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How do other translators back up their files? Best way to set up an automated back up?
Thread poster: Alison Watt
Thomas T. Frost
Thomas T. Frost  Identity Verified
Portugal
Local time: 07:49
Danish to English
+ ...
System recovery is not the same as backup Sep 14, 2014

Tom in London wrote:

Dropbox (and/or the Cloud) will be no good to you if you only have one computer and your hard drive has crashed. Use a physical hard drive that holds a complete clone so that if your internal drive fails you can boot from the clone and keep on working until you get the internal drive fixed (or get a new computer) and can still go online and do everything else. As a Mac user I find this easy, and I imagine it's equally easy with a PC.

[Edited at 2014-09-14 13:27 GMT]


I can see what you mean, but system recovery is not the same as backup. If you want quick crash recovery, you can either have an external bootable drive, or you can have a second computer. An external spare drive will only make you recover if it is the hard disk that fails, though. Even though the hard disk is often the element that goes first, it is not the only element that can fail. Having a second computer is a safer (and more expensive, particularly for Apple) choice.

Regardless of how you recover from a crash, you need a working computer to use the backup, no matter where the backup is. An external hard drive simply cannot provide the same protection that an online backup service can.


 
Mulyadi Subali
Mulyadi Subali  Identity Verified
Indonesia
Local time: 14:49
Member
English to Indonesian
+ ...
external hard drive + cloud storage Sep 14, 2014

I use this combo as my backup strategy. External hard drive is now very affordable. You can buy a 2TB hard drive for less than USD100. I use the external hard drive to mirror my computer + incremental backup. So, this should be a no brainer, as it is cheap and fast way to get/recover your data.
As for cloud storage, regardless of the celebgate, it does offer convenience of accessing your data anywhere. However, I don't like the subscription model offers by most, if not all, online backup s
... See more
I use this combo as my backup strategy. External hard drive is now very affordable. You can buy a 2TB hard drive for less than USD100. I use the external hard drive to mirror my computer + incremental backup. So, this should be a no brainer, as it is cheap and fast way to get/recover your data.
As for cloud storage, regardless of the celebgate, it does offer convenience of accessing your data anywhere. However, I don't like the subscription model offers by most, if not all, online backup services. Therefore, I use only the free option to backup my working files, so that I can access it and work with it anywhere.
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Thomas T. Frost
Thomas T. Frost  Identity Verified
Portugal
Local time: 07:49
Danish to English
+ ...
And if your house burns? Sep 14, 2014

Mulyadi Subali wrote:

External hard drive is now very affordable. So, this should be a no brainer, as it is cheap and fast way to get/recover your data.


So if your house burns, how do you plan to access your backup?


 
Tom in London
Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 07:49
Member (2008)
Italian to English
Fireproof Sep 14, 2014

Thomas Frost wrote:

Mulyadi Subali wrote:

External hard drive is now very affordable. So, this should be a no brainer, as it is cheap and fast way to get/recover your data.


So if your house burns, how do you plan to access your backup?



Buy a fireproof box.

http://www.p-wholesale.com/cn-pro/6/41to1/a4-size-portable-fireproof-document-box-8597.html


 
Mulyadi Subali
Mulyadi Subali  Identity Verified
Indonesia
Local time: 14:49
Member
English to Indonesian
+ ...
insurance time! Sep 15, 2014

Thomas Frost wrote:
So if your house burns, how do you plan to access your backup?

Then it's time to claim insurance
Anyway, when your house has just burnt down, will data backup be the first thing that came into your mind?


 
Laura Fenati
Laura Fenati  Identity Verified
Italy
Local time: 08:49
English to Italian
+ ...
the simplest way to back up our files/our whole PC Sep 15, 2014

Hi all colleagues, please forgive me if I have not read all the messages posted since I do not want to repeat things. I have been successfully using a wonderful backup system for many years now and its name is MEMOPAL, www.memopal.com. For basic EUR 49/year I have everything backed up from when I turn the PC on to when I switch it off. I do not have to do anything: the system is automatic. NO EXTERNAL drive becau... See more
Hi all colleagues, please forgive me if I have not read all the messages posted since I do not want to repeat things. I have been successfully using a wonderful backup system for many years now and its name is MEMOPAL, www.memopal.com. For basic EUR 49/year I have everything backed up from when I turn the PC on to when I switch it off. I do not have to do anything: the system is automatic. NO EXTERNAL drive because it is a device that can be lost, stolen, burnt, etc. and moreover I think it implies to remember to back up documents sometime. Our files are automatically saved in 3 different servers in the world and this means that if and when you need them, you only have to log in with your password and ID and you have access to them. This also means that you can have access to them via whatever PC because maybe yours has crashed or has been stolen. I have just spent more than 2 months away from home and since I went on working, of course I could not copy and paste all the contents of my home PC to my laptod! I just downloaded the files I needed when needed. Try this tool.Collapse


 
Thomas T. Frost
Thomas T. Frost  Identity Verified
Portugal
Local time: 07:49
Danish to English
+ ...
So if backup is not the first thing on your mind, it doesn't matter then? Sep 15, 2014

Mulyadi Subali wrote:

Thomas Frost wrote:
So if your house burns, how do you plan to access your backup?

