burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Unless lightning strikes and fries both of them, and your computer and its hard drive! That actually happened to a friend of mine about a decade ago. He lost all the electronic devices in his house that were plugged in at the time

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

My desktop goes to screen saver after 30 minutes of inactivity and sleeps after three hours I think. The login screen comes up upon wakening from either. If I know I'll not use it for a long while, I'll put it to sleep.

11bravo

I'm a big fan of StableBit Scanner; have it on all my computers (existing customers get a discount when buying additional licenses). I like that I can set it up to do periodic (interval up to you) surface scans automatically, and that it monitors the drives' temperatures while doing scans and will throttle or suspend a scan if the drive gets too hot, and equalizes drive temperatures across drives while scanning. Will also try and recover damaged files detected during a scan.

Customer support is excellent; questions are answered quickly; I've even had a question asked on a weekend answered on a weekend. Once when a mobo failed so I couldn't move a license myself, sent a message to customer support, and they deactivated the license for me so I could install on the replacement computer.

https://stablebit.com/Scanner/Features

While StableBit monitors temp and health in the background, I prefer Hard Disk Sentinel for drive temp monitoring. Like StableBit, have it on all my computers. You can set temperature thresholds for alerts and even actions (such as shutting down the computer on overtemps). Audible alerts; several times when I'd forgotten to switch on a desk fan to keep an external no-fan HDD cool, when it started to overheat, the audible reminded me of my failings (at least that one). Possible to set up a status window on the desktop that easily shows you all your drive temps at a glance. Multiple license packages are available. Hard Disk Sentinel will also do surface scans. Customer support is excellent and like StableBit, helped move a license when I couldn't deactivate first.

https://www.hdsentinel.com

Certainly functional overlaps between the two, but for my use, hdsentinel for temp monitoring and StableBit for periodic surface scans and file recovery.

Alert Configuration

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11bravo

Brought back the memory of a laugh from earlier this year. While we were away, my wife's nephew was house-sitting for us. He called my wife to say that we had lost all power at the house and he was having to call the power company to repair.

Wife: What happened?
Nephew: I saw a snake crawling along the wire. Later, no power.
Wife: What kind of snake?
Nephew: Green.
Wife: What happened to the snake?
Nephew: Grilled.

Thinking of the way my wife tells the story, I can't ever keep a straight face.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Smile.

Doc Barry Loc: Huntsville, Alabama USA

If you use WD drives, be sure to get the "black" not "green" drives. Green ones tend to fail more often.

11bravo

Here's an explanation of WD color coding:
https://www.dignited.com/57978/western-digital-drives-color-codes/

mwsilvers Loc: Central New Jersey

I back up everything to 4 external drives. Your files, whether they are just photos, or anything else of importance to you, should have more redundancy then a single 5 year old external drive.

tjw47 Loc: Michigan

simpliest raid ( equivalent ) would be to use 2 external drives.. each one having the same exactfiles.

There are free software programs to keep them synchronized.

More expensive would be to use an external raid enclosure.

2 Drives would be disk mirroring. 3 drives would be raid 5. raid 5 allows one drive to fail. Then replace the failed drive the raid 5 hardware will rebuild the replaced drive.

2 esternal drives would be cheapest solution.

selmslie Loc: Fernandina Beach, FL, USA

Correct.

I keep two 4 TB drives attached live and one in the safe deposit box at the bank and rotate them once a month. My incremental backup runs every 4 hours during the day.

I have had only one failure in over two decades. It was not one of the connected drives but the one that I had just brought back from the bank.

Paul Diamond Loc: Atlanta, GA, USA

Perspective on this topic and most others is actually necessary.

On UHH, we have working professionals, beginners, retirees without unlimited budgets, etc. A broad spectrum of 'members' with different needs and budgets. It seems that the responses are often tilted toward the professionals and their budgets to run their businesses. This one level of answer to any question, seems to usually forget all the others reading UHH without that size budget, that level of need or maybe even that level of interest.

Beginners and retirees - computers and their hard drives will fail at some time in the future. Have a back up of your photos and vital information on an external hard drive. Doesn't cost much compared to the possible loss. Even better, have 2 backup hard drives. - Losing even pictures of your family could feel like a disaster if it happens.

For all levels of UHH members, do question your cloud storage. If you don't know the answer to this question, you should ask it. Does this cloud service compress my image data before storage or when downloading that image back to me? (Will you get the exact same thing back that you thought you were saving?) - And, will your cloud service continue to be in business? Cheap is rarely the best option.

My experience with computers goes back nearer to the beginning of it all. Learned to program 'basic' with an outdated punch card reader at a community college. My first "PC" was a Radio Shack Tandy TRS-80 Model III. Mainframes at work before the IBM System/38-AS/400. And, I have been building my own computers until recently.

Hopefully, when anyone asks a question, you should qualify your level of need/budget and your level of experience/expertise. Replies should be geared to the OP at their level of need. And, if you can do it, think of the other levels of need, budget and interest. Asking a lot? Why not?

selmslie Loc: Fernandina Beach, FL, USA

I agree with all of that. The biggest problem I foresee is the possible need to do a full restore from the cloud. It might take days or even weeks.

Incremental backups (only copying what’s changed) may seem quick but they are much quicker with an external drive and so is copying data from an external drive to a new empty one.

Like you I started with Basic an FORTRAN. My career was in system design and consulting.

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

If you pick the right cloud provider they will loan you a disk for major restorations.



Incremental backups are certainly faster than full backups. Local backups are faster than cloud backups but the cloud backups can be done in the background so it doesn't really impact your computer.
For restoration, cloud backup is a last resort. You should be using local drives as your primary backup. The cloud is for times when all your local drives are not able to do what you need. However there are so many scenarios in which your local drives won't hack it that cloud backup is worth it.

In general, backup is for everyone, but the degree of backup depends on the individual's situation. Everyone has to place a value on their files. If the value is high enough then expenditures for backup can be justified. For professionals, costs can be covered by factoring them into prices. For the rest of us we have to balance things.

When it comes to things that most people consider important (e.g. family photos as far back as they can go) probably the cheapest form of backup is to distribute copies to all the relatives you can. Some of them will keep the files.

srt101fan

selmslie Loc: Fernandina Beach, FL, USA

But there is still a delay getting it prepared and sent plus some expense depending on how quickly it can reach you.

But you might get some resistance unless it's a matter of disaster recovery. If you just accidentally delete a single directory you will have to expect a lower priority unless there is something in it for them. Repeat visitors might receive less attention.