Simple automatic backup for Windows 10 laptop, have Dreamhost, ASO

March 23, 2016 6:53 AM

My elderly Dad's laptop got infected with some ransomware and it turns out he has no backup. I'd like to set him up with something simple and automatic to back up his files periodically. I live in another country and can set things up via TeamViewer to his Windows 10 laptop and maybe get some local help. I also have accounts on Dreamhost and A Small Orange, can I make use of those? What's the state of the art for easy backup solutions?

I don't use Windows myself and haven't kept up with what's offered.

Bonus question: the ransomware was locky. So far, only pdf files have been affected. Other than a complete reinstall, is there a good way to find and remove the malware files so that it doesn't start encrypting other files?

posted by meijusa to Computers & Internet (9 answers total)

It depends on whether or not you want to pay for the service, but I use Backblaze, which is a small program that is installed and running all the time in the background. It's $50 a year, set it and forget it. If you ever need your data back, you can download it for free from their website, or you can pay a small fee to have a USB or hard drive shipped back to you. There are a number of similar services to choose from.
posted by possibilityleft at 7:04 AM on March 23, 2016

Crashplan is pretty dead simple. Costs $5/mo unless you want to send the data to another computer, in which case it is free.
posted by ssg at 7:04 AM on March 23, 2016

Dreamhost won't let you use it for backup, I don't think. Backblaze or Crash Plan would work. Dropbox is also a nice solution if you can teach them to save in the Dropbox folder.
posted by backwards guitar at 7:09 AM on March 23, 2016 [1 favorite]

I use Arq, because it's a one-time cost for the program and then you're free to use whatever cloud storage service you want (I use it with Amazon Cloud Drive and also S3).
posted by brentajones at 7:25 AM on March 23, 2016

The cheap web hosting plans almost always have something in the TOS prohibiting use for backups. I'd be careful of Dropbox because it's a file sync service, not a backup service. If you truly want backups then deleting a file on your local machine should not also instantly delete it on the backup sever. There are many $5 a month type backup services for Windows. Pick one that gets recommended here and go with it.
posted by COD at 8:36 AM on March 23, 2016 [1 favorite]

Dropbox is also a nice solution if you can teach them to save in the Dropbox folder.

Apart from the training issue (sometimes, that's a big if), by default, Dropbox only saves revision history for 30 days. If you pay for Extended File History, that gets bumped to a year. For most people, if something happens to a file and you don't realize for 30 days, it's gone.

If money isn't an issue, just pay for one of the automatic backup services.
posted by zamboni at 8:43 AM on March 23, 2016 [1 favorite]

Other than a complete reinstall, is there a good way to find and remove the malware files so that it doesn't start encrypting other files?

No. Malware is obnoxiously hard to get rid of in some cases.

If you have the ability to do so, this is a good time to try to move your father to a more secure platform such as OS X, iOS, or ChromeOS. Unless you have the ability to remotely administer your father's computer, he's going to get hit again if he stays on Windows.

Nthing that you need a backup service, not trying to kludge something with a generic hosting service.
posted by Candleman at 9:50 AM on March 23, 2016

your backup isn't really complete until about a month into it (the time necessary to transmit the backup online without maxing out your Internet bandwidth)

This only applies if you have many, many gigabytes of files to back up, which I doubt is true in this case.

I'd recommend Crashplan for this myself. Just point it at his user directory and fuhgeddaboutit. If you wanna be cheap, you can even set it up to back up his files to your own PC for free; they only charge for the cloud backup. Works the same on Windows/Mac/Linux.

Dropbox does keep previous revisions of files around, but AFAIK you can't easily restore files en masse. Crashplan lets you restore entire directory trees as they were on any particular date.
posted by neckro23 at 10:05 AM on March 23, 2016

Use Crashplan or something similar, and you'll need to wipe the machine and start over to get rid of the malware. I'd set him up with Secunia PSI to update third party apps, which might be why his machine was infected.
posted by cnc at 1:26 PM on March 23, 2016 [1 favorite]