Then it's time to claim insurance
Anyway, when your house has just burnt down, will data backup be the first thing that came into your mind?


Right, you can claim all the insurance you want, but unless a data recovery company can extract your data from your carbonised hard disk (that costs around 2000 euros), insurance money won't help getting your data back.

Maybe backup data is not the first thing on your mind after a fire, so do you mean it doesn't matter if you lose all your work, clients, accounting, contacts, and all other data if the cause is a fire (or flooding or burglary or hurricane damage or earthquake ...). You'd retire anyway after such a disaster, you seem to be saying, so you won't need your data.

I doubt many store their external drive in a fireproof box.

As I said, people can do what they want, they should just be aware of the risks of not having a backup away from the home/office.


 
Mulyadi Subali
Mulyadi Subali  Identity Verified
Indonesia
Local time: 14:49
Member
English to Indonesian
+ ...
conveniently secured Sep 15, 2014

Thomas Frost wrote:
Right, you can claim all the insurance you want, but unless a data recovery company can extract your data from your carbonised hard disk (that costs around 2000 euros), insurance money won't help getting your data back.

Maybe backup data is not the first thing on your mind after a fire, so do you mean it doesn't matter if you lose all your work, clients, accounting, contacts, and all other data if the cause is a fire (or flooding or burglary or hurricane damage or earthquake ...). You'd retire anyway after such a disaster, you seem to be saying, so you won't need your data.

I doubt many store their external drive in a fireproof box.

As I said, people can do what they want, they should just be aware of the risks of not having a backup away from the home/office.


All my contacts are on Gmail, synced to my mobile. My accounting files are on Google Drive. My working data is on Dropbox. I upload most of my photos to Facebook.
What then do I have on my external hard drive? Well, mirror of my laptop, which includes old projects data, music, ebooks, photos in raw files. So, yeah, I'm pretty much set.


 
Oliver Walter
Oliver Walter  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 07:49
German to English
+ ...
FreeFileSync Sep 16, 2014

I use a freeware program called FreeFileSync (with Windows XP, soon moving to Windows 7). It has a website here:
http://freefilesync.sourceforge.net/
I use it with an external plug-in hard disk drive (and sometimes with a USB "flash" memory stick). It compares files on the basis of their pathname (i.e. filename and position in the folder (=directory) structure), date and size (it can also
... See more
I use a freeware program called FreeFileSync (with Windows XP, soon moving to Windows 7). It has a website here:
http://freefilesync.sourceforge.net/
I use it with an external plug-in hard disk drive (and sometimes with a USB "flash" memory stick). It compares files on the basis of their pathname (i.e. filename and position in the folder (=directory) structure), date and size (it can also compare contents, but that would take much more time, so I don't do it).

When it runs it compares the contents of the directories (whole partition, such as C: or D: or E: or the directory structure from some point downwards) and gives you the result as two lists (for what it calls the "left" and "right" sides). You can configure the rules for what to do with a file (e.g. create, delete, overwrite) based on which side's file is newer or does/doesn't exist on the other side.
I've been using version 3.7 since I obtained it in 2010. The latest version is 6.9.
It doesn't actually do any copying, overwriting or deleting until it displays the list that results from the comparison; then you can tell it to go ahead and do the synchronising, change the rules first, untick individual files to exclude them from the process, or just exit and get on with your other activities.
It can happily compare a whole partition with part of a directory structure. e.g. the last time I used it, it compared D: (on the "left") with H:\D-copy (on the "right") because I keep a backup copy of my whole D: partition on the plug-in hard disk starting at the point called (for an obvious reason!) "D-copy" (H: is the name of the partition on the external hard disk, but, depending on what other storage has been connected since I last used it, the letter could be different when I use it again - the directory name \D-copy helps to find it again quickly in such a case.)

HTH
Oliver

[Edited at 2014-09-16 12:30 GMT]
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Kokoro2
Kokoro2
Uganda
IDrive Online Backup Oct 3, 2014

Alison Watt wrote:
Is there a way of setting up an automated process that runs the back up for you?


Hi Alison. It sounds like you're looking for Continuous Data Protection. I recommend IDrive's online backup service. They offer real-time backup in the form of CDP. That means you do a full backup of all your files, and after that if you make any changes to those files/folders they'll be automatically backed up in real-time or you can change the frequency of backups (real-time, 10 minutes, 30 minutes or 60 minutes).

Other services offer this feature, but IDrive is more affordable and offers backup of an unlimited devices to one single IDrive account at no extra cost. Plus they use super secure encryption. The same that the military uses Hope that helps. https://www.idrive.com/online-backup-cdp-faq


 
TechStyle
TechStyle  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 07:49
NDAs and clouds Sep 3, 2015

Michael Beijer wrote:

I don't think that use of Dropbox goes against many NDAs. You say, ‘for obvious reasons’, but what are they, if I may ask? Can you point to a specific NDA and a specific fact about e.g. Dropbox that would breach said NDA?


