My new PC Backup Strategy

[88V8]

Bummer to lose 25 years of files. Hope there weren't a lot of irreplaceable pics.

My weekly full backup is running right now. Automated, but I have to switch on the external HDD. If I forget, I have to trigger the backup manually when I do remember, usually same evening.
Saved my bacon years ago when the computer died, and again more recently when all the storage folders in my LiveMail vanished.

No offsite backup. One of those subscription services would - will - be a good idea. Right in front of me as I write is the underside of our thatched roof. Losing the whole lot cannot be discounted.

There, I've written it on tomorrow's Do Today list.

V8

[scotia]

I'm now retired, so I suppose I'm a bit more relaxed about my informal backup policy. I like the comfort of a full image backup with Macrium, carried out at odd intervals of a month or so - onto a USB connected hard drive. I usually keep two or three of these, and delete the older ones. Recently modified directories are simply copied to a different USB connected hard drive, and sometimes to a second PC. All important directories are compressed, encrypted and store on OneDrive - again at odd intervals of a month or so.
Its also sensible to check occasionally that you can restore data from your backups.

[vrdiver]

Its also sensible to check occasionally that you can restore data from your backups.

Reminds me of a client who made daily tape backups of a particular application. The machine sat in an open office, full of smokers, and of course, after a few years, it failed to boot.
I was called in to do the restore onto the replacement machine. Turned out the tape backup (daily backups for a week, weekly backups for a quarter and monthly backups saved for a year, with tapes rotated) hadn't worked for at least a full cycle of all of the tapes - every single one was corrupted.

As luck would have it I'd been doing some work on their data model, so was able to restore their system from the development copy I had. There was a flurry of disaster recovery testing shortly after by all the other users!

VRD

[scotia]

Its also sensible to check occasionally that you can restore data from your backups.

Reminds me of a client who made daily tape backups of a particular application. The machine sat in an open office, full of smokers, and of course, after a few years, it failed to boot.
I was called in to do the restore onto the replacement machine. Turned out the tape backup (daily backups for a week, weekly backups for a quarter and monthly backups saved for a year, with tapes rotated) hadn't worked for at least a full cycle of all of the tapes - every single one was corrupted.

As luck would have it I'd been doing some work on their data model, so was able to restore their system from the development copy I had. There was a flurry of disaster recovery testing shortly after by all the other users!

VRD

Snap! I had a similar experience and I developed a deep distrust of all tape backups.