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Okay, so I have a weird question: I bought a Memeo backup drive. It automatically backs up stuff on my PC after the UFO computers saved me from the Virus of Doom. So suppose I backup files and then delete them from my desktop. Does the backup remain untouched or does it sync like an iPod? Does anybody know?
Also, should I invest in an online backup as Drop Box – seems expensive?
Any recommendations/explanations would be very much appreciated.
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Not sure which memeo device you have, but here is a support article about Memeo Backup (see option 1). The only reason I see to have an online backup is if you move around a lot and don’t want to carry the backup device with you, or you are concerned about something happening at your house (fire, flood, theft, etc):
http://support.memeo.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=15014
How can I remove/delete unwanted files from my backup destination?
Currently Memeo Backup does not have any built-in utility for removing files from a backup destination, except one: when you run out of room on a backup destination Backup will give you the option of removing individual files to free up some room.
The only other ways to remove files are:
1) Delete them from your local hard drive as well (obviously this is not an acceptable solution most of the time). If you delete a file from your local drive, Backup marks it for deletion but does not delete it from the backup destination at that time. Files that are marked for deletion in this way will only be deleted from the backup if you have the Purge Deleted Files feature turned on OR if you run out of room on the destination and Backup needs to free up some room for other backups. Obviously if a file has been deleted due to lack of space or the Purge Deleted Files then you will not be able to restore it. Note that the Purge Deleted Files cleanup only runs once every 4 hours, so even with Purge Deleted Files turned on your deleted files may not be removed from the backup immediately.
2) Remove the backup job, delete the files from the destination, and then create a new backup job with a different set of rules that backs up fewer files.
3) Manually delete the files from the backup destination. We do not recommend this approach however because the files on the backup destination will no longer match the files that Backup thinks it has backed up. This can cause problems when you try to Restore files; you will see files in the restore list that don’t really exist on the backup.
I’ve heard good things about Crashplan – http://www.crashplan.com/
Depending on how your server for ilona-andrews.com is organised you may not need an alternative back-up. If it’s a classic server space, there’s a lot of storage there and you have FTP access already. Although it’s a little fiddly to set up it’s not that complicated and shouldn’t cost you anything.
Of course if it’s a domain hosted by your publishers or similar you may not have the space for that. But if you do, it’s a good option. And since most server suppliers also supply a data-backup service, you get a backup of your backup.
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Hey Eloise,
The backup is for home/office PC. My hosting comp[any offer auto-backup, so the website is safe.
I think she meant you can use your website server to back-up your home computer. Many hosting services are offering way more storage than an average website needs. That extra storage could be used for storing your personal files from your home PC.
You can create a private directory on your website (so none of us can access it) and use ftp to upload whatever you want to back-up. Then if your home computer ever crashes, you can just download the files from your website server.
But like Eloise said, it’d depend on your web hosting set-up.
(Hope that clears things up)
Yes, like Kinzle said, your web-host will probably give you too much space for what you need – so rather than paying for more drop-box or similar, use some of that to back up your home computer.
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My hubby invested in an online backup subscription through Carbonite (for us, around $70 a year) after our office was broken into and ALL things computer were stolen (including the external storage device he’d been using as a backup measure). This was over Christmas a little over a year ago- he then spent about three months frantically trying to recreate invoices and sales reciepts for tax purposes (he had been scanning all documents to save and tossing the paper). That was one of our “never again” moments that led us to the online backup service.
The nice thing about online backup is that it is physically in a different location. In the event of house fire or theft, you’re still protected. All the subscriptions out there get expensive pretty fast, especially if you are storing any HD video, but I think they’ll start getting cheaper soon because there are more companies throwing their hat in the ring.
If you only need to store documents, you might be able to get by with free plans at more than one site. If you feel like working that hard.
I would recommend Carbonite or Mozy. It’s pretty inexpensive and they do it behind the scene for you. We have it on our Executives Laptops.
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Does no one else remember the Carbonite Maneuver? From Star Trek? It had a little kid, Clint Howard, I think, as the head alien.
(Sorry, I have too many odd facts stored in my head.)
No, you are just very well informed. It was also part of the inspiration for Encounter at Farpoint in Next Generation
Whether it just backs up daily or autosynchs depends on how it’s set up on your computer. Do you still have the manual? There’s often a troubleshooting section in there and you may find your answer. Good luck!
Carbonite (Carbonite.com) is a life saver in my opinion. Inexpensive and you can choose the level of coverage. ie: One or more computers, just your data or the programs and the data. Once it’s installed, you don’t have to remember to backup. I believe it automatically backs up every forty five mintues or so. Major peace of mind!
