Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with backups

What is the best personal data backup scheme?

burnfirewalls — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 12:06:04 -0800

My data backup procedure is in shambles. What is the best personal data backup scheme to protect my data? My data backup procedure is in shambles, which is partly my fault and partly some ongoing hardware issues. I'll do my best to detail the issues. I've gone through Ask MeFi but I can't find a recent, definitive answer.

I've got a Windows XP desktop, which is the only reliable computer in the house. I've attached two identical external hard drives, each 500 GB. Until now, we've (Mrs. burnfirewalls and I) been saving everything important to one of the external hard drives, and then I manually copy all of that over to the second hard drive once a week or so.

This provides no data redundancy, in the case that the files on the first drive get corrupted.

The backup is also dependent on the operator (me) not being lazy.

Compounding the problem is that my computer will routinely not recognize the USB drives - every other time my computer is booted, it hangs in BIOS loading until I unplug the drives, and I have to then unplug and replug the power cords on the USB hard drives after Windows is booted. I also have issues with other USB devices. If I don't plug my printer into the exact same USB port every time, it re-installs the drivers. The two issues may not be related, but I wanted to include relevant details and not jump to conclusions.

I also need to retrieve the files off of three old devices - an unreliable Sony Vaio laptop, an old external hard drive, and an old internal hard drive - and incorporate the files into my backup. This is not a major issue since I have external hard drives, but, again, I want to lay out the whole problem.

The things that I absolutely need to protect from hard drive failure, file corruption, and my apartment building setting on fire are my personal photos/videos, my writing, my wife's project folder, and our website backups. Commercial music, videos, and all that shit is much, much less of a priority.

So, in short, what are your recommendations for automatic backup software (points if it doesn't require me to use said backup software to retrieve files later), offsite backups, and anything else that will keep my data safe?

Money's not a huge obstacle if it means an end to my anxiety over this!

How should I go about using an external hard drive for Time Machine and other things?

MadamM — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 19:34:59 -0800

I have a Macbook and a new external hard drive. I'd like to set up Time Machine, but I don't want to devote my entire new hard drive to back ups. I'm new to this, but I think I want to partition my drive- how do I go about doing that? And how large of a partition do I need for Time Machine? My Macbook has a 160GB hard drive, of which 84GB are used. The new hard drive is 640GB, so using the entire thing for Time Machine seems like a bit of a waste. I'd like to also use the hard drive to store large video files, which are eating up my laptop's drive at an alarming rate. My questions:

-What is the minimum amount of space I should allot on the new hard drive to Time Machine? My impulse is to divide it in half, which would leave Time Machine 2X my laptop's storage to work with, but I have no idea if this is far too much or far too little.

-I understand OSX has a built in drive formatting utility. Is this the best way to partition my drive? If so, um, how do I actually use it?

A few notes: I am not set on partitioning my drive, but from what I've seen on Apple's site, they intend you to devote an entire hard drive to Time Machine. If you can use a hard drive for Time Machine and also store other stuff on it, well, yay! I just don't want to do my first back up to discover that I'm wrong, and have to start from scratch.

I'm not really looking for other backup programs. I like that Time Machine is easy to use, built in to the OS, and automatic.

Anyone have personal experience with this? My googling and time on Apple's site have not been terribly helpful.

Backing up MANY journals?

FritoKAL — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 10:18:46 -0800

With Livejournal possibly aiming itself for a demise sometime in the future, I have a techie question that I'm hoping metafilter can answer and save me countless hours of google time. I and several (and by several I mean -45-) friends have a LJ RPG, with five years of history that we do not want to lose. We're very aware there are backup tools, but what I'm looking for is a way to backup communities and journals and their comments -without needing the passwords-, preferable in a mass group. None of the posts are locked, so that's not a concern. (I repeat - we do not want to archive locked posts, no privacy will be violated.)

Is there any such tool? ALL of the programs I have found so far require a password, and given the forgetful nature of people, we'd rather just have a small team on this, since it's 70 journals.

