Back up your PC - Regularly !

[Strangeways]

I've been in the IT industry for 23 years and I've always been lucky enough to look after my own machines. I've never lost ANYTHING - until I almost lost EVERYTHING due to an AVG (Antivirus) update killed my Windows 7 64 bit O/S. It was a dodgy update that most AVG users will have to fix if they received the update.

Guys - please take regular backups of your valuable data. Either burn to a DVD or copy to a USB External drive. It does not take long, and there are backup utilities within Windows to do this. Don't become complacent like I did. Disk is cheap, and your data (photos, movies, documents etc) is irreplaceable.

 

[Homepin]

Timely and very valid advice................I backup my entire drive, OS and all using CasperXP about once a week and that really isn't often enough.

The best thing about CasperXP is I can rip the drive out of my laptop and fit the backup drive and it will boot and run with no change or difference at all.

If my PC dies or is stolen or I throw it out the window I just need to slot the backup drive in a new machne and I am up and running in minutes.

[pinnies4me]

Good advice mate. I have backed up the important stuff (pinball related!) several times, but need to set something like I set up for work with a proper automatic backup. Might head off to the PC store today, thanks for the push!!

[PinPal]

I got my self a 2TB ex Hard Drive for my PC and I back-up almost everything, I-tunes music, pinball stuff, and my fave Pinup-Girl (Kestie Morassi) to  
at the start of the year my old PC died and so did my life as I had lot of important documents on it.
So its a good idea to back-up your computer regularly .

[48]

Sound advice Nino, Regularly being the operative word.
I had a hard drive crash on one of my computers a few months ago, wasn't till I replaced it and reloaded my info that I found out that it had been a month since last backup.  Takes days to re-enter business info, won't fall for it again, now I back up everytime I close my business program!

[andtan]

I currently use (WHS) Windows Home Server (32-bit) edition to take care of all my pc backups - as well as storing photos, etc.

I have it installed on a home built Core Duo computer with 2 x 1.5Tb drives in it, and it is set to systematically back up all computers on my home network (mine, kids, wife laptop etc), between 9:00am and 9:00pm each day. If a computer is in sleep mode, it will even wake it up, do a backup and once finished put the computer back into sleep mode. The process once set up is pretty much done in the background.

One of my computers had a hard drive failure recently, so much so that I was never going to get any files off it. All I had to do was buy a new hard drive (got one  from a local computer market - 500Gb for $40) put it into the computer, booted it up with a WHS recovery disc, and selected the most recent backup from the menu, and 45 minutes later it was fully restored. Didn’t need to re-install a thing! 

[ktm450]

Hearing all your stories makes me motivated to buy an external HD to do a backup, I have hardly anything backed up and would be devestated if it all crashed 

[Pop Bumper Pete]

I bought an external hard drive a few months ago
I have taken 100's of pictures of my machines as I have taken them apart
I would be stuffed if I did not have the references to pit them back together

[swinks]

I have a 1TB drive and have set it to backup everything (email, downloaded programs etc, thousands of photos) and it saved me at the beginning of the year with computer failure. I was so relieved to have a backup to restore everything to the point of a week prior to the failure. For $100-150 you can get a good large backup drive - money well spent.

[deep six]

I got sick of my PC regularly crashing, anti virus stalling and needing updates, bloody slow loading.
My solution was to buy a used Mac Power PC, got the box off ebay for $400. This thing is bloody amazing, every time you boot it up the dual fans rev up then come back to idle, its like firing up the engine in your muscle car!!
Updated to the latest Mac OSX 10.8. Never looked back, no viruses, no slow loading, thing starts up every time.
Downside is you have to learn the operating system but definetely worth it. People will tell you all the mac software is expensive but I haven't found it too bad, open office runs on my machine and I can export files as windows extensions.
I have a 8gb usb drive which I regularly back up all my important stuff to but so far so good.
Just my 2 bobs worth

[Redback]

Thanks for the reminder.

I have family photos backed up in 5 hd's (Two of which are overseas).  CD's fail with time.  I have few failed HD's here.
Haven't lost anything important, yet.  However can't find where I stored a hard to find Aqua video.

Not really sure I want to trust my photos to 'the cloud' icloud or any other.

Red