Re: Backup for Home PC and Laptop -- PCTECH

On Mon, Sep 6, 2010 at 7:51 AM, Lennon_s_j@xxxxxxxxxxx
<lennon_s_j@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I want to move beyond CDs for backup of my home PC (XP) & laptop
(Vista). ÂThe obvious solution seems to be a USB External Hard Drive.

Agreed, with caveats. You need a rotation of several drives, and you
should consider them somewhat disposable, because as a rule they are
not particularly reliable. I have used these in work settings (for
laptops and remote folks) quite a bit.

The obvious solution to **me** is the cloud .. Mozy, Carbonite,
JungleDisk, or other online services work very well.

Personally, I use a free DropBox account and keep all of my stuff in
the DropBox folder on (al of my) PCs. It works like a charm, but I am
not a photo or video freak so the 2GB limit on the free account is
fine.

Most of the oneâs Iâve looked at seem to come with vendor supplied
backup software, but donât seem to have much detail on the software
capabilities.

Every one is different. Some come on CD, and some install from the
drive itself. Some do the "continuous backup" thing, others do a
schedule, some do both. David (in a separate message) indicated that
he doesn't have a high opinion of them. I have never used them; I
prefer to use a robocopy script in scheduled tasks and avoid another
piece of software on my PCs.

I donât know that I want continuous backup. ÂIâm more inclined to want
to say when to do a back up (probably weekly) and want to keep several
generations of the backup (this week, last week, the week before, etc.)
Though possibly a continuous backup will allow me to keep ânâ copies of
a file and that might be easier for restores.

This isn't how "continuous backup" works. There aren't "n" copies of
the file .. there is one copy, that is known to be current. Depending
on the software, there might be older (different) versions available.

I also want to back up *both* my desktop and my laptop to the one
external drive.

IMHO you are over-thinking this. I suggest that you go with Carbonite
or Mozy or JungleDisk. Any one of them is cheaper for a year than one
USB external drive.

Iâd like to hear your about your experience with specific hardware, the
vendor supplied software, or non-vendor specific software (e.g. Ghost or
Acronis, and your approach to backup).

Can't say that any stand out. I have used Maxtor and WD and Seagate
"portable" USB drives, and several (of the hundreds) of brands of
external USB cases. All of the brands have had good models and bad
models, and they refresh them often enough that I stopped bothering to
keep track.

(And Iâm curious about how these drives connect. ÂDo they just plug in
and act like a USB Memory Stick? ÂCan you reformat them? ÂMake multiple
partitions? ÂDo they all work the same way?--Iâve read some that Western
Digital drives install some strange software.)

Generally, they come FAT formatted, and are recognized by the system
when plugged in just like a flash drive or any other USB device. Some
have an "autoplay" setup and try to install their own software.
Generally you can reformat and partition them just like any other
storage device.