Backing up data, using any utility, will depend a lot on whether or not you use the Windows DEFAULT for documents, photos and so on.
If your 3rd party application “saves” to a different location (like the desktop for instance*), you must be sure to copy those separately, or they will be lost.
Windows has a backup built in (System Tools> Backup), but I find it bulky & hard to use.
*The desktop items are essentially a singular folder.
Backups should be the ‘all’ data option as a baseline; after that use the ‘incremental’, which saves only new items, and changes to originals. This saves space on your backup media.
Ideally 2 copies are made of each backup: one kept with the unit, one kept ‘off site’ in case of fire, tornadoes, floods, etc.
One decent B.U. application is ‘Cobain’ (moderately easy to use; freeware). http://www.educ.umu.se/~cobian/cobianbackup.htm
For max security, data should be encrypted before sending, independent of any site involvement with that phase.
Use a solid ‘on-board’ utility** for this, and practice a couple of times with some nondescript file to master the entire process so you know for certain you can get your files back.
That would be: file encrypt> upload>download> decrypt & verify.
Once proficient, go ahead with the more delicate file work.
Duplicati is a free backup client that securely stores encrypted, incremental, compressed backups on cloud storage services and remote file servers. It works with Amazon S3, Windows Live SkyDrive, Google Drive (Google Docs), Rackspace Cloud Files or WebDAV, SSH, FTP (and many more).
**Duplicati has built-in AES-256 encryption and backups can be signed using GNU Privacy Guard. A built-in scheduler makes sure that backups are always up-to-date. Last but not least, Duplicati provides various options and tweaks like filters, deletion rules, transfer and bandwidth options to run backups for specific purposes.
this cloud sucks
Backing up data, using any utility, will depend a lot on whether or not you use the Windows DEFAULT for documents, photos and so on.
If your 3rd party application “saves” to a different location (like the desktop for instance*), you must be sure to copy those separately, or they will be lost.
Windows has a backup built in (System Tools> Backup), but I find it bulky & hard to use.
*The desktop items are essentially a singular folder.
Backups should be the ‘all’ data option as a baseline; after that use the ‘incremental’, which saves only new items, and changes to originals. This saves space on your backup media.
Ideally 2 copies are made of each backup: one kept with the unit, one kept ‘off site’ in case of fire, tornadoes, floods, etc.
One decent B.U. application is ‘Cobain’ (moderately easy to use; freeware).
http://www.educ.umu.se/~cobian/cobianbackup.htm
For off-site (cloud):
SugarSync 5Gb
https://www.sugarsync.com/signup?startsub=5
Windows Live Skydrive gives 5Gb
http://explore.live.com/windows-live-skydrive
If you have Zone Alarm firewall, there’s now a free, 2Gb cloud storage.
Google Drive, a free-if-you-just-need-5GB-of-storage; https://drive.google.com/start?continue=https://drive.google.com/##home
(with attendant privacy issues, like all Google products; user beware)
For max security, data should be encrypted before sending, independent of any site involvement with that phase.
Use a solid ‘on-board’ utility** for this, and practice a couple of times with some nondescript file to master the entire process so you know for certain you can get your files back.
That would be: file encrypt> upload>download> decrypt & verify.
Once proficient, go ahead with the more delicate file work.
Duplicati is a free backup client that securely stores encrypted, incremental, compressed backups on cloud storage services and remote file servers. It works with Amazon S3, Windows Live SkyDrive, Google Drive (Google Docs), Rackspace Cloud Files or WebDAV, SSH, FTP (and many more).
**Duplicati has built-in AES-256 encryption and backups can be signed using GNU Privacy Guard. A built-in scheduler makes sure that backups are always up-to-date. Last but not least, Duplicati provides various options and tweaks like filters, deletion rules, transfer and bandwidth options to run backups for specific purposes.
http://www.duplicati.com/
I use Acronis Home Edition. It works great. Easy to use, fats and has friendly user interface.