find it useful for doing backups. It checks for changes, so it only copies stuff that needs to be copied. You configure it by selecting folder pair(s) to sync. For backups that means specifying a folder on your C drive and a backup on an external hard drive. It can be configured to ignore file deletions so if you accidentally nuke a file on your main drive, the file will still exist on the backup drive. It’s easy to use, you can set up as many folder pairs as you like, and it runs pretty quickly.

I have a pair of external hard drives, one I keep at home and one I keep in a safe deposit box. Every month I swap the drives. So I always have a full backup at home, and I have an offsite backup copy that’s no more than a month old.

This level of paranoia arose from having a HD crash. I almost lost about two weeks of invoices. I was able to recover my old data, but I learned my lesson.

[Author]

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