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Need a backup solution

  • 08-07-2015 7:01pm
    #1
    Stinicker
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 7,102 ✭✭✭


    I was left reeling today when I realized I came within a cats whisker of losing over 2TB of Data. My 2TB Hard Drive was for some reason not displaying and was just showing up as an empty unformatted drive. I downloaded Ubuntu live-CD and that wouldn't read it either. I tried reading the drive in my Windows 7 laptop and it wouldn't show up either but the partition structure was showing up alright under Disk Management in Computer Management.

    I then found Hirens Boot-Cd and was about to boot into it but I missed the boot menu and Windows 7 loaded and lo and behold the Drive was showing again and I have spent the last few hours scrambling to backup my data off this rather suspect drive, I'm not turning it off until I have everything I want backed up.

    Most of it was just stupid TV shows and Movies but there was alot of irreplaceable Photos and Videos too as I have a 120GB SSD and I have "My Pictures", "My Videos" and "My Music" routed to the 2TB Drive.

    I have a few harddrives so its not like I was actually stuck for space to make the backups in!

    I have a massive amount of data so I want to get something which will handle the backup solution. Ideally I want something that will only update the changed data. For example if I backup "My Music" at 50GB, so that it would only change the files which have changed since the last backup, so that I wouldn't have to wait over an hour to backup 50GB when I might have only added 100MB of new Music since. Basically something which would just sync the changes to the backup rather than redoing the entire thing all over again.


Comments

  • #2
    Lu Tze
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,498 ✭✭✭Lu Tze


    Stinicker wrote: »
    I was left reeling today when I realized I came within a cats whisker of losing over 2TB of Data. My 2TB Hard Drive was for some reason not displaying and was just showing up as an empty unformatted drive. I downloaded Ubuntu live-CD and that wouldn't read it either. I tried reading the drive in my Windows 7 laptop and it wouldn't show up either but the partition structure was showing up alright under Disk Management in Computer Management.

    I then found Hirens Boot-Cd and was about to boot into it but I missed the boot menu and Windows 7 loaded and lo and behold the Drive was showing again and I have spent the last few hours scrambling to backup my data off this rather suspect drive, I'm not turning it off until I have everything I want backed up.

    Most of it was just stupid TV shows and Movies but there was alot of irreplaceable Photos and Videos too as I have a 120GB SSD and I have "My Pictures", "My Videos" and "My Music" routed to the 2TB Drive.

    I have a few harddrives so its not like I was actually stuck for space to make the backups in!

    I have a massive amount of data so I want to get something which will handle the backup solution. Ideally I want something that will only update the changed data. For example if I backup "My Music" at 50GB, so that it would only change the files which have changed since the last backup, so that I wouldn't have to wait over an hour to backup 50GB when I might have only added 100MB of new Music since. Basically something which would just sync the changes to the backup rather than redoing the entire thing all over again.
    If its just backing up files, you could look at sync toy, used to come with windows i think back in the day, but you can still get it off the microsoft website..

    I use it to to do a one way sync every couple of weeks from my computer to an external hard drive, it only updates any changes, deletions and additions. It still takes a while though. There are likely better options now, as this is quite old, but simple to use.

    Windows 8 has a sync centre but i havent used it


  • #3
    ED E
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 36,170 ✭✭✭✭ED E


    Synctoy is your man for local stuff (It does an "echo" copy off my workstation daily).

    If you have irreplaceable photos then you cant count them as backed up unless you have them in at least 3 places. I'm a big supporter of Crashplan, of all the offsites they tick the most boxes. I give them USD $5.99/mo, and they store an ever increasing blob of encrypted data for me(its currently 936GB), I hold the keys so even if they get hacked nobody can ever read it and the best bit is it runs on Server08 without paying a business licence. Win win.


  • #4
    janeparker
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 145 ✭✭janeparker


    Hi Stinicker,

    You can use inbuilt Windows 8 utility i.e. File History that will automatically take backup for you. It'll automatically update the backup copy with the files that has been updated or modified recently instead of taking the whole backup from scratch.

    If you want to automate the whole procedure, InstaBackup from Stellar Phoenix might be the exact tool you're looking for. It offers full, differential and incremental backup features with cloning the complete disk feature.

    Feel free to ask if there is anything else you'd like to know.


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