Backup for Old People?

The Halk

The Halk

The Halk

Soldato
Joined
13 May 2003
Posts
11,865
Location
Hamilton
I have a holiday home in Florida, and there's a very dear old lady who lives near by. She really is one of the nicest people I've ever met.

However she has a laptop and for the past few years she's felt it needs replaced. I've sorted it out a few times with spyware etc. But it's really getting past it now so it's time to replace it.

I did say to her that I meant to sort her out with a backup system, so now seems about as good a time as any to get backup set up.

I'll be over there in May and I'll be grabbing her a new laptop and backup over in the States.

For backup I'm thinking just an external USB hard drive. I had a look at what OcUK sell as an example, and the 250GB is more than enough. So I don't see any need to spend more.

Is there any software someone could recommend which would automatically backup everything to the drive periodically, and make sure if something happened she didn't lose her pictures, etc? I've never used Windows Backup, and the vital thing is that whatever I set up, it needs to keep working when I leave.
 
2GB is not enough. She's got years of photos on it.

I need a backup solution that someone recommends as "This will work" so that I don't need to worry about it.
 
If cloud storage of some kind isn't an option, I'd go for a small NAS device instead - it's a little more outlay, but that way she won't have to worry about remembering to plug in an USB drive periodically (and maybe dropping it).

You could use pretty much any syncing tool running on a schedule to make it as set-and-forget as possible - my favourite is FreeFileSync, which is ideal for this sort of thing. :)
 
You can backup an unlimited amount with mozy for $4.99 per month IIRC. It is pretty much set it and forget it. The initial upload sucks though.
 
For the really non-replaceable stuff, like photos etc, I'd also think about looking at burning copies to two or three DVDs and storing them somewhere safe, preferably off-site. Does she have any relatives or something like a bank deposit box where she can keep a copy of at least up to what she has now?

I know it's not a nice thing to think about, or talk about to old people but if she really wants to keep the photo's etc safe and has family she might want to pass them onto at some stage, then you really need to think about worse case, things like fire and theft etc.

It's all good moving it to an external drive but if what ever it is that takes out her PC takes that out as well then the whole thing is pointless.
 
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