My (old) company's work for part of the UK government, for one - analysing some economic data under an NDA which prohibits handling it on any network-connected computer, which completely rules out using Dropbox anyway. (Irritating: we keep almost everything else in Dropbox!) I think some of the other client data we have is supposed to be kept physically within the EU or EEA at all times ... I seem to recall we bid on an MoD contract which said the data had to stay inside the UK, but we didn't win that so the details didn't matter much.

I use CrashPlan for my systems - nice and secure, and I think you can use your own encryption key if you want, so even their staff can't access your data without it. You can also set it only to back up to your own computers (or a friend's), rather than using their servers, which would mean the data never leaves the country.


 
Michael Beijer
Michael Beijer  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 07:49
Member (2009)
Dutch to English
+ ...
I recommend getting CrashPlan Pro via (UK-based) Ceejay Sep 3, 2015

TechStyle wrote:

Michael Beijer wrote:

I don't think that use of Dropbox goes against many NDAs. You say, ‘for obvious reasons’, but what are they, if I may ask? Can you point to a specific NDA and a specific fact about e.g. Dropbox that would breach said NDA?


My (old) company's work for part of the UK government, for one - analysing some economic data under an NDA which prohibits handling it on any network-connected computer, which completely rules out using Dropbox anyway. (Irritating: we keep almost everything else in Dropbox!) I think some of the other client data we have is supposed to be kept physically within the EU or EEA at all times ... I seem to recall we bid on an MoD contract which said the data had to stay inside the UK, but we didn't win that so the details didn't matter much.

I use CrashPlan for my systems - nice and secure, and I think you can use your own encryption key if you want, so even their staff can't access your data without it. You can also set it only to back up to your own computers (or a friend's), rather than using their servers, which would mean the data never leaves the country.


Incidentally, for anyone here considering getting CP: I get CrashPlan Pro via a UK reseller (http://www.ceejay.net/ ), so I get to use their Amsterdam servers, which are (a) inside the EU (which is important for some people), and (b) way faster than the US ones.

The guys at Ceejay also answer any support questions almost immediately, and even send you personal emails if they see that something is awry with your backups.

Michael


 
Richard Foulkes (X)
Richard Foulkes (X)  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 07:49
German to English
+ ...
My PC is the backup Sep 4, 2015

All my work is on a USB stick. I make regular backups to a PC. I don't use cloud services in case of conflicts with the varous NDAs I sign.

[Edited at 2015-09-04 09:44 GMT]


 
TechStyle
TechStyle  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 07:49
Crashplan speed Sep 4, 2015

Michael Beijer wrote:
Incidentally, for anyone here considering getting CP: I get CrashPlan Pro via a UK reseller (http://www.ceejay.net/ ), so I get to use their Amsterdam servers, which are (a) inside the EU (which is important for some people), and (b) way faster than the US ones.

The guys at Ceejay also answer any support questions almost immediately, and even send you personal emails if they see that something is awry with your backups.


Thanks Michael, that's good to know - I hadn't come across Ceejay before! The one snag seems to be that he's only offering the "pro" plans? I've been using the "family" offering for a while now - which allows up to 10 devices, with unlimited storage - but backups and restores are dog slow from here since that uses their US servers. (Last time I looked, I think I was getting about 4 Mbit/sec - something like 1.5 Gbytes per hour, so my 1 Tb full system restore took well over a month!) That version would work out about the same for me after reclaiming the VAT, but for 4 devices not 10.


 
Michael Beijer
Michael Beijer  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 07:49
Member (2009)
Dutch to English
+ ...
re pro packages and speed Sep 4, 2015

James Sutherland wrote:

Michael Beijer wrote:
Incidentally, for anyone here considering getting CP: I get CrashPlan Pro via a UK reseller (http://www.ceejay.net/ ), so I get to use their Amsterdam servers, which are (a) inside the EU (which is important for some people), and (b) way faster than the US ones.

The guys at Ceejay also answer any support questions almost immediately, and even send you personal emails if they see that something is awry with your backups.


Thanks Michael, that's good to know - I hadn't come across Ceejay before! The one snag seems to be that he's only offering the "pro" plans? I've been using the "family" offering for a while now - which allows up to 10 devices, with unlimited storage - but backups and restores are dog slow from here since that uses their US servers. (Last time I looked, I think I was getting about 4 Mbit/sec - something like 1.5 Gbytes per hour, so my 1 Tb full system restore took well over a month!) That version would work out about the same for me after reclaiming the VAT, but for 4 devices not 10.


You might want to email them. They are very friendly people. I only have one computer backing up via CrashPlan, so I'm not sure how it would work out for multiple devices. All I can say though is that it is fast. I'm also not sure if the increase in speed is more due to the fact that the servers are located in Europe rather than in the US, or because the Pro versions are somehow uncapped vs the home versions.


 
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How do other translators back up their files? Best way to set up an automated back up?






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