How often do you back up your data?

**Todd Belverstone** · 02-15-2010, 09:10 AM

I just opened for business at the start of the year and have only done a couple inspections so far, but as I was changing some wording and adding the finishing touches to my documents, my computer decided to lay down and die

. I lost my designs, form and web layouts, and 3 years worth of family pictures. I should be able to retrieve everything from my hard drive when my tablet PC (gotta look at the bright side) shows up tomorrow.

Just wondering how, and how often one should back everything up? I'm thinking the first of every month. lesson learned.

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**Scott Patterson** · 02-15-2010, 09:16 AM

Originally Posted by Todd Belverstone

I just opened for business at the start of the year and have only done a couple inspections so far, but as I was changing some wording and adding the finishing touches to my documents, my computer decided to lay down and die

. I lost my designs, form and web layouts, and 3 years worth of family pictures. I should be able to retrieve everything from my hard drive when my tablet PC (gotta look at the bright side) shows up tomorrow.

Just wondering how, and how often one should back everything up? I'm thinking the first of every month. lesson learned.

I use an online service called Carbonite. It backs up everything in the background automatically. Once it is setup you do not do anything

Send me your email address and if you sign up with them you and I get a free month of service.....

scott@traceinspections.com

A.D. Miller · 02-15-2010, 09:26 AM

I have a terabyte USB hard drive which backs up important stuff daily. I am still not comfortable with the cloud storage that SP uses.

**Jim Luttrall** · 02-15-2010, 09:47 AM

Similar to Scott, I use an off site backup service. If you have a catastrophe such as a fire, flood, tornado that destroys your computer, hard drive, etc. you will be glad you have a totally separate and secure place to retrieve you important documents.
I use Mozy but the theory is the same, except I don't get kickbacks

for recommending them.
Set it up and never have to think of it again until you need it.
I corrupted my report template with all my diagrams, verbiage, etc. a few months ago and about had a heart attack. I went to Mozy, found what I needed and within 5 minutes, I was back in business. A VERY happy camper!
I have 11Gb of storage for something like $60 per year. I would have gladly paid $60 bucks just to get the one document back!

**John Dirks Jr** · 02-15-2010, 10:32 AM

I back up data after each inspection which reminds me I need to do it now.

**Scott Patterson** · 02-15-2010, 12:38 PM

Originally Posted by A.D. Miller

I have a terabyte USB hard drive which backs up important stuff daily. I am still not comfortable with the cloud storage that SP uses.

I did the same until my backup drive died! Had a 600gb Maxtor One Touch that bit the dust after a few years of service.

I had to use the backup on the "cloud storage" a few months back when my hard drive died on my office computer. All I had to do was reload the programs on a new machine and then download the data. Worked like a charm. It took several hours but it worked!

**Jack Feldmann** · 02-15-2010, 04:53 PM

I too had a hard drive die. There were lots of files that I did not have backed up somewhere else. Gone!!
I also went with Carbonite, but the guy that was working on my computer last week is working on a system that will back up my entire network and put it in the clouds, but to several different places. I have no idea how it works, but I trust this guy, so I will probably go with it too.

I found out that some c/d's can become useless, for no apparent reason. I had some reports backed up on c/d, and now the c/d shows nothing there. Same for zip drives, they die all the time.

I now have two external hard drives, I switch back and forth and also use Carbonite. I also back up to dvd's and c/ds.

I lost all of 2007 and really hope I never have to access something from that time period. I guess if I get sued, I will have to rely on whatever report they have, since all my files are gone.

This is not the end of the world, since people have floods and fires all the time and data/files and records are lost.

It wasn't until I had my backup drive die that I found out that hard drives have a limited life span. It seems that almost every computer nerd knows this, but I had no clue.

**Rick Hurst** · 02-15-2010, 06:36 PM

I use Carbonite also to back up all my data and files.

For years and I still do, I email all of my HI reports to my Google email address as a backup when I send the clients their report. I can also access that Google email from just about anywhere and can pull up a HI report in no time. It costs you nothing to do that as far as saving your HI reports alone.

rick

Troy Eskew · 02-15-2010, 06:47 PM

Every time I log on to the internet. I too use Carbonite. Much cheaper than the way I used to. (portable hard drives)

**Matt Fellman** · 02-15-2010, 08:11 PM

I did the external HD routine and seem to burn through one every year or so.... I'm not sure how or why but after the 3rd one I figured it was no fluke.

I use Carbonite now... it's totally painless and works great. It's literally just a couple clicks and $50 a year and you never have to think about it again. The one thing that always worried me about the external HD things was theft and fire.... you're just SOL.

Philippe Heller · 04-09-2010, 06:39 AM

We use Carbonite. It is great! You don't even have to think about backing up. Best of all it is off site, so if there is a disaster (theft, fire, flood) your data is safe.

I live in San Diego where both of the last two big fires started (Ramona). Having your house burn down is a real possibility. Two of my neighbor's houses were lost. You can back up all you want, but if your place burns down you are screwed. You can also access your back ups from any computer! It's only $5/month and no worried because your PC backs up anytime you are connected to the internet. I highly recommend it.

Daniel Leung · 04-09-2010, 09:29 AM

Think about the free of charge gmail (at least still no charge now). It is a kind of FREE unlimited offsite storage!
A friend told me he send himself all important data as gmail attachment. It is totally free for ~7Gb per account (we can open "n" accounts). The only limitation is for small files, say under 20Mb(?).