Can I use the B: drive on my PC?

penciltopper — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 18:32:41 -0800

Can I use B: as a drive letter, on a modern windows PC, without messing things up? Doing some reading, I have learned that there's no B: drive on most PCs because B: used to be the letter for the 2nd floppy disk; most don't have it anymore, so the B: has become archaic.

But I don't see any reason not to use a perfectly good letter.

Is there any reason that I can't assign an external drive to B: (for Backups, duh)?

Would it cause some kind of system irregularity?

How about a networked share? If I've networked all the computers in the house/office/domain, and can I map their backups to B: without causing any wonkiness?

Does this differ from XP to Vista?

B: might actually be special to the system in some way that would make it incompatible, and if so, Fine, I'll leave it alone.

But if it's not any different than F: or Q:, then I'd like to know I'm free to use it without any extra worries.

Turning folders into disk images on OS X

spyke23 — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 11:28:59 -0800

Automating turning folders into disk images in OS X Leopard. I'm starting to use Amazon S3 for backups, and rather than having a single big disk image for my photos, which would equate to 4.3GB, I would prefer to have single multiple folders to upload, and then be able to download/upload disk images as needed. I could then use then use the same process for my work related backups. Is there anyway to automate this process, or any utility which will take a folder and automatically turn it into a disk image of the same size?

Backing up bootable image over a LAN?

nasty, brutish, and of average height — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 08:15:52 -0800

I'd like to create a bootable backup of my MacBook's hard drive 150GB hard drive. I've got a 500GB drive, but it's in an Ubuntu server on my LAN. Is there a good way to back up a bootable backup to another computer? And what would my restore situation be? I know Macs can netboot, but I don't know anything about it. Would I move the whole image to my laptop using target disk mode, or something similar? I've never worked with full, disk image backups.

Only other detail is, I'd like to do this weekly or so. However, I don't suspect that scheduling it will be the difficult part of this plan...

OS X in a WHS Envirnoment?

kbanas — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 07:16:52 -0800

I have finally completed a overhaul of my home network. There's only one question left - how can I leverage the resources I have to backup my Mac? After years of doing a half-ass job, but I finally got my act together with my home computing infrastructure.

I now have a machine with Windows Home Server and a couple terabytes of disk space tucked into the corner of the closet in the bedroom (my girlfriend was surprisingly cool with that addition). I have a PC running Vista Ultimate acting as a media center of sorts, playing stuff from the 'ol Home Server. There are also a myriad of other Dell desktop PCs spread out over the house - one in the office, one in another bedroom.

All the Windows boxes backup every night to the Home Server, I'm able to stream media pretty effortlessly from one machine to another, I am, generally speaking, at peace.

Except there's my MacBook Pro.

I'd really like to be backing up this machine, as it has several (several, several) gigabytes of important work.

Time Capsule would work, except it's expensive and I already have several terabytes of empty disk space sitting on the network, so nuts to that.

A USB-disk drive with Time Machine would work, except that my laptop doesn't really have a "home" - it's always on me, so if I have to set it down, hook it up, and back it up on a schedule, well, that's not going to work for me.

I want to be able to back it up over the network to the Home Server. There have been rumors for some time that Microsoft is going to add a little Time Machine plugin for WHS, but as far as I can tell, that's never going to happen - or, if it is going to happen, it's not going to happen any time soon.

The one thing I can do is map a shared drive to the server on my MacBook Pro using Samba.

So, I guess what I need is a robust, reliable piece of OS X software that can backup over the network to a shared drive. Bonus points if it's free, but if it's not, well, my data's probably worth more to me than free dollars, so I'll pay.

I've found a couple pieces of software by browsing through Lifehacker and a couple other sites, but they mostly seem to focus on synchronizing over the network. I don't want that. I want incremental backups.

The end.

Maybe it's time to start backing up...

unexpected — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 20:20:45 -0800

Help me figure out the world of computer backups. We're slowly moving our backups from "oh, I guess it's time to drag the my documents folder" to the external hard drive to something more sophisticated.

Ideally we'd like to make images of the people's laptops, and store them somewhere. I know that we can do this with various software, but to me this process becomes tedious. When you use something like Acronis or any other image backup software, you have to install it on each machine, and then physically tell it to back up.

Ideally, we'd like it to be done over the network. The workflow I envision is a small client size program that runs in the background of the target computer. The program checks in with a server daily, and every 2 weeks or so makes an incremental image of everything that's changed.

We're all connected through gigabit ethernet, and we're willing to commit the resources (i.e, $$) to making it work, but I haven't been able to find a program that does all this.

I've looked into Norton Ghost, but their website is a mess and they've segmented their product so many different ways that I think they're marketing department needs an overhaul.

Is Norton Ghost what I need? Is there a simpler, better, workflow? We want something that will minimize human involvement. Shared Network drives don't work for us because we want to backup whole systems, and not just user-chosen files.

We're willing to spend money (to a point...), and I know that hard drive backups aren't real backups, but once we have all the computer images onto the server, we'll back them up to tape.

Looking for empty LTO tape cases

everichon — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 10:11:41 -0800

I am looking to buy empty LTO Ultrium clamshell cases like this one. I found one place, but the website is very dodgy with popups, etc. Anybody know of a good source for these?

Squeezing data out of Legato Networker

drstein — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 11:15:56 -0800

Help me graph the amount of data I'm backing up! We're using Legato Networker 7.2.x and over the past few months, it seems that the amount of data being backed up has increased. I'm using more tapes and it seems like I'm spending 4-6 hours a week mucking around with backups alone.

I'm wondering if any of you hivemind dwellers are familiar with this product and are aware of any ways to get some useful reporting out of it. I have searched Google to no avail.

I have both the Solaris xwindows GUI and the Windows GUI available to me.

(Any tips for making life with Networker easier are also welcome!)

Hard drive backups for closed office

BigSky — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 13:20:22 -0800

My father passed away a few months ago and the question of how to store the data on his office computers for the long term has come up. [more inside] There are two computers, one running XP, the other 98 or perhaps ME. We need to keep all the files on both computers. My father reportedly wrote a memoir on one of them that I have been unable to find. Even if it doesn't exist, I am reluctant to wipe or destroy that hard drive.

It is tax time and I am helping my mother with the taxes for the estate, personal and professional. My father ran a one man office. The most important programs right now are Quickbooks 2004 and MSN Money. These have all the family's financial information going back several years. We do not have either of these programs on our other computers.

So, what is the best way to store all this data? Money is a factor but we are more interested in security and accessibility. Is an internet service the way to go?

I can get around with a computer but I don't have any serious skills. Feel free to include lots of detail or links to explanatory websites.

Easy Windows backup software using remote storage?

miagaille — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 11:56:40 -0800

I'm looking for very easy to use Windows backup software that backs up to a remote (FTP or SFTP) site. Essentially, something as dead-simple and friendly to use as Mozy, but that allows you to specify your own storage. Simplicity of use is essential (initial setup can be complex). Don't even think about mentioning rsync or subversion. The target user is someone who probably has ten copies of Bonzai Buddy. They need to be able to right-click a folder and restore it to a previous state, or open the backup program and restore a deleted folder.

What's the best way to backup/restore (on a Mac)?

Colloquial Collision — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 19:55:58 -0800

What's the best way to backup/restore (on a Mac)? I'm asking this question for a friend —

“I use Subversion (svnX) to backup my Documents (which allows me to check files into and out of the repository from OSX, Windows, and Linux, it works really well). But for the stuff I don't need versioned I can't figure out a clean way to back it up...

I was using Rsync to do daily backups of my home folder /Users/ben, and one time I did have the system crash. When I brought it back up my iCal, iTunes, Address Book, and iPhoto lost all their data. So I used rsync to restore /Users/ben/Library/Application Support/iCal, / Users/ben/Library/iPhoto Library, /Users/ben/Library/Application Support/AddressBook and /Users/ben/Music/iTunes/ ...here are the results:

iTunes, everthing works but it has to rebuild the database and redownload all the artwork everytime it is launched.

Address Book: restored perfectly.

iCal: data restored, but preferences are stuck. If I set any preferences it forgets them if I close and reopen iCal, but it remembers my new appointments and todos okay.

iPhoto: I can't get it to launch, it's just stuck at loading Photos. All of the Photos and data files are there and seem to be okay.

So, I must need to restore some other files I'm not aware of, or rsync just isn't a good way to do backups.”

Thanks for the help, MetaFilter!

What's a good network-enabled piece of backup software for Windows?

phearlez — Thu, 19 Jan 2006 10:48:42 -0800

Is there a reasonably priced Windows backup solution that does SCP, not FTP? LifeHacker's post about automated backup solutions is nice, but mostly inapplicable to me - I keep my home data mirrored across two external drives and am not concerned with running traditional backups. But there's some things at the office I'd like to keep backed up in case they, oh, I dunno... can my ass for asking an AskMe question mid-day rather than working?

So the LifeHacker mention of SyncBase and how it will automatically FTP out the backup inspired me to set it up to automatically backup and send my bookmarks out for a daily backup... till I discovered it doesn't also do SCP.

FTP only? Is it 1992? Not only do I not use a host that supports FTP but I wouldn't USE a host that supported FTP. I could use Tunnelier or the like to do an FTP-to-SCP bridge but then it's not a one-app solution, and the name of the game here is simple. I can do this shit by hand, I just don't want to have to remember to do it.

What Windows software do you know of that's not crap, in the under $50 category and will bundle up and scp a backup?

Ripping != Playing ?

cyrusdogstar — Fri, 30 Dec 2005 19:58:43 -0800

Why do some PC game CDs and DVDs play and install just fine on my machine, but absolutely refuse to be backed up? I'm not entirely sure it's due to actual copy protection schemes. I've tried using every piece of software I can get my grubby paws on, including Alcohol 120%, Nero Burning ROM, a WinXP PowerToy that copies optical discs, and even good old 'dd' on my PowerBook. None of them work--they all report read errors almost right away; attempts to override these errors don't seem to do much good.

The discs themselves are in pristine condition and play/install perfectly on the same machine, which is why I am baffled about this apparent difference in the way the OS and the ripping apps are reading them.

I haven't been able to find any info about copy protection on the specific games in question (Civilization IV, realMyst are the two I'm mostly futzing with) and I could swear that we were past that point in terms of backing up discs--e.g., I remember years ago hearing of Software X that could make a perfect bit-for-bit copy of a disc and thus get around copy protection. Plus, I would assume that out of the games I have successfully imaged without problems (about ten or so) at least a few would have had the same copy protection as is on the ones which don't work.

While it's not entirely relevant, I will note that I load the images that do work, with tools such as Alcohol and Daemon-Tools--the whole point of this exercise in frustration is to "iTunes my games" such that I don't have to swap discs every time I want to stop playing Game X and play Game Y instead. And without nasty, possibly virus-laden "crackz" and hacked EXE files.

Making a stand-alone rsync appliance.

Wild_Eep — Tue, 11 Oct 2005 11:54:56 -0800

Is there a distribution of a linux-like OS which turns hardware into an easy-to-configure rsync appliance? I have a client (web dev agency) whose president wants 'on site backups of all of the websites we host'. They had issues with less-than-clueful providers, I guess. They're not interested in switching their hosting provider.

She essentially wants to be able to point to a box in her office and say 'our backups of all of the sites we're responsible for live here'. I don't work at this office, so I'd like to be able to control this 'remote backup appliance' via a web-admin or VNC or some such. If I have no other choice but to be on-site, that's okay, but not optimal.

I have a Shuttle-size PC available to me for this project (p3, 256MB, 80GB mirrored HDDs.) My original plan was to install a flavor of linux, then make some shell scripts to do simple wget requests on a regular (perhaps daily) basis. Some research revealed that the aggregate file size to transfer was ~1.5 TB range. This office has only business-class cable modem service (5Mb down).

Now I'm thinking about implementing rsync, which I need to learn more about. The client claims to have root on their server at the ISP, so if I need to install sw to support rsync, that shouldn't be a problem.

