Do you back up your computer regularily?

[emjay45]

My husband is always telling me to back up my computer and I have done it once I believe. I haven’t done it for a long while now in spite of his insistence. I switched my computer on this morning and a load of gobbledegook came up. I got my son to take a look and it looks like my hard drive has packed up. Woe is me why didn’t I listen.

[Boris+]

I do it at least once a day every day.

Also, I periodically store important stuff on disks or pen drive.

Belt and braces.

Em

[Manoverboard]

I do try to remember to take selective back-ups every couple of months in order that I can retrieve most of my important-ish stuff if needs be ... having also lost a hard drive a while back I was glad that I did.

The last interim back-up was Sept 1st so all is well

[Mervyn and Trish]

I try to remember to back mine up when I change my socks, so that's at least four times a year.

[Kendhni]

The simplest thing to do is use an auto backup or synchronisation service (depending on volume of data).
I would recommend using cloud storage to ensure your data is safe.

Btw do not backup to the same drive (a common mistake) for obvious reasons.

[Mervyn and Trish]

Would such an automatic gizmo change my socks too Ken?

On a more serious point, which I'm confident you'll know, do the likes of Apple charge a fee to use their cloud or is it free?

And less seriously again, does the CIA have a direct connection to it for monitoring purposes?!

[david63]

Would such an automatic gizmo change my socks too Ken?

Possibly

On a more serious point, which I'm confident you'll know, do the likes of Apple charge a fee to use their cloud or is it free?

No - and it is a wonderful service when you need it.

And less seriously again, does the CIA have a direct connection to it for monitoring purposes?!

Probably

[Kendhni]

Not sure about Apple but there is plenty of free space out there (Apples are not tied to Apple storage) ... Some good ones are
Sugarsync, skydrive, amazon, google, copy.com ... Between that lot you shou,d beable to get50-100gb

Another one to consider for bulk storage is 'mega'. Which gives 50gb for free (assuming you trust Kim Dotcom).

As far as the CIA are concerned, of course they will be able to see your files if they really want to, as will MI5/6and just about every other security agency ... The only thing is tbey have to find your file in amongst the billions of other files transferred every day ... And just to annoy them most services encrypt the data during transfer and many also encrypt it when they store it.

The media real,y are throwing their toys around at the minute with a lot of false and misleading information.

[emjay45]

Would such an automatic gizmo change my socks too Ken?

Possibly

On a more serious point, which I'm confident you'll know, do the likes of Apple charge a fee to use their cloud or is it free?

No - and it is a wonderful service when you need it.

And less seriously again, does the CIA have a direct connection to it for monitoring purposes?!

Probably

My son has an Apple and has suggested that's what I have next. So the cloud thingy will prevent this happening to me again. It's so different to Microsoft I'm not sure

[Meg 50]

I do a security scan once a week - both virus and spyware.
'crap clean' once a week too

I back up all my files on to a pendrive on the 1st of each month

[JenniC]

I use Just Cloud, (other providers are available) all set up and happens automatically overnight, a MUST as I have over 4,000 holiday and family photos on my laptop. A bonus being I can access my account from anywhere, so when I was at my brothers and had left the iPad at home, I accessed my cloud account on his laptop to show him some pictures.... Easy peasy

[Kendhni]

I have been extolling the virtues of cloud storage for a while now and once set up it is so easy to use and, as Jenni points out, your data is available anywhere in the world. In most cases I have an autosync process in place that means when I create or edit a file it is automatically copied to the cloud (I am not a fan of the auto backup process .. I prefer auto-syncing over auto-backup ... but that is personal preference).

Different providers have different ways of doing this. For instance Sugarsync allows you to select any directories on your computer versus most others have a special directory that you copy stuff into. The initial upload can take a while (took about 6 days running 24/7 for my data) but now the updates happen almost instantaneously.

A couple of tips though
1. Be careful of videos and other very large files (Gb's in size) - they can take a long time to transfer
2. I only keep resized versions of my photos (1920x1080 - equiv. of HD) in the cloud - thes eupload very quickly. The full size ones are on my main computer and backed up locally but if I lose them at least I have the cloud ones ... and, on Google, you get unlimited free storage for photos of that size.

