How do you backup your data?

[Charisma Veteran]

I don't have much data (not into TV/movies) so I have a 300GB external drive that gets my important stuff backed up to it once a week.

When I am travelling for any length of time I grab the HDD and take it with me, just in case something happens to my place while I'm gone.

Edit: almost forgot, I have most of my music backed up on box.com. Free 50GB of space ftw :D

[WAQT]

Back up on the cloud in real time, DropBox, SkyDrive or Google Drive FTW!

[Shadrack]

I have a share on my MacBook that I keep all my personal data on. When working on my Windows computer I work off of that share. The MacBook backs up to an external with TimeMachine. Every couple of months I swap externals at my bank's vault.

[jagowar]

I use skydrive (bought 100 gig plan) as the primary store for my important data and then sync it to my home server. then once a month do a manual copy to a separate backup folder.

[MikeChipshop Member]

All personal files get backed up every Saturday at midnight on to a external HDD using Windows 8 backup.

All Photos and documents get the Dropbox treatment, all work files get synced with Google Drive. Every month i grab an image of my OS install which gets pushed to the backup drive as well.

[SteveMackinnon]

All of my documents / spreadsheets are on a mixture of Dropbox / iCloud (using Pages and Numbers)

As for music - all on iTunes Match so I no longer worry about this.

As for video - I don't tend to hoard, i usually watch and delete.

My Wifes Laptop on the other hand is a very different problem.

She takes thousands of photos so she has a 1TB USB3 drive that performs a windows backup every sunday and well as Picasa / Google backing them up on the Cloud!

[medium_pimpin]

pics stored on skydrive

music stored on local internal drive and backed up to external drive

video backed up on two separate external drives

[sanctified Veteran]

Just an advice: Never backup to partitions. If the disk goes kaput you'll lose not only the originals but also the backups.

Back on topic, I divide my data into three tiers:

• General - Everything I have, including important and critical data. This is backed on a dedicated Time Machine external drive.
  
• Important - Documents, Portfolio, photography and art projects and installers. This is backed on another external drive. Also have a copy of some of these in my 12 gb Dropbox.
  
• Critical - Photography and art projects. Everything backed and sealed on burned media.
  

Lot of redundancy here, but that's the key for proper backups.

[heyitsheather]

I use the backup features of my SBS 2011 Essentials box (2TB mirrored) to backup my clients and then backup the server itself to my dlink NAS which is again 2TB mirrored.

[Roger H. Veteran]

For me everything is on my Windows Home Server but that's not being backed up at all - too much data so that'll cost 2 arms and my first 2 kids! Gotta work on that soon.

------------------------------

Since this is not really a "Windows" thing per say....

Moved to General Discussion

(Network and hardware and software backup methods so ... :ermm:)

[OOOOOOOO]

I have a Time Machine Drive at home and one in the office. They backup data once an hour every hour, as I'm always connected to either one via networking.

I also have a 100gb Google Drive account where everything I work with is backed up constantly.

I also have a Dropbox account doing the same thing.

These days, I'm paranoid about data as I have had experience with a massive data loss in the past. I don't leave anything to chance now :)

All my music rips are thrown into iTunes Match. Then I remove the songs from my hard drive. I only rip the CD's there to get them into iTunes Match. I'm always connected to the internet on my Macbook Pro so I don't need to waste space with music. Between iTunes Match and Spotify I have everything music wise I ever need.

[articuno1au]

Windows Server: Robocopy to removable drives off of my RAID5 array.

My theory is that if the RAID array dies in the ass, the removable storage ought be enough to save me.

The issue is that backing up 12+tb of data is just a PAIN IN THE ARSE. I've got extremely important data (like 30MB) encrypted and uploaded to skydrive with a script.

[+Frank B. Subscriber²]

Important data (personal documents, photos etc): Backed up on external HDD, on optical media and as encrypted files online.

Recoverable data such as films/music: Backed up on external HDD.

[Rudy]

Both my computer and my wife's are backed up using time machine (USB hdd hooked up to airport extreme). I also have my work backed up to dropbox

[deactivated_]

CrashPlan using two methods: Backing up vital documents, pictures, etc. to the CrashPlan cloud servers, and everything I deem 'would suck to lose but wouldn't be the end of the world' gets backed up locally using CrashPlan to a home server with RAID 5 storage.

It's all automatic, and basically makes sure I have at least two or three copies at any given time. Even allows for version history too, so has saved my butt a few times when I have accidentally saved over a vital PSD using the same file name. (hangs head in shame at having to admit to doing something stupid like that... but it can happen to us all.)

[NeoandGeo]

Documents are shared between my computers with Dropbox. I also have 4 TB of offsite external drives I bring home periodically to copy paste anything new I have.

[KenCars]

For really important stuff Dropbox/Google Drive. Others copied on an external HDD from time to time.

The same. I back up to Google Drive and ex HDD by the third party soft. This solution suits me enough.

[FlintyV]

I've recently changed to using Bvckup and love it. It's simple, doesn't overcomplicate things like when I Acronis which throws your backups into its own proprietary container. Bvckup to a 2TB external HDD.

I did try a Backblaze but my upload speed is feeble and would take far too long.

[ultimate99]

how do you guys encrypt your files before uploading them to cloud?

[DrJohnSmitherson]

I have 2 TBs. And I have it back up everyday with SyncBack free. it's great!

[KenCars]

how do you guys encrypt your files before uploading them to cloud?

@MAX SyncUp allows you to select the type of archive as encrypted one.

[Gromvar]

Dropbox: all my important documents

iCloud: all pictures