Let's talk data backup!

[Teggy]

Oooh, exciting! Backing up those zeros and ones!

So I currently have an external backup drive at home that I use to periodically back up my notebook and my wife's notebook. I've partitioned it in half so her backup (Windows) is on one partition and my backup (Mac) is on another. Her backup is done by USB and my backup in done via Firewire and the whole thing is a bit of a chore. Add to this I now have a new Macbook Pro and I don't necessarily want to stop backing up my older Macbook just yet.

I'm wondering how other people are handling their backups and would like to invest in something that's going to be more convenient and gets me to the point where I am backing up on a regular schedule.

For one, I would like to do network backups. Secondly, I want to make sure I have enough space. What is the rule of thumb here? Do I need space that equals the sum of all of my hard drives together? Third, is a RAID necessary? I've read varying opinions.

[ibdoomed]

I use a windows home server box and just backup documents, pictures, movies, etc...

Carbonite is what we recommend for total online backup but it's something like $50/yr unlimited storage and I don't recall if they do versioning and that would be per machine.

Dropbox is free to 2gb if you only need specific files.

A NAS would be higher initial investment over carbonite, cheaper in the long run, easier and cheaper than WHS. Lacie, thecus, synology or qnap if your are either not doing time machine or don't mind doing unsupported time machine. Otherwise, get a time capsule.

I don't think you need raid. What are the odds of your hard drive crapping out (we're only talking your hard drives, not the rest of the laptops) AND the backup hard drive(s) at the same time?

[farley2k]

I use Mozy and have set it up for several people.  2GB is free but you pay if you have more.  It runs nightly to do its thing. 

It occured to me at some point that it doesn't matter how much I backup at home if the house burns down so something like that.  I figure an offsite backup is a good investment.



 

[Malificent]

I'm using both Carbonite and an external hard drive. The only problem with Carbonite (for me) is that it can't keep up with me. I do a lot of photography and so I'm editing a lot of big files on a regular basis. Carbonite currently has 31GB to back up and at my upload speeds, that takes forever. I would hate myself if my computer died and I lost a bunch of photos because Carbonite hadn't caught up yet. So I just use WIndows backup to backup to the drive every week and Carbonite continues to backup to the cloud.