If you're reading Unplggd, you've got to be at least a little bit more tech savvy than the rest of the population, right? You probably troubleshoot most of your own computer problems and perform your own system maintenance at your home office without help. But what about everyone else? Well according to a recent survey, most people think they're capable of being their own IT guy. According to that same survey, they're wrong. Do you back up your computer enough?
The Staples IT IQ Survey, conducted by Zogby International, surveryed more than 2,000 people about their at-home IT habits. What it found? Well, for as often as we use our computers, we sure don't back them up enough:
- While 97 percent of respondents use their computers every day, less than 40 percent of respondents back up their computers at least once a week.
- And, almost a third of all respondents back up their computers once per year or never.
If you're dealing with new, important information when you sit down to your desk every day, a once-a week backup is a good idea. For those of us who only use our home offices for the occasional digital camera photo dump, a once-a-month or quarterly strategy should be fine.
At the very least, do it once a year. Pick a milestone like your birthday or back-to-school week to remind you to do it.
Need help getting started? Check out our guide to How to Choose the Right External Hard Drive.
(Images: Flickr member lippo licensed fir use under Creative Commons)
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It took me having a hard drive completely fail and loosing tons of photos for me to get into this habit. I now back up once a month or when I have a lot of new pictures uploaded or important projects going on.
Much like MrsMollyK it took a drive failure for me to begin doing backups. Initially I did the same routine; manually backing up around once a month. However, this eventually became tedious so I purchased a Time Capsule; since then I get a backup every hour and it does not disturb my workflow. It's a fantastic piece of equipment, and I'd reccommend it or something like it to anyone not doing backups at present.
I keep a good number of backups. I have two external hardrives. One at work and one at home where I run time machine. That does exclude some directories but nothing I can't afford to lose.
I also have a CVS server for all of my scripts, research codes, and analyses.
Finally, I use dropbox solely for backup on my Documents folder that contains all of my reports, etc.
I just got another external for backing up my CVS server and some data (around 300gb). I guess the data is the only thing that I do not directly have backed up but other people in my research group have local copies so if something happens to mine, it is just an overnight copy operation.
own a mac? time machine. PERIOD.
you can add in some redundancy if you want too. do a manual backup to another drive, store somewhere else, but if you have a mac, plug an external in, turn time machine on. it takes less then $100 and 10 minutes, and at least then you have a fighting chance.
@Trish1980
that seems even more dangerous to me. thumbdrives are susceptible to loss, damage, water, and just getting their own file errors and bricking.
at least for me too being a designer/photographer i would have to have some pretty hefty thumbdrives to carry all of my stuff, even though, i would not trust my important data on them, that is asking for trouble.
+1 jmorey
Time Machine is the easiest ways to backup your Mac. It's how I plan on keeping my iMac's data safe (music, ripped DVDs and Blu-rays for AppleTV, photos, etc.) along with a WD My Book Studio Edition II using RAID 1 for mirroring.
Plug it in and forget about it.
I back up to an external hard drive regularly, but does anyone know of a good online backup site? The EHD is good if the computer crashes, but I'd like an outside the home backup as well. (Thanks in advance.)
@KimberlyRose: I use Mozy, I know people that use CrashPlan and others that use Carbonite. They all have their pros and cons.
I haven't used or looked into Carbonite in years so I won't comment on it. Pricing for CrashPlan is better than Mozy's if you're backing up multiple machines but for one machine the price is comparable. Mozy for Windows has a feature that lets you back up to an External hard drive in addition to the cloud; Mozy for Mac does not have that yet. CrashPlan does that period.
Hth!
@kimberlyrose
how much do you need to store? if you don't have a ton of data you need to store all the time look into dropbox.
http://db.tt/Vtfx2US
(yes this is my referral link, but if you use it you get an additional 250mb of space in your account with it, so 2.25gb for free)
Free accounts start out getting 2gb of space for free. So if you don't need to store a ton this is great.
I just started sing dropbox and it is fantastic. Click the link above, make an account. At this point you can just upload stuff to your computer manually, or you can download it's application. The application will put a folder on your computer where ever you want. Whatever goes in there will sync online. You can then access it just by logging in anywhere else, you can install the app on another computer and now the folder there will sync with the dropbox and it will have the same up to date files as home. You can also download it on your iphone and ipad and access files there.
For small storage it is really nice. No need for a flash drive. Plus through referrals you can get up to 8gb. not too shabby. Plus best of all..... it is FREE
oh and another pricier option and you have a mac, buy a time capsule
we just had one delivered today for my boss (odd coincidence since i didn't order it)
if you are forgetful or don't want to be tied down by plugging in to an external drive time capsule's are nice.
It is a hard drive that will work on your wireless network. So no matter where you are at your home or office (where ever you put it) when it wants to back up, your computer accesses your drive through your wireless network. Done and done, easy peasy.
They are pricey, but pretty much foolproof (which is why my boss is getting one, somebody doesn't remember to back their laptop up...)
I use Carbonite and thank goodness I had something b/c my computer died late last year. I just got a NAS for using with Sonos but I think I'll continue w/ the online backup b/c it's offsite.
backups are only as good as the media they are stored on. hard fail eventually. media disks get scratched. redundancy is the key back up on multiple sources. i have way to much stuff to back up so cloud is not the answer for me. i use multiple raid arrays, where is the next big storage solution?
I own a mac and thus time machine, but the connection somehow commonly breaks down, despite everyone telling me it's beyond foolproof.
I'm slightly annoyed by how much technology advertises itself as plug-and-play when really it means plug-in-mess-with-tons-of-settings-curse-and-google-for-help-mess-around-more-finally-find-the-tiny-thing-wrong-get-it-working-for-a-week-until-it-mysteriously-stops-working-again.