I’m a Carbonite user too. One burst pipe and all electronic backups hosed….. Paranoid now, so I’m big into duplicate backups, one external hard drive and Carbonite
I use a Seagate external drive which has backup software. However, since it only backs up to the same file/folder each time (which means if I’ve deleted files from my computer, similarly, since the backup overwrites itself, those deleted files would also not be found on the current backup) , I’ve created my own paranoiac work around: I created a separate unique folder on the Seagate drive. Within that folder, I copy the seagate backup folder into my unique folder after each backup and then rename the copy to make it unique and easily identifiable (usually by appending the date of the backup). I keep several ‘generations’ (that is, at least 6 months’ worth of backups – I backup every month) of backups in case my PC gets corrupted or infected and I don’t notice right away; I should be able to recover to a ‘clean’ system by using one of the copies (which is neither corrupted nor infected).
I hope this helps (and isn’t too confusing – paranoiac solutions are never simple).
I’m pretty sure that in order to delete anything from the backup drive, you have to manually do it. So deleting a file from your computer shouldn’t affect anything on the drive. However, I would strongly urge you not to leave the hard drive plugged in when it isn’t in use (even off). Those things fry really easily, even with surge protectors.
As for the online backups, I don’t use them, but I have really large files (digital photography/graphic design works). Instead I use a triple backup for external harddrives, and I put them in different places of my house (in case of theft/fire/one randomly breaking down).
Hope that helps! (You can e-mail me if you have more questions!)
I can’t recommend backblaze enough: http://www.backblaze.com/
It’s the cheapest I’ve found at $5 a month/ $50 a year, backing up is easy and automatic and you can adjust the uploading speeds. Files are encrypted and backblaze saves all file and file versions from the past 30 days, even after you’ve deleted them. Storage is unlimited too. There’s even a $5/month business plan that backup every employee’s computers.
Their website is streamlined, easy to use, and is very informative.
I second Backblaze! Cheap and easy, it backs up seamlessly in the background, with no need for action from you. I spent weeks researching options after my previous laptop was stolen from my studio. From their website:
“Backblaze de-duplicates, compresses, and backs up incrementally to backup online as efficiently as possible. Have the same photo stored twice? Backblaze will de-duplicate to back it up just once; if you restore, it will be put back in both places. Have some large files? Backblaze will compress them when possible. Change a file multiple times? Backblaze will only back up the changes. ”
I have a ton of large image files for work and it took two months to download all of it ( at night I changed the settings to highest download speed, low internet speed) but the peace of mind has been totally worth it.
We have that, and my husband says it syncs like your ipod, the deleted files will be gone on the backup as well
I recently did some research on Dropbox and went with Amazon Cloud instead. Amazon is much cheaper for the amount of storage I need (mostly for a TON of music) and I can stream my music from anywhere.
I use Dropbox all the time. It’s free, unless you want extra space. Honestly, i prefer it because when i work off of multiple computers i don’t have to worry about saving to a separate file. Also Dropbox saves previous versions of any document automatically. So if kill off a character and then two months later decide you didn’t want to do that, Dropbox will have the version from back before you killed off the character.
Since i write so many books at once, dropbox has been a lifesaver in terms of having all my books, the different WIPs, and edits, etc.
Also the more friends you invite to Dropbox that get it, the more space you get. Personally, I’d advocate it all the way!
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I like Mozy and use it. My brother really likes Dropbox.
I like the cloud backup better than the hard drive as I always forgot to backup the laptop whereas the cloud makes it easy to back up the laptop.
I use dropbox and find it incredibly useful. I have three different machines and I work on one, go home, work on another, and each time it syncs and have the exact point I left off at. I also pay for the extra space and pack rat – so I can actually wind back everything. It also shows all deleted files. It has ‘saved’ me numerous times. You can’t pay enough for that piece of mind.
The downsides to dropbox -
- can slow down the start up of the machine as it ‘syncs’
- remember if you link a machine and then decide to give the laptop to your mum then you also need to remember to unlink before you clean off all your files. (Though here you call them up and they then wind everything back to before your space cadet moment).
It means when I am travelling even if I lose my laptop I still have all the files. I can also work offline in places with no internet access and as soon as I get a connection everything resyncs.
I don’t know anything about Memeo drives. We have an external harddrive and use Microsoft’s free synctoy software to run the backup process. I’m not sure if it can be set up to run automatically. It does have several settings that control how the backup works – synchronize, contribute, and something else – so that I think you could potentially have every file you ever have on your computer on your backup drive.
IMO, if you delete files from your computer to free up space, you’re making the backup drive the primary location for the files, and it will then need a backup.
