Some backup questions

haaammit

haaammit

haaammit

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Hi - I really need to sort out a decent backup regime, as I have lots of piccies I really don't want to lose. Sorry for the noob questions coming up :/

At the moment, I'm using the Win 7 backup thingy, set to do a "Files in libraries and personal folders for all users" every Sunday evening to a 2nd hard drive installed in my computer. On that drive, there is a folder called "myname-pc" - is that the backup thing, and has it got all my files in it, as it doesn't seem to be explorable. I want to make sure that this is the backup. Will that also grab folders I have on the desktop?

I also want to start using an external drive to keep separately away from the pc. Presumeabley I can use the windows backup thingy and do a manual backup to the external drive?

How do you access the pictures/files on the backup file, or does it not work like that? I'd really like to see all the files individually - is there an automated way to do this, or some software that could do it?

Sorry for the barrage of questions, but I really want to make sure my pictures are safe :)
 
Quink said:
Will that also grab folders I have on the desktop?
Click to expand...

Yes it'll be included, as well as you're my documents and other "libraries" for your users.

Quink said:
I also want to start using an external drive to keep separately away from the pc. Presumeabley I can use the windows backup thingy and do a manual backup to the external drive?
Click to expand...

I'd strongly suggest making your "secondary backup" using a different backup method.

Buy an encrypted external drive - usually fairly expensive
Just drag and drop the files you want onto it, job done or use a file copy utility to schedule the copying of files onto the drive, so you don't even need to make the effort. Synctoy, robocopy are good applications to look at but there are dozens of options.

Buy a standard non-encrypted external drive
I'd suggest encrypting the data, so a tool like Crashplan (free for local backups) or Truecrypt would be best, then you simple select what you want to back up on Crashplan or copy the data into the Truecrypt container.

Cloud backups
Create a Truecrypt container in your local dropbox/skydrive folders and it'll backup to the cloud, only issues are that it may take a long time to update.

Alternatively purchase a license for Crashplan and use it's encrypted cloud backup solution, which is what I've done, although I also have an encrypted local back up too. I personally couldn't care less if windows falls over, I'll just reinstall anyway and restore what I need manually, rather than letting it choose.
 
Quink said:
How do you access the pictures/files on the backup file, or does it not work like that? I'd really like to see all the files individually - is there an automated way to do this, or some software that could do it?
Click to expand...

You might want to have a look at Cobian Backup. http://www.cobiansoft.com/index.htm

It's more advanced than Windows Backup and easier to restore data because you can use any old archive utility to extract the contents of the backup.
 
If you were at all thinking of upgrading from 7, Windows 8 has 'File History' which will continually back up your files and is easy to browse through. Pro supports Bitlocker encryption too, so you could even encrypt your external storage if that's what you want.
 
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