[Kendhni]

BTW ... if anybody wants any help with cloud storage then please feel free to PM me and I will gladly help to get you up and running.

[david63]

I use Dropbox quite a lot, which will sync files in the Dropbox folder with those held on the "cloud" but has the advantage of syncing with other computers/devices

[The Tinker]

I don't really bother anymore - just call out my nephew who retrieves everything onto a disc when the computer gives up the ghost!

[emjay45]

BTW ... if anybody wants any help with cloud storage then please feel free to PM me and I will gladly help to get you up and running.

Thanks for the offer Ken as you must realise I'm not a whizz regarding computers. Thankfully,my husband and son are, especially my son. He has talked me into an Apple Mac Pro and will set it all up for me. He also thinks he can recover most things from my dead computer with something called a caddy. Fingers crossed. I'm using my husband's little computer he bought to take on cruises at the moment.

[Frank Manning]

BTW ... if anybody wants any help with cloud storage then please feel free to PM me and I will gladly help to get you up and running.

Thanks for the offer Ken as you must realise I'm not a whizz regarding computers. Thankfully,my husband and son are, especially my son. He has talked me into an Apple Mac Pro and will set it all up for me. He also thinks he can recover most things from my dead computer with something called a caddy. Fingers crossed. I'm using my husband's little computer he bought to take on cruises at the moment.

Lucky you Emjay! I am the computer whizz kid in this house skill level 1 on a scale of 1 to 10 where 10 is excellent. I must try to back up my photos and the emails from the charities I work with as a minimum. If I lose them it will be a bit problematic.

[Manoverboard]

So, let me see if I've got this right.

Emjay wrecks her hard drive by never defragmenting it but cannot recover from the crash because she doesn't take any back-ups.

Now, instead of getting a good flogging somebody is stumping up for an Apple Mac Pro.

Life's a bitch ... right

[emjay45]

[
Lucky you Emjay! I am the computer whizz kid in this house skill level 1 on a scale of 1 to 10 where 10 is excellent. I must try to back up my photos and the emails from the charities I work with as a minimum. If I lose them it will be a bit problematic.

Yes Frank I need all the help I can get. Make sure you back up or you could end up in trouble like me.

So, let me see if I've got this right.

Emjay wrecks her hard drive by never defragmenting it but cannot recover from the crash because she doesn't take any back-ups.

Now, instead of getting a good flogging somebody is stumping up for an Apple Mac Pro.

Life's a bitch ... right

I didn't wreck it. I did defragment and having MacAfee I always ran the quick clean. The only thing I'm guilty of is not backing everything up. I deserve a Apple Mac Pro for the stress I'm suffering

[Frank Manning]

Defragment?? What's that? I periodically delete stuff to keep the stored volume down, I must investigate this defragment thingy some time. I have HP with Windows because we had so much success with them when I did real work. Perhaps I'll get a typewriter

[Kendhni]

You only need to defragment if using a disk based hard drive .. and it should be done every few months or so.

If you are using a solid state drive (SSD) you do not need to defragment (arguably you should ensure SSDs do not get defragmented since it can 'wear them out' more quickly).

[Meg 50]

I use C Cleaner which does a similar job to defragging - gets rid of odd bits left behind. It's a free download from here:

http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner

[david63]

I use C Cleaner which does a similar job to defragging - gets rid of odd bits left behind. It's a free download from here:

http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner

Beware that you get the settings right otherwise C Cleaner can cause havoc on your computer

[Meg 50]

I think I have - it took a bit of tweaking.

the basic settings don't cause any probs - it's when fine tuning


any in particular?

[Frank Manning]

I looked in my HP Adviser and it says that it defragments automatically, but it gives the option to initiate defragmentation separately. Must look into this fragmentation business in more detail, especially as Sue's newer Sony wireless lap top gives far more trouble than this PC, and its anyone's guess what she gets up to on there.