Though Drop Box seems useful, I find it to have plenty of security problems and unless the plan is to share documents with other people, it seems like an unseeded hassle. Seems like a poor service to use if you want to protect sensitive data.
I think the best practice is to store your data in a partition of your hard drive that doesn’t contain your operating system. That way, when you get infected with a virus you only need to format and reinstall the operating system partition which doesn’t touch your data. So what I do, is when I go to install, say Windows, I make a 40GB or so partition that will serve solely for the OS and program installations, and then have another partition with the rest of the disk space for data, downloads, etc.
Along with that, you have your external devices to keep back-up of your desired data. Anything more than that seems like a waste of energy.
As for Memeo, I don’t know how that works. I personally always found it better to do the old manual copy and paste of data I need without all the automatization. It removes control of what you’re actually doing, and situations just like this, where you are unsure of what you can delete and can’t delete since you don’t know what it’s doing.
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I don’t know if you have a Lacie HD too but if you do they offer a free 2 GB of online space. You can set a backup of your most important/current files there.
You should know that online backups may be somewhat accessible to government and hackers (especially depending on the country where the servers are). I don’t know if you have any questionable software or music/movies but those backup sites may one day soon be searchable by copyright enforcement…
Cheers,
Nick
It is hard to tell from the Memeo site how it works, so I’ll just cover my usual advice. I usually recommend a couple levels of backup/file replication:
1. Local Backup – This would be either a USB drive or network drive at your house. Local space is cheap so you can backup everything, keep history of files, and be able to restore your full computer quickly in case the hard drive dies. However, this is vulnerable to theft, flooding, or fire so you don’t want it to be your only backup.
2. Offsite Backup – Mozy, Carbonite, Backblaze are some examples. Depending on how much data you have, you might not want to store everything offsite (if you have a lot of music or movies you might decide the cost is too high and a local backup is good enough). The downside of offsite backups (and the reason I always recommend a having a local backup) is that it could take a long time to restore files over the internet. If your computer dies, you might not want to wait weeks to get your files back.
3. Dropbox – Dropbox is not strictly a backup solution. It is primarily designed to keep folders in sync between multiple computers. So, it is great for important files or files you want to access on multiple computers/smartphones/tablets. Price per gig is pretty high, but you can get a fair amount of storage for free (not sure what the free deal is right now). It is magic. You save a file on one computer and it shows up on all your other computers and it is backed up on their servers.
The final important thing is to make sure your backup process is automated. If human intervention is required, you will likely forget or delay backups and the backups will be out of date.
I can’t say this enough: always backup multiple places. I have had backups fail and was left with nothing! Not a techie so won’t weigh in on the type but you should always have things stored at least 3 places.
I use Dropbox, doesn’t cost a bean. I am bad for remembering to do it though. Nearly kicked myself yesterday when I thought I’d lost an assignment I’d spent weeks working on, turned out I’d just saved two different versions with the same name – phew!
Has reminded me to be consistant with the backing up though.
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I have dropbox and love it, but then, I’m only working with files for school papers and things, not novels and research for them. And I really like the automatic backup process-it’s very nice and I don’t have to think about it. I have made use of the fact that they save previous versions, too.
I don’t know what comment #17 Bastard meant about security issues, since there was no elaboration. But, for my school files, security really isn’t a big issue. My paper on TIGER planning files is only of interest to a very select group of people (and I suspect not even my TA really cares, not after reading 49 other similar papers).
I also say dropbox, since it’s free to sign up it’s a great way to do a test run of the program and see if you like it yourself before paying money for it, if you do you can always upgrade.
I don’t know about the security issues either, I’m pretty sure the files are private unless you choose to share it with someone, but then again, I too use it mainly for school work.
I am not sure what a Memeo backup drive is or what drop boxes are, but I do know that some external hard drives come with software programs to automatically backup files, folders or your whole computer at programmable time. For other external drives, you have to manually copy and paste all of the files/folders, etc. from your local drive to the backup.
My internet provider offers me an online backup service too. I think a certain amount of disk space is free with an option to pay for more if you need it. Maybe yours does too.
But I am not a PC person at home. My personal computer is an Apple laptop with software for backing up files included. All I had to do was buy the external hard drive, connect it to the computer and program the frequency of backups.
Hope this helps. Good luck with your decision.
I turn to my hubby for stuff like this. He’s the technician. He recommends
http://www.carbonite.com/
Gotta read the manual. It all depends on your settings
I use DropBox religiously for sharing files and the free apps for iPhone/iPad are incredibly useful for someone on the go needing to share files. I haven’t had to pay a dime yet, and the more you share, the more storage space you get for free. I’m not sure how effective it is as a means to back-up your entire computer. Also, if you are into photography and shoot in “raw” format, you can’t upload those files. For whatever reason it won’t recognize that as a valid file.
