How Do You Organize and Backup Your Data?

from JoeUser Forums

I just got a new ioSafe 214 and figured now was a good time to reevaluate how I organize and backup my data.  I have a good hardware and cloud backup solution, but organizing the data is always what gives me trouble.  It’s more of me trying to be a perfectionist than anything else, and I try to keep it rather simple.  I really don’t have a lot of backup as far as different kinds of data.  The biggest is my photo collection, then music, then other data like work and personal documents. 

I organize my photos by year, and then into subfolders by event name.  What’s difficult is older photos that aren’t real organized.  Music is real simple as it’s just copying over my iTunes folder.  I really don’t have a lot of other data so that’s not too much of a hassle.

pcbackup

My two main computers, a PC and an iMac both have their own external HD, and are also backed up to the ioSafe for triple redundancy.  Most of what I work with on my MacBook Air is in the cloud, but it has access to the ioSafe for anything I would need to backup otherwise.

Since mostly everyone in the house has their own computer, I usually just create a separate directory for each person and put all their stuff in there.

Do you have a data backup plan, and how to you manage to organize all your data?

56,118 views 21 replies
Reply #1 from WinCustomize Forums Top

External hard drive. Syncback software. Absolutely no cloud.

Reply #2 from WinCustomize Forums Top

Do use unsquashfs and mksquashfs. For compressing my backup  folders and move them in some folders of my harddisks and usb sticks or usb drives or dvds. Its a linux thing and not so often used for this purpose  i do know.

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Reply #3 from WinCustomize Forums Top

I do daily backups of my important stuff (sometimes several times a day) to a different hard drive, and complete OS automatic backups weekly using EaseUS ToDo Backup. I keep backup images on a separate hard drive too, and I also have a 4TB personal cloud drive that I can access from anywhere.  :)

Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top

External hard drive and USB flash...I back up manually every so often to my external, and important files related to work are backed up to my USB flash as well (more often than full back ups)...

Many of my files are also on websites...I store many of my work related files on my personal website (which other people access to get what they need from me) and I store any game mods I'm working on to media fire...

So, the stuff I care about most is usually saved in 3 places...

Reply #5 from WinCustomize Forums Top

Four hard drives and DVDs for my photos (RAW files).

Acronis 10 and SyncBack SE work fine for me.

No way is anything of mine going on the 'cloud' ;)

Reply #6 from WinCustomize Forums Top

fuzzy Logic and lightstar 1 : You do surely more backups than me, but i do backups every 2-3 months. Have 2 Hard drives ( 1.5 tb in total ) and a 32 gb usb stick. about 200 GB backup.  My windows partiton is always only for skinning and OCR programs, so 60 GB with 500 MB left. 

Glad to hear that there are persons who don`t trust the net completely =). Thats good.

regards bluedxca93

Reply #7 from WinCustomize Forums Top

I have been using Easeus To Do Workstation for a few years now. But lately, for some reason, all my backups have been failing to work when restored.

 

Any ideas?

Reply #8 from WinCustomize Forums Top

Isn't there an error log & what type of backup is it there's around 4 differing types if i recall correctly, however if your using incremental or differential then say no more been there done that switched to one time images; since doing so my failure rate pretty much dropped to 0,if it's one time images (system images or images of C) that are failing are you making sector by sector backups if so do a full disk check now use something like seagate seatools or other such software,do basic test first then the one below that,don't matter what make your hdd is

chances are your going to need more specialist help if there's nothing coming from easeus support or requires more knowledge there's only one place to go it's free & i've mentioned them before in another thread a while ago,regardless bookmark it

http://radified.com/index2.html

 

 

Reply #9 from WinCustomize Forums Top

Quoting Fuzzy, reply 5

Four hard drives and DVDs for my photos (RAW files).

Acronis 10 and SyncBack SE work fine for me.

