Monday, May 15, 2017

Backing up

Am I the only person who finds computer data backup a confusing issue?   I mean, I never quite seem to understand what exactly the software is doing, and whether, once I used one company's particular software, it means I'm dependent on that particular software still working in future if I were to do a recovery.  I know there's a Windows back up built in as well, but it seems particularly unclear as to what it is doing (and I think all tech people recommend using other software.)

I've had some improvement on my understanding of how back ups can be set up from this site, but after trying a freeware version of one company's software, I still feel a bit confused...

3 comments:

John said...

I use Acronis. I looked at the freeware ones but I wanted something that could do everything including imaging, recovery software, and is entirely automated through differential backups. I find it best to have one directory for all new data and music so the software doesn't keep continually doing differentials on all the backup sets and then do a full backup as the new files accumulate. I back up to my hard drive not the ssd and then back up to the external drive. (Better to avoid unnecessary read and writes on ssds as that is the primary driver of their lifecycle.) It can be confusing but I have so much data and music I'd be spitting chips if I lost the lot.

Steve said...

Actually, I once bought and used Acronis too. But I think that was before I had to start using a small network at the office, and that make backing up a bit more tricky (and slow).

John said...

Steve another option to think about is an external HDD with backup software installed. I think Seagate sells something like that. It might reduce your network issues. The other approach is to schedule the back ups to avoid network bottlenecks. But I imagine this is coals to Newcastle for you.