In terms of backing up the computer, my husband uses external hard drives. 1 for photos/media, 1 redundant back-up and 1 for Time Machine (he’s a Mac guy). They’re not that expensive and his reasoning is makes sense to me: 1. store media separately, no need to take up space with large files that eat storage space for breakfast; 2. have a redundant back-up of that media storage (drive do periodically “go bad”) – you only need to lose your entire collection of photos/music to realize that a small investment is completely worth the relatively small amount of extra money; and 3. always have a back up of your computer that is set up automatically. Speaking from experience, the hard drive on the Mac was fried and we took it to Apple and because we had a Time Machine back up (we also brought in our external drive), they were able to restore everything down to the desktop settings.
Highly recommend something, whatever you choose. And I agree with earlier posters, automated is better; if you don’t remember to back up your computer, it doesn’t matter what solution you choose.
I don’t know what OS you have, but most have an onboard backup solution. You can schedule it to run every day.
Or, alternately, you can write a batch file to do the copying for you. Say you have your data stored in a folder called “Book” on your C drive, and you want to copy to a USB drive that is drive f, the open notepad and type the following:
copy c:\book\*.* f:\book\*.*
Click File, Save as, change the type to “All Files” and name it something like backup.bat.
Then you can just insert the USB drive, and double click the bat file, or use task scheduler to to schedule it to run.
Otherwise, there are free cloud storage solutions, usually free up to 1-2 GB and you can manually back up to those locations every day. Just keep your current projects there, and older projects that are finished can be written to a DVD and stored in a safe deposit box.
Your backup solution depends on the importance of the data. If you need the data for your livelyhood or in case of IRS audit — I echo the comments that you consider both storage on and off site at a minimum. If the data is precious to you like digital pictures or digital media, but not essential to your livelyhood, maybe one type of backup is sufficient. While it might be personally devestating to lose the pictures, video etc., you would not be looking at a significant financial impact. If you have to pick one type of storage, then I would go with offsite storage. I know two people who had to evacuate because of fire and had five minutes notice. And with five minutes notice my world would narrow to people and pets and everything else will be deemed replaceable. If you are the same, i strongly echo the recommendations for off site storage.
Do a try here, http://bit.ly/19fATi
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I think everyone else has managed to suggest what you need. I would say invest in a geeky computer genius teenager. ;D
I recently had my computer die a shrieking awful death. I regularly backup my files onto my backup hard drive, but then my dog knocked it off the table & stomped on it and broke that!(Yes, this all happened in the space of 30 mins.) I thought I’d lost everything. When my kid (a super genius) got home from school, he managed to get my computer to start up long enough to retrieve what he could on a USB drive, then harvested the drive out of the broken backup, installed it in an empty case and retrieved what he could off that. He managed thru some miracle to salvage everything. Teen genius trumps anything.
I use dropbox less as a backup but more as a way to synchronize my various computers (macbook, pc and ipad), and since the first 2GB are free, it’s ideal for me. I also have a 1TB backup drive, which I use about once a year to back up my entire pc, but since it doesn’t synchronize, I have tons of duplicates. And a hard time figuring out which version is the one worth keeping. So I use dropbox, unless I have something big coming up, like refragmenting or getting a new one…
I subscribe to the view, that if there are not 3 copies of everything it does not exist. While YMMV, a daily back up in the house, which can be automated. An incremental daily cloud backup, and a weekly backup stored off site. The most paranoid go with bank safe deposit boxes. I find a more reasonable approach is a trusted friend or employee who can keep a copy out of the house. Incremental backups are key because if you get trashed by a virus, you can reach back to the last good copy if you can’t recover.
I love Dropbox because it not only lets you sync working files across several computers, you can pull to a smartphone or tablet as well. Lets you take advantage of down times like waiting on teenagers and such. Not that that ever happens.
As an IT professional, I use Dropbox (free) constantly, but not for backup. I use it to store files that I use at home AND work (and while traveling).
For backup at home I use a Windows Home Server which can cost $300-400, requires you to have Windows, but works (I’ve had a complete hard drive failure) and was very simple to set up and use. Backing up to an external hard drive is also a good solution.
In terms of online backup options, Mozy is a good option. I use that at one of my client’s for the CEO’s laptop. You probably don’t travel with your computer as much, so you don’t need an expensive only solution. I would just back up to an external hard drive. You can use Windows Backup or find a free third party backup solution.
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