Computer death, backing up and solution!

[GrantG]

I haven't heard of DropBox, but Mozy saved my butt last week. TWO of my computers suffered from "catastrophic system failures" within three days of each other. Mozy used to be free up to 2gb, but I don't think it is anymore. Anyway, I set Mozy (which runs in the background) to back up the folders of my choosing every 15 minutes. I'm insanely glad I did it.

 

[TheEndIsNigh]

And that is why I use McAffee Total Protection 20--(whichever number is the most recent). It even has "siteadvisor," a program that tells you if the site you are going in is dangerous or not. I'll have y'all know that this site has the greenlight.

Which just goes to prove that intelligent software is a pipe dream.

This has got to be the most dangerous site of all for the innocent unsuspecting SFF fan.

For here we all are -





TRAPPED

On a serious note: The only safe backup system is a mirrored drive - although even they are vulnerable to 'machine death' or my favourite and infallible system - 'Disk copy' get an exact replica of your hard drive, test it boots and then take it out of the machine. Do this regularly with multiple disks so you can go back. In between use system backups in differential mode.

To be absolutely sure have two identical systems because sometimes when you buy a new machine to install your safe drives in, the bios is different and the old drivers don't work with the later hardware and you can spend weeks getting everything back to normal.

The Internet backups are supposed to be safe but would you trust the WWW with your life, there are times when you can't get access, because your system doesn't boot for example, and the passwords are on the Internet etc. God forbid you forget the encryption words etc.

I also use briefcase for interim backups (daily).

 

[TheDustyZebra]

I'm sorry, I just realized that I was speaking gibberish in my previous post. I went to do a new backup on the other computer and once again started out with the wrong disk--which is the OpenSUSE one, given to me by my brother for something else. The one to use for backing up the computer is CloneZilla, which is the program I was referencing above. You may be aware of the fact that I am NOT the computer guru in the family.