Do you have your first backup?

Topic

New Reply

It’s January 1, 2025. I’d like everyone to stop for a moment and think about all your devices you use to communicate that contain software. Whether it
[See the full post at: Do you have your first backup?]

Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

5 users thanked author for this post.

abbodi86, lmacri, Myst, Elly, Alex5723

Reply | Quote

Replies

As usual on every first of month I have created a full image backup (all partitions) to an external SSD drive.
I copied that image to drive D on my laptop in case I need to restore when away with my PC.

Reply | Quote

Before bed Saturday night, I unplug my Ethernet switch from my cable modem.  Every Sunday morning, beginning at 2:00AM, Task Scheduler launches Image For Windows to create images of three critical partitions, OS, Programs, and Users in a dedicated SSD in my PC.  At 4:00AM, Task Scheduler launches a Robocopy batch file to copy those drive images to my NAS, and creates log files on my desktop.

While I’m having coffee Sunday morning, I transfer those fresh images in my NAS to a 3TB HDD that I plug into the drive dock on my NAS.  When that finishes, I replace that HDD with another, and repeat.  When the second copy completes, I unplug that HDD and put it away.  Then I can reconnect to my cable modem.  That gives me two offline copies of fresh drive images.

I use OneDrive, but I have it on a separate partition on a different SSD from my Users partition.  Task Scheduler initiates daily copies of the several folders, which I want to be uploaded online, to my OneDrive folder on my PC, and creates log files on my desktop.  This gives me two local and one online copy of those files/folders.  I have no online-only files/folders.  Everything stays on the various drives/partitions on my desktop.

I have a number of partitions that seldom get updated, and periodically I will create drive images of these to copy to offline storage, similar to the way I keep offline storage of my critical drive images.

 

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems; we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

We were all once "Average Users".

Computer Specs

Reply | Quote

Every 14 days (Usually Friday night) backup all 4 of the household computers (2 desktops and 2 laptops) to a bare HDD plugged into an USB dock. Repeat at the next iteration with a different HDD. Six drives in rotation.

Every 60 days I backup the Pictures directory on my NAS and a collection of other NAS directories. These items don’t change much thus the longer time frame. The NAS is RAID 0 (mirrored) which is another reason for the longer time frame. These rotate on 2 larger drives that hold more than one backup round.

I keep track of it all with an Excel Workbook that reads the latest drive after the backups deleting backups I’ve deleted and adding the new ones and keeps track of space usage on each drive. It also keeps track of images on some other drives I use for intermediate backups when I’m “fooling” around! Here’s a shot of the main sheet.

I also have File History running on my main driver storing it’s data on the NAS in a directory that doesn’t get backed-up.

“You can’t be too Rich or have too many backups!” by Experience! at least with the latter…

May the Forces of good computing be with you!

RG

PowerShell & VBA Rule!
Computer Specs

Reply | Quote

I have an Icy Dock 5.25″ bay adapter that lets me hot-swap my non-OS internal drives and do a full image backup of my primary drive first thing every Sunday morning to a removable 1TB drive.

Also, just in case it blows something up and I need to roll it back, I create a USB Rescue disk before installing each monthly update.

Reply | Quote

Everything gets a backup to external SSD’s on Sunday nights. Full backup on the 1st Sunday, differential for the rest of the month. My production machine gets additional diffs every Tuesday and Thursday. First backup of the year will happen as scheduled tonight.

The iPhone & iPad get backed up semi-regularly to the MacBook Air when I feel like it and I usually check for updates on the Linux system while doing that since they’re in the same room.

New addition for 2025: Back up my most irreplaceable personal files to Blu-Ray/M-Disc and keep an extra off site copy of those discs in the fire safe at my shop and/or safe deposit box at the bank. Process the files with Winrar with a recovery record first and verify each burn before storage for fault tolerance.

Also, to copy the backup files from the external SSD used for that purpose on the production machine to a compact bus powered extra USB drive on a monthly/bi monthly basis and store that drive in the fire safe as well.

Reply | Quote

We are now in the process of archiving decades of data stored on:

• Hundreds of CDs,
• Various external SSD drives, and
• The drives of more than a dozen retired computers.

For now, all data is being copied to 4TB WD BLACK P50 Game Drives.

The amazing thing is that 25 year-old CDs are still readable.

 

Reply | Quote

Worth testing your disks regularly once the data is written.
https://www.askwoody.com/forums/topic/from-the-lounge-simple-and-cheap-data-backup-and-storage/#post-2318643

cheers, Paul

Reply | Quote

One other thing to account for — if  you do data backups that back up only a portion of your data, review your methodologies to make sure all your essential data is, indeed, getting backed up.  This is particularly important if you’ve done something like add a new application, and the corresponding data store is in a location that may not be included in an existing backup regimen.

As an example, I normally don’t back up all the data in my Windows AppData folder (specifically, %APPDATA%) because there’s a lot of stuff there that I don’t care about if I need to do a recovery. In my context, the AppData data that I care about are Mozilla profiles, and a couple of Microsoft things (namely Outlook .PST files and personal dictionaries and templates for Word).  In my backup tool, I can set it to exclude a lot of stuff, but that’s a lot of work to add dozens of exceptions.  Or I can exclude the all the contents of AppData, and then set my backup tool to include the folders that I want.  The latter is easier, but it can happen that if I add something new (and where I do want that data being backed up), then I have to remember to review my backup procedures to make sure that my backups are getting everything that I want.

Beyond stuff in AppData, the other place that it’s easy to get bitten on this is if you store data in non-standard locations, especially outside of Windows user profiles. Also, if you have a machine that has multiple user IDs, making sure you’re backing up data from all the profiles.

I agree that a full-image backup that gets everything avoids this particular problem, but there are a wide range of backup and recovery scenarios, where it’s not always desirable or practical to have everything backed up, or to recover every single file.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Paul T

Reply | Quote

My main PC is of the Desktop variety with a fair amount of internal real estate.  I have an M.2 drive for Windows (C) and installed software.  I have an internal SSD SATA drive (E) that holds all my current data.  The data drive (D) is backed up to two spinning platter drives (F & J).  The SSD drive (E) gets culled from time to time to save space.  The two spinning platter drives (F & J) contain every electronic file I have ever created.  Lastly, I have a pair of USB external drives.

Before leaving my computer, I run a robocopy script that copies any new or changed files on the E drive to both the F & J drives.  This takes about a minute. About once a week, I run a script that copies those new or altered (F) items to a USB external drive.   After a Windows update proves reliable, or upon adding a significant piece of software, I make a full Macrium image and store it on the G drive (a second partition on the first spinning platter drive (F & G).  A new system image is backed up to the external USB drive using the same script as for the F drive.  About once a month, I take the external drive to my safe deposit box and swap it with the one that’s there.

My house could burn down, and worst case, I’d be without a month’s worth of data.  Works for me, but then again, I have room in my case for all those drives.

Casey H.

 

Reply | Quote