online backups

[Okierifleman]

Why would I want some company in New York with all of my files and personal information at their fingertips? The first time I heard that, I thought to myself, no one would do that. But, I guess they do. I back my home computer up once a week on an external, and it goes in the safe.

[thorkyl]

ummm, i cheat
I have a 10 TB server at the house and one in Ohio that are mirrors of each other

[thep33t]

If you really care about your date, you will do some sort of offsite backup. Leaving a backup in the same room, or god forbid, attached to your computer is irresponsible at best. At a minimum get it away from your machine, that way if one goes, it is less likely they both will.

As far as online backups being unsafe, that may be true, but there are plenty out there that are, for arguments safe, much more secure than your home PC.

[TrailDust]

I like my detachable drive also. I am not a fan of leaving all my data online with a company. It is a hackers bullseye. Plus, those external drives are getting less expensive every month.

And on top of that they're extremely reliable too! Latest data from Western Digital is that their external hard drives are averaging 1,000,000 hours mean time between failure!

Why would I want some company in New York with all of my files and personal information at their fingertips? The first time I heard that, I thought to myself, no one would do that. But, I guess they do. I back my home computer up once a week on an external, and it goes in the safe.

Ditto. One of mine always goes in the safe.

If you really care about your date, you will do some sort of offsite backup. Leaving a backup in the same room, or god forbid, attached to your computer is irresponsible at best. At a minimum get it away from your machine, that way if one goes, it is less likely they both will.

Two words: Fireproof safe.

[thep33t]

fireproof safes area great invention; however, there is one problem I have seen happen with putting hard drives for backups in there: people forget. Generally people will get lazy, and leave the hard drive out of the safe after performing a backup.

If this isn't the case, then fireproof safes generally work well for short exposures to fire

[TrailDust]

Well, heck, no system is ever going to be perfect. But I'd rather maintain my two back ups, three if you count very important things like my mp3 collection also backed up to DVDs in my own possession, as opposed to trusting some company to do it for me. I've seen way, way too many businesses go belly up in my lifetime to ever trust anyone completely. I don't have all my money in just one bank, I have it in several. Investments the same way too. Diversify and personally control, works for everything in life IMO.

[Wolfwood]

I like my detachable drive also. I am not a fan of leaving all my data online with a company. It is a crackers bullseye. Plus, those external drives are getting less expensive every month.

** fixed

[jsbcats]

Word of caution with external drives. They do have moving parts and don’t take kindly to being bumped or even dropped so the less you have to move it, the better. Working in the computer industry for 18 years I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve been asked is there any way to recover my data on my external drive that has stopped working? Always keep your data in 2 places. CD or DVD media is the safest way to store data if you don’t need to change it and want to put it away.

I use Microsoft’s skydrive with my live.com account for stuff I’m not concerned with being compromised such as music or pictures. You get 25 gigs free and it’s easy to move stuff back and forth.

A warning about usb memory sticks also. If you do a lot of re-writing to them, they do have a limited life for that kind of activity. I've seen a number of those go bad as well.

[TrailDust]

Excellent advice. I never move my drives till their shut down and the read/write head are parked and locked, and even then I always treat them with TLC.