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I am baffled why people still have irreplaceable files stored only on their local hard drive. Forget having your computer stolen, what if your hard drive dies?
by masnick 15y ago
I am baffled why people still have irreplaceable files stored only on their local hard drive.
Forget having your computer stolen, what if your hard drive dies?
If you aren't backing up your critical files, there are a myriad of cheap cloud-based options: http://tarsnap.com http://tarsnap.com for geeks or the paranoid, Backblaze/Mozy/Carbonite/Dropbox/Arq/etc. for others.
- astrodust 15y agoConsidering a 1TB external drive costs less than a hundred dollars, and back-up software is either free, bundled with the drive, or part of the OS, there really is no excuse other than ignorance. http://www.jungledisk.com/ http://www.jungledisk.com/ is a super cheap cloud-based backup system based on S3 that has some nice client software, less n3rd than tarsnap.
- dhughes 15y ago>Forget having your computer stolen, what if your hard drive dies? That's what the extended warranty is for! /s ;) Seriously that's what I ask when told about extended warranties when buying a laptop or similar item that would store data, I ask how does an extended warranty magically make my data reappear? Also most non-technical people I know never make a restore disk right away when they buy a new system, so if they lose the HD and the hidden partition has to only copy on it. Anyway, Dropbox, Zumodrive, Ubuntu One, Wuala, plus an SSD RAID setup and I back up to two 1TB external drives weekly rotating them out to my office at work.
- sliverstorm 15y agoIt's just not an issue many people are aware of. If you're not a computer geek, you don't hear about these things until it's too late.
- ltamake 15y agoUnfortunately, people don't think about this until it's too late. I learned the hard way when my MacBook Pro's HDD failed unexpectedly, and I lost a lot of music, movies, games, code, etc. (had some of it backed up, though). I'm glad Mac OS X and Windows include "set-it-and-forget-it" backup solutions, but users are reluctant to turn them on simply because they may not have the time or effort to set them up.
- masnick 15y agoThere's really no excuse for not using Time Machine on Mac. I think it's one-click setup (a yes/no dialog comes up the first time you plug in an external hdd to a fresh installation, if memory serves). If you are afraid you won't be plugging an external hdd in enough, I think it's worth getting a Time Capsule (automatic Time Machine backup over wifi).
- ltamake 15y agoThere's a hack that allows you to back up to a shared folder on Windows, which is what I do.