The hard drive in the Catican PC has been slowing down and finally got to the point that it couldn't be relied on to open programs in anything less than 30 seconds where it used to take 5. Knowing it was on the way out, I bought a new hard drive, installed Windows 7 on the new one (I used to use XP) and then told Mozy to swap my new hard drive for my old one. I then restored my old hard drive from Mozy.
No data was lost.
Mozy is an inexpensive ($50 a year?), online backup service. You buy the service, download a tiny app and then set what files you want to back up and how often. I back up almost everything and have it set to review my backups every day at 2AM. It checks for anything new since the last backup and promptly backs the new files up to Mozy's servers. No muss, no fuss.
I've had three hard drive crashes since I started using Mozy and have never lost even a single byte of data. If you don't use it yet, you should.
I don't have any affiliate program with Mozy, I just love the product.
I currently back up my insect pictures on an external hard drive, but it makes me nervous knowing that a single disaster could wipe out all of it. I should look into this. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteI use Carbonite myself, but Mozy and others are a great and inexpensive way to have an offsite backup.
ReplyDeleteThough I would recommend also maintaining backups on an external drive. If a drive died, restoring from an online backup tool takes a very long time.
I run multiple backups. One is a constant backup where new data is instantly backed up. Two, a weekly bootable clone of my main drive, Three - online backup. They saying is you don't have a backup unless you have it in two places.
Am currently using an online backup services called Safecopy backup.Safecopy backup is inexpensive.For only $50 a year one can get space worth for 200GB.They now offer a 3GB trial version and this trial version never expires.Wow with Safecopy backup i have been saved from spending tons of money.
ReplyDeleteI have the same sort of deal through Qwest. It works nice. That's for the PC of course.
ReplyDeleteOn the Macs, an external drive, and Time Machine takes care of everything. I've restored all 3 Macs at least once after a disk failure.
Backups are critical. Before I had Qwest, I was using PC Backup, and it failed me to the tune of 5-6 years of pictures. My wife wasn't happy.
If you use Mozy and Quicken or Quickbooks, be sure and read the fine print about backing up their proprietary data files.
ReplyDeleteMy wife, who uses Mozy at her law office, didn't.
Other than that, it's fabbilus.