What's your backup strategy?

[W1zzard]

Data is becoming more and more important. Do you perform backups of your files? In an automated way, or just a manual copy from time to time. How do you feel about storing backups in the cloud?

Thanks @1freedude for the poll idea

 

[Athlonite]

I'll never trust the cloud but I do backup my important stuff to elsewhere usually an HDD within the PC and to an USB HDD

 

[Sithaer]

Nothing really, to be honest I don't keep anything dead important on my PC to bother.
At most I have some old screenshots from online games 'MMOs' I used to play that I keep around cause nostalgic value.

Rest can be dled again if needed, game saves are mainly cloud saves nowadays or at least the games I play have that.

 

[ThrashZone]

Hi,
I manually system image every month or two with free macrium reflect winpe recovery media, never in the active os.

I copy and paste new movies/ series recordings/... after they're created to 3 other system drives, there's no sense in system imaging these since they're on several different hdd's/ ssd's.

Nothing automated
Onedrive is removed from systems and if I want something on onedrive/ icloud="phone crap" I manually upload the files but usually nothing I care anything about.
I sure don't use cloud as any type of recovery backup it's just silly sharing crap.

 

[s3thra]

For my phone it’s just iCloud.

For my PC, there’s a few processes:

Local backups - I run robocopy scripts every month or so to backup to my 2nd PC. Then every so often I run scripts to back everything up to external drives I mount in a dock. All data is therefore on 3 separate “disks”.

Cloud backups - occasionally I’ll backup to my Amazon S3 bucket using s3cmd. These are things that are super important like documents, photos, dev files etc. so that if my house burns I’m not totally screwed. I don’t upload my videos/music/software etc. as my upload speed is limited, so for that…

Offsite backups - I’ve also got HDDs stored in a safe at a relatives house that I’ll swap out occasionally (yearly).

So yeah, backups all over the place - not keen on ever losing my data!

 

[austinrider]

Twin HTPC's, 1 has an 8TB HD the other is 4TB. Manually backup to 2 USB HD's when I remember too.

 

[micropage7]

manually backup to google drive

 

[Freeco]

none of the above
All my important data is stored centrally on my NAS. I don't have to worry about backing my desktops/laptop.

NAS backup strategy:
My NAS automatically syncs twice a week with my old NAS, most things with versioning. The NAS's are on different floors, so in case of a small fire that should still be fine.
Once a month I manually sync my NAS with a USB disk (encrypted). At other moments I keep this disk disconnected, to protect against lightning/power surges.
Twice a week my most important data is automatically backed up to OneDrive & Google Drive (encrypted). I don't want to pay for the cloud storage, so that's limited to the utmost important things.
Twice a year I make a selection of some important data and burn it to a DVD. I keep all DVDs, so I have versioning again.

I could improve it by paying for some cloud storage, but I guess I'm pretty safe

 

[Leiesoldat]

I have a network share within the home server that runs Proxmox with the disks being mirrored within the ZFS pool (reasoning for mirrors over RAIDZ). Snapshots of this pool are taken on a regular schedule using the Sanoid tool and then sent to a local backup server once a week using Syncoid. I am currently working on building a larger and more robust backup than the old Ivy Bridge i3 that is in the current backup.

 

[dir_d]

I have a network share within the home server that runs Proxmox with the disks being mirrored within the ZFS pool (reasoning for mirrors over RAIDZ). Snapshots of this pool are taken on a regular schedule using the Sanoid tool and then sent to a local backup server once a week using Syncoid. I am currently working on building a larger and more robust backup than the old Ivy Bridge i3 that is in the current backup.

I have a similar server except i have ESXi and my Dual RAIDZ2 is backed up to another RAIDZ2 in the same rack. Not the best but i dont have data in there that is so important that if my house burned down i would lose out. All the important digital data, pictures of Kids are online.

 

[SN2716057]

I run an automatic backup of several important files to my NAS. Non critical stuff, like some humongous games (steam mostly), I back up manually to my NAS.
I also make manual backups to an external hard drive cause it eases my mind.

 

[Andyr]

I'm a hobbyist photographer, so I'm a bit paranoid about backups. I use Macrium Reflect to image everything up to 2 external SSDs monthly. I keep 1 at home and 1 at work. I also have an external HDD where I keep a physical copy of the files as an archive (I only add files to it). Oh and a Backblaze subscription just in case...

 

[Mysteoa]

I don't have much valued data. So I just have One drive to sync My Documents and that is it.

 

[AusWolf]

I've always said: if you need a proper job done, do it yourself. So my answer is: manual copy. I've got several external HDDs for important and less important stuff. I'm also planning to arrange family photos for blu-ray M-disc backup later.

 

[OneMoar]

buy a new 500GB sata ssd every 6 months and bury it in the backyard .....

 

[Psychoholic]

Manual copy -- Well, Manual but automated

My raid lun in my linux host (which serves as a SMB share for everything else) gets sync'd once a week with a single spinning hdd via rsync (Just to have it in 2 places)
Also gets backed up to USB and cold stored, although not as often as I Probably should.

 

[AlwaysHope]

Does windows system restore count? that's just one strategy I use atm.

 

[MrDweezil]

Can't think of any data I'd be upset about losing for longer than 5 minutes or so.

 

[v12dock]

Personal I use GDrive and OneDrive. I backed up our wedding photos to S3 as well. Now work... that's a whole different ballgame... Backed up to onsite and offside via MPLS and cloud solutions.

 

[sam_86314]

I've been using Macrium Reflect to do weekly backups of my entire system to my server. It does a full backup on the first Monday of the month and then does differential ones after that.

At the beginning of each month, I delete old backups to regain space.

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

I wrote a powershell script to back up certain files to multiple locations, although it only doing 1 file atm. And than I am using File History for (folder) backing up the rest of what I want.

 

[TheDeeGee]

Manual Offline backups.

I got various 2,5 Inch HDDs in USB enclosures.

 

[64K]

I keep everything of importance on both of my laptops and my gaming desktop. Also it all goes to my two USB drives. Every year I buy two more drives and the old drives go to my safe deposit at the bank. Maybe I'm just being too careful but I like knowing that it's almost impossible to lose any files this way.

I'm a bit surprised that on a tech enthusiast site 15% say they don't do backups.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Many of you know I am a strong advocate of backups and data redundancy. Would it surprise any of you to know that I do all of it manually?

I've always said: if you need a proper job done, do it yourself. So my answer is: manual copy.

Same here.

I'm also planning to arrange family photos for blu-ray M-disc backup later.

That's how I do most of my backups. Some of them are even encrypted with an uncrackable cypher.

 

[mb194dc]

Cloud via iperius, Google backup and sync.

Both are free, no idea why you wouldn't use for important data.