How do you back up your laptop?

What software do you use? What devices?

How often? Is it automatic or do you somehow remember to do it on your own?

Hopefully, we can all benefit from hearing different people's approaches.

Thanks,

Laura

[PS I edited this and added specific questions after some awesome people had already responded.]

 

I do manual CDs.
Somebody just told me about external drives. I'll look into that

 

I have been using True Image 8 and 9 to do disk imaging backup for my laptop and desktops. Backup images are stored on external and internal drives. So far True Image is reliable. I did disk image restores and hard drive cloning (to new drives) using TI8/9 without any problems.

 

External hard drive and DVDs.

 

I use Cobian Backup with Drive Image XML to create an image of my laptop as it is now. I store it on an external HD. I probably need one more set of backups. Not sure how to do it. 80Gb is a lot of DVDs!!! right now, its once a week!

 

I use NERO and burn full backups to DVDs. Only negative is that you have to have NERO installed to restore it (i think). I only back up my spare partition.

 

I just backup on a Re-Writeable CD every month. I should be getting a small external hard drive though, as my dell does not have a DVD burner drive and Cd's can only hold 700MB. I have about 4GB of music and a lot on anime. Can you guys suggest a portable hard drive? 20Gb should be sufficent.

 

Have you tried burning it to a CD? Usually unlicensed Anime from subtitle groups such as Soldats will be sized so that you can fit exactly one, two, or three episodes on a single 700 MB CD. Then just run it from the CD. I have a friend who has an Anime collection that is over 1000+ CD-Rs..

CD-Rs are still cheaper per Megabyte than DVD-Rs when you buy the CD-Rs in 100 pack spindles or greater.

 

It would be better to start a new thread in hardware section since portable hard drive isn't related to software.

 

It's worth it to spend less than $10 on a 2.5" to 3.5" IDE converter, so you can backup to a desktop computer. I keep my backups on my spare internal HDD. I've always been able to recognize a drives death noises early enough to be able to pull my data before it goes, although I'll admit my system has a bit of a risk factor to it.

 

I've got an external hard drive. I created a batch file that is called through windows scheduler. I have it set up so it only copies my data, not programs, etc., and it only copies files that have changed since the previous back up. It is simple, and i don't have to think about it. My backups occur 3x/day. that way if/when a crash happens I lose at the most a 1/2 days worth of work.

 

I sync my important 'data files' from my Laptop and Desktop daily (using AJC Dir Sync Software) - my Desktop then uses Retrospect to take backups of my 'data' directories on a daily basis (incremental) to DVD.

For my Laptop (and desktop for that matter) like others mentioned here I use Arconis True Image version 8 . Once a month or so I take a complete image to an external USB drive.

So far this has worked for me - probably don't test restores often enough - but I have tested the restore occasionally

 

Sync Toy, a freebie from Microsoft - it's easy to use, relatively smoothe in operation, can run in the background, and, did I mention it's FREE?? I know, I know it's from the evil empire, but, hey... the law of large numbers dictates that even they cannot have a perfect record of crummy products, and this proves it.

Just hook up to another computer, external HD, etc., and go.

 

Files and Settings Transfer Wizard, about once a month, to an external HD kept just for backup. My photos and MP3 collection also reside on multiple places.

 

I backup various files and folders from around the system (firewall ruleset, OL data, registry keys with settings and configurations for various programs, start-menu, favorites for different browsers etc.) to a folder in My Documents once a day using a batch file, image all of my partitions to a dedicated backup partition once a day with PQ Drive Image 7.0, compress all of my personal data with WinZip 9.0 SR-1 and burn it to a DVD twice a week with Nero BackItUp and clone my entire HDD to a remote one once a week with PQ Drive Image 7.0.

With the exception of the cloning, it's all done overnight while I sleep.

Regards,
Erronius

 

I send all mine via the internet to a server here in the states but a good distance from myself. This updates all my work. It is only available with the software for my work which only myself and a few other thousand students use. My laptops have flat out died before (one just did) and as long as I've sent my work to the server I'm fine always. From what I've read its the best way to backup data

 

another vote for true image ... itz good and reliable ... just make sure if you finish with the backup to check the image .. i had a corrupted image and I didn't check ...

 

no backup for the laptop. It has the basics on it and almost no files. I use it mostly for terminal and remote work so everything I'm working on is on different computers, my outlook is an exchange server so I don't worry about that either. Everything else of mine sits either on my server or my work server. both backed up.