Backup media

[Ken W]

What media do you use and how often do you backup your data?

[heero_yuy]

I have a secondary system where I back up my /usr structure also on removable USB HDD.

USB Data stick and places like dropbox and google drive

[Ken W]

Originally Posted by Maggy

USB Data stick and places like dropbox and google drive

One prob is my USB stick failed, I only relied on that to my peril that was my only backup, I should in the future have my backups to at least two media.

Photos on Amazon Photos, Google Photos, & removable HDs.

Documents in OneDrive, Google Drive, & removable HDs.

Photos are backed up automatically from phone/tablet to Google & Amazon, and when I copy them over from my camera’s memory card, again backed up automatically.

I have a cycle of 4 removable HDs (old 256GB drives from defunct laptops) where I back up photos and documents weekly, and they are kept in a different room from my PC (the latest one is in my "GO!"* bag, where we keep copies of important docs and our passports in case we needed to evacuate the house for some reason).

*habit I picked up from work, when (on a rota) I would the DR/Emergency Situation Co-ordinator 1 week out of 8).

Everything I care about is synchronised across my iPad, phone and two macs via iCloud. It’s been a complete backup solution for ma ever since they added a file system app to iOS about 4 years ago. It meant just as I was heading back to uni I was able to buy a Bluetooth keyboard for my iPad and use it as a laptop, rather than spending £100s on a complete new machine I didn’t need.

These days we have a family subscription to Apple One, which puts Apple Music on all the Echo devices around the house and Apple TV on all the screens, and also gives me 2TB of iCloud storage. I’ve not got round to uploading my entire photo library to it yet. I synchronised that to Google photos for years, until they started charging for it - that was the point at which it began to make sense for me to be paying Apple more than the token 79p per month for 50GB storage. So at the moment I have about 100GB in iCloud, which includes all my photos over the last 6 months or so, but once I get my entire photo library in there I will probably be over a terabyte.

[Taf]

3 backups go to 3 drives (SSD, USB x2). All automatic using the free FBackup program.

Photos go to Snapfish and Photobox.

[Jaymoss]

Have paid One Drive and Google Drive all data goes to both

[nffc]

Some stuff goes onto OneDrive, which is more so I can access it on other devices easily (Windows PC, Macs, iPad, iPhone etc) than a security thing.


For actual backups I have sync jobs running on media folders to the storage pool on my server (which has duplication on the disks via Drivepool) which pairs the folders pretty much as they change, but that's more useful with a disk failure as if there was a virus it would wipe out potentially anything on running Windows. So I have a weekly backup set of USB disks which sit in a box unless they're backing up, which covers this as well, because I have a lot of media which would be a pain to get back on there off the original discs.


Everything else is backed up to another non-Windows server using this which works a treat, but I don't include music or video files in the backup because it would take up too much space.

All backed up to remote storage.

A mixture of Google Cloud, AWS Cloud, Wasabi & my own servers.

[idi banashapan]

Standard File History to Synology
Full backups run to Synology weekly
Synology backs up to external drive daily (due to manual file changes)

Whilst I also use OneDrive as document location storage (redirected Libraries), I must emphasise to anyone using any file sync apps believing it to be a backup system - it is not! It is file sync, designed for you to be able to access files from multiple locations. If you remove files from your machine in the storage location of that app, by default it will sync that removal server-side (and vice-versa). Equally, if a file becomes corrupt, that corruption will be synced and you may not know in time before the sync app can no longer roll back to a good version. Proper for-purpose backups are a must for your important files.

[Carth]

I don't use any kind of sync, I do remember reading about it at one time, and seeing warnings about possibly wiping your saved data by you deleting the data at the 'home' end.

My only backup is that once a week (or two . . or three) I copy my music, books, photos and documents folder to a separate HDD, which over writes the last 'backup'

[alanbjames]

I use The cloud and External USB Hard Drives.

[SnoopZ]

I use Amazon Prime for unlimited photo backup and will start using OneDrive more now I have 1TB after purchasing Office365, I also back up on external and internal HDDs.

[ThunderPants73]

JBOD in Icy Box