I keep my business accounts on a removable hard drive in my PC. I upgraded the main drive to ssd as well for stability.
Now I'm thinking of buying a USB drive to backup the removable one and wonder if there is some program that will automatically write to both
drives as I type, or save?
Its mainly word, excel and PDFs on there but for hrmc I need to keep records for donkeys years...
Any advise??
Thanks,
Steve
[Edited on 25/3/15 by coozer]
What you will have to watch is that backup formats change with each generation of Windows. Also avoid "One Touch" backup drives as these
also can have issues when you upgrade to a later OS.
We use Cobian backup which is free.
If you want very frequent backups best to go for a hard disk that connects to the network rather than using USB --- a usb device will tend to get
unplugged and is too easy to over write. We have been using a couple of these for some years.
We also make monthly archive back ups to cheap SATA hard disks using an eSATA connection to a hard drive docking station this is a quick and easy way
to store tens of giga bytes of data. Very cheap eSATA drives can be found on eBay they are generally manufacturers pulls out of unused or ex-demo
systems.
[Edited on 25/3/15 by britishtrident]
Have you considered using a service online such as Dropbox?
backup to that and its stored in the cloud with version control built in.... That way if theres a fire or a burglary at home it won't
matter...
Understandable if its sensitive buisness info but if its just "normal stuff".... dropbox would work pretty well...
I use a NAS with two drives configured using RAID 1 configuration where you save to one drive and the other is mirrored so in the vent of a failure you slot in a new drive and its copied across so you always have a back up.
you really need a backup solution that does versioning, most standard backups will overwrite a backup with gibberish if the original is overwritten like that.
quote:
Originally posted by Mr C
I use a NAS with two drives configured using RAID 1 configuration where you save to one drive and the other is mirrored so in the vent of a failure you slot in a new drive and its copied across so you always have a back up.
You need to look at your requirement. If you are look to mitigate hardware failure then a RAID disk array will do that. If you are looking for
backups which include version control then you need a decent backup program and the disk space to do it onto. If you want to mitigate against
fire/theft/flood or other property damage then you need an offsite facility.
It use to be much easier as we would all use overnight tape backups which where then either take offsite everyday or place in a fireproof safe (or
both) but tape has not kept up with data sizes.
A large capacity USB 3 drive in conjunction with a decent backup program is probable the answer. You need to ensure the backup is done regularly and
that the drive is stored offsite (in your car maybe).
RAID especially hardware RAID can cause more problems than it solves. It really is best left to IT pros.
Better to keep a clone of the disk and lock it away and then use separate NAS disk(s) for regular backups.
[Edited on 26/3/15 by britishtrident]
quote:
Originally posted by gremlin1234
you really need a backup solution that does versioning, most standard backups will overwrite a backup with gibberish if the original is overwritten like that.