No way is anything of mine going on the 'cloud' ;)
End of Fuzzy's quote

Pretty much the same...;)

 

 

Reply #10 from WinCustomize Forums Top

Tried and tested ;)

Reply #11 from WinCustomize Forums Top

Quoting scorpNZ, reply 8

Isn't there an error log & what type of backup is it there's around 4 differing types if i recall correctly, however if your using incremental or differential then say no more been there done that switched to one time images; since doing so my failure rate pretty much dropped to 0,if it's one time images (system images or images of C) that are failing are you making sector by sector backups if so do a full disk check now use something like seagate seatools or other such software,do basic test first then the one below that,don't matter what make your hdd is

chances are your going to need more specialist help if there's nothing coming from easeus support or requires more knowledge there's only one place to go it's free & i've mentioned them before in another thread a while ago,regardless bookmark it

http://radified.com/index2.html

 

 
End of scorpNZ's quote

 

Full backup. Disk/partition.

 

No error, the backup is said to be valid, by Easeus. but once restored to the disk, it won't boot. Sux.

Reply #12 from WinCustomize Forums Top

Verification is useless is my attitude only real way of knowing is to use it..lol..

If you use its file explorer you can make sure the booting partition has the correct drive letter

use the windows install disc to see if it can do a fix mbr & a boot repair ;if you don't have a disc see if a torrent has your version you'll need to make sure its an untouched iso (non cracked) then attempt to fix it up

Reply #13 from WinCustomize Forums Top

I have discs. Windows 8 is convoluted in how it tries to fix itself. Even a reset didn't work. I remember now, I did get an error. It said a boot device wasn't available. When I tried to run a repair, I was told the disk was locked.

Reply #14 from Sins Forums Top

The repair stuff only works if W8 was installed a certain way, you have to do the whole "UEFI install" for it to repair itself...

If done correctly, it actually is really nice....you can repair and reinstall without needing an actual disc...

Reply #15 from WinCustomize Forums Top

I dont do any backups
have several externals that do hold important files and those are disabled and password protected.12TB
if my masterdrive gets screwed i try to delete whatever crapped on it.
If its something major
OTL Norton Sophos/ART if any of those spits red text factory reset format and start over. 

At least nobody is getting any relevant information this way or naked picture s =) from the icloud 

Reply #16 from WinCustomize Forums Top

Files, pics, installers, docs, etc, I back up to:

A partition on my main 640GB HDD. Some of these are temporary and get moved later.

An additional internally mounted 1TB HDD. I also save some of the most important ones to an external HDD

In addition, I make a full image backup of both OS installs which includes both Win 7 and Win 8  (soon to be 10)to an external drive and a full image of the entire main HDD to the internal 1 TB drive.

All my portable stuff is also saved to a 32GB flashdrive.

Organized?...Sorta...if it fits, it saves.

Reply #17 from JoeUser Forums Top

Two external HDD's.  One for SyncBack backup of userfile directories.  One for disk image.  Both nightly.  Limited iCloud for my phone & iPad.

Reply #18 from JoeUser Forums Top

Was unaware of ioSafe.  Just looked 'em up.  $255 for 2TB fireproof/waterproof device seems damn reasonable.  Gonna have to think about that.  Thanks for mentioning them, ID.

Reply #19 from WinCustomize Forums Top

I have all my installers, files, data, and things on platter drives. My OSes and installed programs reside on SSDs.

 

 

Reply #20 from WinCustomize Forums Top

Quoting Daiwa, reply 18

Was unaware of ioSafe.  Just looked 'em up.  $255 for 2TB fireproof/waterproof device seems damn reasonable.  Gonna have to think about that.  Thanks for mentioning them, ID.
End of Daiwa's quote

Me too....but here the price is a bit silly.

I'll stick with my existing fire-safe and removable HD.....less convenient but cheaper....and holds paper docs too....;)

Reply #21 from Stardock Forums Top

 

Raw data is stored/accessible from RAID NAS setups that are subject to weekly[full]/daily[differential] backups.

I used to perform sector-by-sector silent images [daily] on all of my systems in case of complete system failure, but then I discovered TRANSWIZ by a company called ForensIT (www.forensit.com).

I now have a silent script taking a complete profile backup of each system on a schedule and should anything fail on that system I can either repair the system and restore the profile data using TRANSWIZ back to the repaired system or I can even build myself a new system and then restore everything to it.  Works like a charm even to change from one OS to another (ie. Win 7 to Win 8 say.... O:) )

On a side note:  I have used their ProfWiz software for years to migrate domain users from domain to domain, domain to local accounts and from local accounts to domain.

 

Very powerful and useful software and makes jobs that would otherwise take hours, literally complete in seconds.