Survey: How Do You Backup Your Files?

As the terabyte gradually drops to the magical $100 by the end of the year, there's little room for excuses to not have a backup plan in case your machine decides to suddenly go *kablow* (believe me, two of our editors just had our computers die these past few weeks), causing you to lose all of your work, pictures, and music with one sweeping blow. How about it readers? What's the best backup plan out there? Or do you run about your daily lives not worrying about these frivolous things?

With the slew of options available of your disposal - from free online storage to portable pocket sized options - it's hard to choose just one. Heck, I say have multiple systems synchronized together and you'll never have to worry about another day since your files would safely be stored in at least one location.

[photo via dboehmer]

Comments (9)

I have Time Machine, which backs up to an external hard drive. Husband set it up.

http://embritadesign.blogspot.com

posted by EmmieB on October 29th 2008 at 12:14pm
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what's a good online backup? are they secure with super personal information?

i have an external hard drive, but i don't back up my stuff anywhere else.

and, unfortunately, my system (so says dell tech support) is in the process of crashing. they're coming out to replace my system board and hard drive. less than a year old computer. so i'm pissed! but i'm thinking that if i didn't have my external drive, i'd be (tr)ucked!

so yeah, what are my options?

posted by kdkaboom on October 29th 2008 at 12:49pm
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i'm not using anything yet - been clearing off the 150GB FW drive for time machine but keep filling it back up!

@kdka

you'll have to pay for the higher storage online backups. idrive is one that i know of.

posted by FightTheFuture on October 29th 2008 at 4:54pm
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none of those really.
i burn back up DVDs of music and raw photo files, have an ipod which also keeps all my music, videos, and jpeg photos, and an external hard drive which i use time machine to back up everything, including my system again.

posted by Matt. M on October 29th 2008 at 4:57pm
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4x750GB hard drives in a NAS in RAID 5. The really important stuff is also on an external hard drive that I keep at work and bring home once a week to update. This way, should there be a fire or some other catastrophe, I've still got my files somewhere. The NAS is also serving media files and acting as a BT client when I want to download large files so my laptop doesn't have to be on for days on end. It's a pretty hard working little unit that's just shut away in a cabinet.

posted by charmac on October 29th 2008 at 7:04pm
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yea, this isnt a very complete survey. I do backups but i dont fall into any of those categories. I have a usb backup drive that i manually backup to every once in awhile.

posted by beesknees on October 30th 2008 at 4:42am
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I backup my entire drive to an external drive weekly, and backup certain folders to xDrive. I used to use Mozy for online backup, but their service for Macs stopped working one day. I was studying for the bar, so I didn't want to take any chances, so I switched.

posted by twotwenty on October 30th 2008 at 5:43am
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I use Time Machine, as well as Mozy. I use the free Mozy to back up docs and small files, I don't do off-site backup for media.

posted by Max on October 30th 2008 at 8:35am
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maxtor one-touch. you probably need a poll category for external hard drive backups.

posted by Jezebella on October 31st 2008 at 6:00pm
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