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OT computer hard drive and backup
Ugg10 - 21/7/14 at 06:49 PM

Came downstairs and found my hard drive has suddenly died, no warning, just spins up clicks a few times and turns off, bios does not see it.

"luckily" this is the third time I have had this happen and so backed up a month ago so may have just lost a few email, the rest is either on sd card in the camera or saved on Flickr.

So, I have a 2tb nas for backups/access from other pc's, tablets etc. and an old 500gb drive, my plan is to get a 256gb ssd for the os and programmes and another 2tb drive for data. Is this a sensible set up with the nas backing up the data and the 500gb periodically making images of the os ssd? Also any recommendations for image making software, the data will be backed up on a schedule (weekly or possibly daily) with sync toy.

Any thoughts, recommendations or alternatives? Thanks in advance.

Slimy38 - 21/7/14 at 07:47 PM

Personally I wouldn't bother making regular backups of the SSD. Get the OS installed, get your software installed, then take one image. If you find that you've made a lot of software changes over a few months, then take another. Don't store anything personal or useful on the SSD.

britishtrident - 21/7/14 at 07:54 PM

Best way to ensure your email is safe is use Thunderbird as your mail program and back up your emails and settings with Mozbackup.
Mozbackup not only backs up the emails but also the whole email account settings and passwords.
It will also do the same for the Firefox browser, saving all the passwords , bookmarks and addons.

britishtrident - 21/7/14 at 08:00 PM

quote:
Originally posted by Slimy38
Personally I wouldn't bother making regular backups of the SSD. Get the OS installed, get your software installed, then take one image. If you find that you've made a lot of software changes over a few months, then take another. Don't store anything personal or useful on the SSD.



+1

Create an image of the system (which can be on Cd/dvd) then just regularly back up the data.

See http://www.howtohaven.com/system/how-to-back-up-hard-disk.shtml

Also. http://www.thefreecountry.com/utilities/index.shtml#system

Ugg10 - 21/7/14 at 08:29 PM

Many thanks, will look into the mozilla product, sounds ideal, can this import all of my ms livemail emails once I am back up and running?

Got loads of space on the nas so can do the occasional iso on there, I guess I should also do one for my laptop as well.

Should have said all my pictures are backed up on Flickr (20k of then and counting, only jpgs though not raw) which is useful.