Best method to back up a laptop?
 

I had a co-worker who lost his laptop recently at a CP (don't get me started on that issue) and unfortunately he didn't back up anything, ANYTHING! - I feel for the guy but shame on him.

I was wondering what method (zip drive, DVD, etc..) people are using today to back up their laptop hard drives who travel a lot and cannot take the chance of losing the information. Also what devices people would recommend.

Thanks!

External hard drive (Lacie 160GB) to back up on and leave at home.

If I know I need access to specific files that are likely to change while I'm away, I back those documents up on the iPod - and carry that in different bag from the laptop.

Ditto on the external HD. I put an image of the laptop on the drive and put it away. This way I can restore the applications without having the install individual stuff.

The individual files that change frequently are backed up on a memory stick, I haven't heard of those things fail yet.

Whew! That is a bummer
 

yeah, getting it stolen is a bummer.
I've lost drives, to fatal errors, but never "lost" one.
So, I am usually just trying to get back up to speed as fast as possible.
Therefore, I carry a second HD, with a pretty recent backup, of most of my data and applications and OS. A second drive 12gb-20gb costs about 60$ these days, so it is not much of an expense.

On top of that, I have a 5GB file share on my ipod, that acts as a backup for critical files, outlook ost file, all my documents and some other items.

I can boot to the laptop from the USB cable I have connected to the external drive, or I just stick the drive in the computer. If I have a fatal drive crash, I just pop out the bad drive, pop in the new one and I am set to go. Everything is as usual.

The initital creation of the back takes a bit of time to do the first time, incremental backups don't take much time at all. For that pupose I have historically used norton ghost. It is not the best program for this, but it was free and works well. It also makes DVD or CD backup copies of the drive in case you have to create a whole new drive on the fly, with like a new one purchased from Bestbuy or something. I have only had to do that once, since I usually have the extra harddrive with me.

There is a newer version of ghost that is suppossed to be much better than the one I use, easier, faster and smaller files. I like the fact that I can carry a DVD image of my Harddrive with me, and esentially CREATE that computer anywhere I go.

I back up all my data files weekly to rewritable DVDs using an external DVD drive. I keep a copy in my safe deposit box, one at home, and one in my laptop bag.

Both my laptops are backed up weekly to an 80gb external USB HDD; daily backups of critical files are either to CDR or memory stick. As an on-the-road tool when I've "spaced" and left my blank CDR and/or memory stick at home, I send files as attachments to my yahoo mail account for retrieval later.

I use CD-RWs. Don't have enough data to justify the higher cost of DVD media, though my drive can burn them too. I'm going to get a memory stick, but not for backup - they're rapidly becoming the universal physical file transfer medium among the folks I share files with.

Most new and recent laptops have at least a built-in CDRW so that would be the easiest to use for file backups. A built-in DVD burner would be even better as you have greater media capacity. After that, you have external HDDs or DVD burners, which have their own pros and cons. I think an external DVD burner would be my personal choice since you have the flexibility to burn DVDs for any reason including backups.

My company now backs up my hard drive remotely but before then you needed to go into the office and manually back it up to the network or find some portable system on your own at home. Since I didn't want to go to the office I bought a Toshiba 5GB portable hard drive that slipped into the PCMCIA slot. I would then remove it from the computer when travelling through the airport just so I knew that my data was secure.

Toshiba 5GB Type II PC Card Removable Hard Disk Drive

PartitionMagic includes a utility program called DataKeeper (I believe that's the name). Basically it's a simple monitoring program, you configure different files/folders for it to watch, and changes to any files in it cause a copy to be sent to the backup destination (basically another folder). At home I have this configured to be a network drive mounted from another computer. If that computer isn't up at the time changes go to an alternate (typically local) folder. When the primary destination becomes available (for me, the 2nd computer is on), the changes get copied over to it.

Assuming you're network drive is occasionally available (ie. may not have this while on the road), you don't modify huge files (since copies at least temporarily may be stored on your local drive), and you don't need to do an complete image restore, this software may be worth considering. It's perhaps not as foolproof as a full backup to CD/DVD/HD, but at least it's automatic, so you don't have to remember to do it.

Jeff

A copy on 2 external hard drives. I use Retrospect to do it.

i like this
 

but i don't think that utility is included any longer in PM, now owned by symantec.

Windows 2000 Pro / XP Pro Offline Files feature works too as a means to synchronise changes with a server, but again, you only get backups when you're connected to the server.

FewMiles..

In Win XP and 2K, there's a standard utility that comes with the OS named Backup (See Programs > Accessories > System Tools). It has some powerful features in that it can make a baseline (basically a complete image) backup, and from there you configure it to subsequently backup only files that hace been created/modified since the baseline.

It's surprisingly similar to an OS utility from bygone days in the VAX/VMS world named BACKUP. And that utility quickly implemented the typical data center model of: Once a month do a complete disk drive image, once a week do an incremental backup of everything that has changed in the past week, and once a day backup anything that has changed in the past day.

With a USB enternal hardrive, it's quite easy to implement the data center backup model on a PC. All you have to do is configure Backup to run, and then copy the output files it creates (save sets?) to the USB HD.

You can even use Task Schduler to automate the backups too.

(I should listen to all this advice about backing up my data!)

FewMiles..