View Poll Results: Do you back up your files ?

Voters
31. You may not vote on this poll
  • Yes

    24 77.42%
  • No

    3 9.68%
  • Never thought about it.

    4 12.90%
Page 1 of 2 12 LastLast
Results 1 to 10 of 14
Like Tree1Likes

Thread: A Heads Up and a Poll ; backing up your files

  1. #1
    Senior Member blabbermouth JimmyHAD's Avatar
    Join Date
    Feb 2008
    Posts
    32,564
    Thanked: 11042

    Default A Heads Up and a Poll ; backing up your files

    Do you back up your files ? I never have and didn't worry about it until it was too late. So the moral of the story is back up your files or you may lose your precious info. The rest of the post is a meandering description of how I know. Think of "House Of The Rising Sun" if you read the rest of it. As in,"Mothers tell your children, not to do what I have done."

    I figured it would be interesting to run this as a poll. I had a bug get into my email a few weeks ago. I would receive a new email and when I opened it the text box would show an email I received from a different individual in 2006. Very weird. So whether this was a virus or a corrupted file in my mail I'll never know.

    I have two towers with linux operating systems on both. So the one that was corrupted was my main wheel and had years of photos and other stuff that I wouldn't want to lose. The other tower, that I used to use at work, was my spare tire, figuratively speaking. I got in touch with a systems admin friend and we tried to figure the bug out to no avail.

    I hadn't backed anything up but my drive was partitioned in such a way that I could reinstall linux and keep my home directory with all of the photos and whatever else it contained. So I was running linux mint 6 and it is up to 11. I went with 10 because I like the KDE interface better than Gnome.

    I don't know where I messed up but on the reboot I had lost my home directory. All of the years of photos were history. I was running mint 7 on the spare tower so I installed ubuntu 11 on that with the gnome that I'm not crazy about. Actually I'm getting to like it now. I didn't lose the home directory on that install but there wasn't much on it anyway. So I have the mint 10 with the KDE on one and the ubuntu 11 with the Gnome on the other. Either system is highly recommended AFAIC. Whatever you have don't forget to back up those files.
    Last edited by JimmyHAD; 06-12-2011 at 04:08 PM.
    Be careful how you treat people on your way up, you may meet them again on your way back down.

  2. #2
    illegitimum non carborundum Utopian's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2008
    Location
    Rochester, MN
    Posts
    11,552
    Thanked: 3795
    Blog Entries
    1

    Default

    I didn't understand half of what you wrote, but got the take home message anyway. Also, I'm sorry you lost your stuff.

  3. #3
    lz6
    lz6 is offline
    Senior Member blabbermouth lz6's Avatar
    Join Date
    Feb 2010
    Location
    California
    Posts
    4,833
    Thanked: 1841

    Default

    I lost everything a few years ago and almost none could be recovered. Now using a Dell with double hard drives
    and automatically back up at 4:00a.m. everyday.
    Bob

    "God is a Havana smoker. I have seen his gray clouds" Gainsburg

  4. #4
    Customized Birnando's Avatar
    Join Date
    Feb 2010
    Location
    Oslo, Norway
    Posts
    5,079
    Thanked: 1694

    Default

    Oh yes.
    I back up to external drives once a week.
    In addition I keep a a 2-disk rotation separate from the above, where one is always in my Bank-box.
    I also keep every important file or folder stored in two separate cloud-systems.

    Or put another way. I'm not gonna loose any data. Period.
    Bjoernar
    Um, all of them, any of them that have been in front of me over all these years....


  5. #5
    ..mama I know we broke the rules... Maxi's Avatar
    Join Date
    Feb 2010
    Location
    Toronto, Ontario, Canada
    Posts
    2,895
    Thanked: 993
    Blog Entries
    8

    Default

    Being a teacher, backing up files is a way of life.....It has to be. SWMBO and I have a Mac that is loaded with everything...a PC that is our "spare tire", and an external drive that is the second spare tire.

    Further to that, for working I have a three memory sticks that act the same as the computer set up.

    Paranoid....maybe. It happened last year....i was using a new memory stick and it started to erase files. I lost many school units...not lessons...units.

    Jimmy, I understand completely. I don't want that to happen again. it was a boat load of work to recreate everything.

  6. #6
    Senior Member blabbermouth ScoutHikerDad's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2010
    Location
    Upstate South Carolina
    Posts
    3,308
    Thanked: 987

    Default

    Yeah, I learned the hard way to back up everything. For the last couple of years, I kept everything on a flash drive, which I backed up periodically on my desktop.

    Maxi-My wife and I are both teachers. What has made our lives much easier is DropBox. You create an account with a password, and load your files on it. It backs up automatically every time you work on it, on both a remote server, as well as every computer you have the software downloaded on. It makes flash drives obsolete, and is actually much easier to use.
    There are many roads to sharp.

  7. #7
    ..mama I know we broke the rules... Maxi's Avatar
    Join Date
    Feb 2010
    Location
    Toronto, Ontario, Canada
    Posts
    2,895
    Thanked: 993
    Blog Entries
    8

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by ScoutHikerDad View Post
    Yeah, I learned the hard way to back up everything. For the last couple of years, I kept everything on a flash drive, which I backed up periodically on my desktop.

    Maxi-My wife and I are both teachers. What has made our lives much easier is DropBox. You create an account with a password, and load your files on it. It backs up automatically every time you work on it, on both a remote server, as well as every computer you have the software downloaded on. It makes flash drives obsolete, and is actually much easier to use.
    YES! I'm heading to check it out right now. This could be the answer....thank you very much!

  8. #8
    This is not my actual head. HNSB's Avatar
    Join Date
    Nov 2009
    Location
    Middle of nowhere, Minnesota
    Posts
    4,624
    Thanked: 1371
    Blog Entries
    2

    Default

    My backup backups have backups.

    Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.

  9. #9
    BF4 gamer commiecat's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2009
    Location
    Gainesville, FL
    Posts
    2,542
    Thanked: 704

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by HNSB View Post
    My backup backups have backups.
    My home setup is close to that -- I have a backup drive, and then a backup of that one. All my music and personal files get backed up twice. I take an image of the household computers probably every 6 or 8 months.

    EDIT: Now we keep so much information on our cell phones. I have a backup app (Titanium) for my Android that backs up all the phone data to SD card and syncs to Dropbox, and my SMS app has a separate backup for text messages. Contacts copied across Gmail and Hotmail.
    Last edited by commiecat; 06-13-2011 at 01:46 AM.

  10. #10
    Well Shaved Gentleman... jhenry's Avatar
    Join Date
    Dec 2009
    Location
    Indianapolis, IN
    Posts
    3,860
    Thanked: 3760

    Default

    Jimmy,

    I feel for you. My hard drive crashed on my Mac at home earlier this year and I lost a lot files.

    I now use an external drive and Time Machine to backup the files on my home computer.
    "Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter." Mark Twain

Page 1 of 2 12 LastLast

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •