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Resolved Question

How to choose a good backup system

Jul 21, 2014 11:44PM PDT

Hi !
I'd like to find a good backup provider. If possible a free system to save my pictures and personnel files. It has to be really secure. Which important points i've to check?

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maxwatson80 has chosen the best answer to their question. View answer

Best Answer

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Here's what I do.
Jul 22, 2014 12:06AM PDT

I suggest you get away from the Windows backup program and get yourself a good commercial backup program. I've seen forums fraught with problem reports for the Windows one. I know I was very unimpressed when I tried it. Two I'm familiar with and like are Easeus Todo Backup Free, and Memeo which has a 30 day free trial and you can buy it for $29.99. Both of these will do incremental backups.
The March 2012 issue of PC World was very high on the FREE program from Easeus and so is CNET. In my experience with a variety of configurations I have to say I'm very impressed. Like Ghost (which unfortunately is no longer on the market) it will back up to a networked drive, and it will create a boot CD for when your PC won't boot. Don't download from CNET unless you want to get malware, but you can see CNET's review of it at
http://download.cnet.com/Easeus-Todo-Backup-Free/3000-2242_4-10964460.html?tag=mncol;1#editorsreview .
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CNET has a lot of backup program reviews at
http://download.cnet.com/windows/backup-software/?tag=contentBody;sideBar .

Some of these are free (last time I checked there were over 300), some have free trials (over 1000), and some are purchase only (over 200).
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External hard drives are best for backup. You can get a 500 GB one for around $50 and a 1 TB one for around $50. You can also buy a 32 GB flash drive for under $20. It's the best insurance you can ever buy!

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I hope this helps. Good luck

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Reply
Jul 22, 2014 12:14AM PDT
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The cloud is not that great.
Jul 22, 2014 12:20AM PDT
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Mine does automatic backup
Jul 22, 2014 1:17AM PDT

You can set it up to do everything automagically at the time and frequency of your choice. Like Bob, I don't like the cloud. For one thing uploads are extremely slow, whereas I can back up 110 GB of data to my external USB 3 hard drive in just under 15 min. Security is another. Even if your uploads are encrypted, I've read that they're not really safe from prying eyes. And as Bob points out, there's the reliability factor.

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Answer
Don't forget the restore part
Jul 22, 2014 3:30AM PDT

Make sure you test both ends of your plan well. This means to simulate the inevitable failed hard drive scenario.

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Thoughts on Backup Software
Jul 24, 2014 12:14PM PDT

The failed system disk is a real problem. I've rarely been able to find backup software that I can rely on to restore the system. They state they can but when push comes to shove most backups fail.

What I've learned to do is to separate my installations from the system drive (which doesn't always mean that all the files will be placed on to an alternate drive but it's a lot easier to restore your apps if you have them on a separate drive from the system and it cuts down on the backup time if you backup each drive on a different day. The next thing you should practice is to always create a restore point before you install something new so you can always recover from a bad driver. Also don't forget you can also reset the registry with the Windows startup options of restoring to "last known good" which I believe will revert you to the last time the system was able to startup successfully. Finally don't forget about sfc which also can be a big help in an emergency.

Even with all this that system restore is still a real problem. My suggesting is to install a secondary OS like Linux or create a Linux thumb drive with your backup software that is able to run under Linux or using Wine (Windows Emulator under Linux). Then use it to restore the Windows OS. I've used Image for Windows because it's available for one price and it has a version to run under both Windows and Linux. Even if you're OS drive gets hosed because of a bad disk it's a lot easier and much quicker to use a bootable thumb drive with Linux and Image for Linux to quickly restore your system from the backup which of course you've saved on an external drive with a copy kept in a fireproof storage box or at a neighbors. Only downfall is to make sure that you don't forget to check and insure that your backups are running successfully if you run them automatically as you can easily get burnt if you haven't had a successful backup in several months. Also to use Image for Windows/Linux you need to understand some fundamental disk structures to do a successful restore. It's a very powerful backup/restore but you can easily do a lot of damage if you don't understand the parameters you're setting when you backup or restore your data.