Are YOU Prepared For A Computer Emergency?

Paul - Thanks for the note on Ubuntu. Will definitely check that out.

I back-up new docs and projects daily to a Maxtor one-touch external HD. Small, USB and highly portable.

And weekly back-ups using Acronis True Image to a much larger HD. In case of failure, crash, virus, theft, etc - acronis will completely restore your system in a few minutes. All your settings, all your programs, software, O/S ... everything. No time-consuming re-installation of programs and digging for install CDs.

Acronis completely clones your system. First full back-up can take some time, but incremental back-ups are quicker.

Also useful if setting up a new computer ... a few minutes and you're back in business.

Not an affiliate link:

Complete hard disk recovery solution, backup, drive copy, clone and image computer software

Man, sorry to hear that. But it looks like it could have been worse?

I had it happen once. And let me tell you, it makes you paranoid and super thoughtful about what you will do to prevent it from happening again.

I now do things that take a little more time, a little more thought and a little more preparation, but it may save me one day. Not that I hope it comes to that.

But thanks for the link. I'm going to have to check that out.

I started getting paranoid that my external backup drive would fail so I took it another step further and use a mirrored RAID drive setup

Hey thats some very good tips there my business is beginning to grow so I am gonna have to look at taking these steps are they all free?

Cheers

Marcus

Also, look into using an off-site backup so you're protected in case of fire etc.

I like mozy.com

Yes to off-site backup (make sure it's encrypted) and yes to Acronis True Image. I have 3 identical computers and they all have clean backup images on them. Having the same machine means I can use the same hard drive in a different computer and/or restore the image to a new machine while I fix the old one. One machine is off-site for emergencies.

TomG.

After my first B.S.O.D. (Blue Screen Of Death)...I thought "Nah, won't happen to me again."...

After my second B.S.O.D. ... I got a back up hard drive and started backing up every month at least...

After my third "failure" (a hard drive crash)... I combined Carbonite with my back up hard drive...and had less of an inconvenience when...

My 4th (that's right 4 in 10 years) failure happened. Since then, I just did what Paul mentioned above combined with Carbonite.

If you think it won't happen to you...well...neither did I until I learned the hard way.

Put at least 2 drives in your computer - 1 just for the operating system and programs, and the other drives for data.

I hope you mean external USB hard drive, and not an external jump drive.

The database backup of my forum is 2.2 - 2.5 gigs. And that is "just" the database. If I downloaded my entire site, it would be like 15 gigs + database.

On top of that, I probably have close to 100 - 120 gigs of home videos and pictures that I use. To claim the copyright on the images and videos, I have to retain the original. Once the video has been edited and posted on the internet, I retain the edited video and the unedited raw video.

Lets just say this, I have 5 drives in my system:

1 - 500 gig external drive
1 - 250 gig external drive
2 - 160 gig internal drives
1 - 80 gig boot drive

And I have about 75 - 100 gigs free room.

My next step it so buy 2 - 1 terabyte drives and put them in a mirror array - just for my website related stuff, videos, pictures, and other data. My operating system will be on a separate drive.

This is what I hope to havae pretty soon

boot drive
drive for various stuff like games
2 X 1 terabyte drives for video, pictures, and other web related things.

--------- EDIT --------

A couple of months ago I backed up all of the important stuff on my computer to double layer DVDs. Double layer DVDs hold something like 8 gigs of data each. I took those DVDs, put them into a cd case and sent them to my moms house. In all, there were probably about 30 DVDs in that case.

ditto thanks on ubuntu never heard of that. but i do currently back all my business data on usb drives for safety. as well as carbonite. i really don't get carbonite all that much, it came free with virus removal though so i'm sure to back everything on that as well. i did have an old laptop crash on me once. not prepared=not pretty

I'm not a fan of using USB drives for backups AT ALL. In my experience, they have a relatively short life (especially if you use them a lot), and are less reliable than an external drive. They're fine for moving data between computers, but SUCK for backups.

I use Windows Vista Ultimate and that allows me to
create a full back-up of my hard drive as an image
file.

Once a week (Sunday evenings) I back-up my entire
hard drive to an external hard drive.

What this means is that if I have a main hard drive
failure, I can simply use the image file on the external
hard drive to get up and running pretty quickly.

Because it's an image file, it's basically a copy of the
hard drive and so no programs need to be re-installed
or anything.

I also keep a back-up of essential files on a thumb
drive too.

And then there's offline services like Carbonite to put
a triple lock on my business systems.

I've had a hard drive die on me once - and never want
to go through that again.

Only the paranoid survive.

Dedicated to your success,

Shaun