My previous experience is with Mac OS X Server, where turning on services is as easy as clicking a button. I have enough unix experience to get around a shell, but not enough to know where all of the config files, etc. live for various services.

I need to be able to ssh into this box and set up cron scripts to fire rsync events, but if there were a web interface for this kind of thing, all the better.

Basically, I don't want to go through the effort of manually writing the scripts if there's a smarter way to achieve my goal.

Data tapes for digital cameras?

donpardo — Mon, 19 Sep 2005 05:55:34 -0800

We have a bunch of unused 4mm data tapes (DDS3), a format we don't use for backup any longer. Any reason we shouldn't use them in a digital video camera?

No more synchronicity!

Sinner — Thu, 30 Jun 2005 17:45:34 -0800

Windows Synchronization Catastrophe! Due to office policy, a former colleague was using an office server as the location for the "My Documents" folder of her personal laptop, then using the synchronize folders feature to provide her with a crude backup. It worked too well. The server was decommissioned a year or two ago and no one ever told her. She just continued to work using the offiline cache. Today, not knowing what she was doing, she went into the "synchronize files" menu and unchecked the box. Suddenly her "My Documents" folder is very, very empty. Those files have to be stored somewhere on that machine, don't they? Can they be restored? Easily, even? Thanks in advance.

Online backups

delmoi — Sun, 27 Feb 2005 09:27:54 -0800

I'm looking for an online backup solution for my personal computers. What I'm thinking of doing is having one big Linux box with lots of hard drives to store everything, and then do incremental backups to a server somewhere. I don't need a dumbed down service, any online hosting system that provides a lot of storage would do, any recommendations?

Does this extensionless naming convention look familiar? What program is it for?

cedar — Thu, 03 Feb 2005 12:23:47 -0800

Wacky Windows question. I recently did some work on my chiefs computer and in the process upgraded his OS from 98 to 2000Pro. The problem is his backups (that he never mentioned existed) are saved without an extension on a Zip disk. Does this naming convention look familiar to anyone: "Backup Job 4, Disk 1, 04-12-14 22.20.05.1-Step" ?

Online Dat Storage

terrier319 — Fri, 21 Jan 2005 11:43:59 -0800

Does anyone have experience with online data storage services -- i.e. backing up important files such as pictures, transaction records, music, etc. on remote storage accessible via the Web? Is there true value in this? Who are the best providers? What should I be paying?

I've lost my Microsoft Office install disk. Is it possible to transfer the software from one Mac to another?

yankeefog — Fri, 14 Jan 2005 07:44:16 -0800

I've lost my Microsoft Office install disk. Is it possible to transfer it from one Mac to another? If so, can I run both Macs on the same network without any troubles? (MORE INSIDE) About two years ago, I purchased a version of Office that came with a license to run it on up to 3 home computers. At the time, I installed it on my G4 desktop. Now I'm thinking about buying an iBook as a second computer, but (as I said) I've lost the install disk. Can I just copy the Office applications over to the new hard drive, or would they have been somehow locked to work on only one computer when I installed them? And if I can copy them over, will I have any problems running two copies of Word wth the same serial number on the same network?

Scheduled Backups

stupidsexyFlanders — Thu, 05 Aug 2004 18:46:50 -0800

Will I ever be able to do scheduled backups again? I'm on XP Home, and Task Scheduler seems hosed. I get the message "Unable to establish existence of the account specified" whenever I try to schedule something. MS tells me this is a known problem, resulting from the account having been renamed, and that if I restore the original name, all will be well. I have no idea what the original name could have been. Suggestions?

I need an offsite backup service that works with OS X and can handle frequent changes.

rhyax — Sat, 24 Apr 2004 00:07:22 -0800

I am looking for a good offsite backup service, I don't really feel comfortable storing important files on a web server. It doesn't really have to be automatic, but that would be nice. If it does have software it needs to be OSX friendly. This data is important, and not replaceable, but not like checking account numbers and things. The data also changes somewhat frequently, so burning a dvd and throwing it in a safety deposit box is not an option. also i'm aware of .mac, and I use it but this is for a friend, and he won't be needing any of the other features, so i'd like another cheaper option.