jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

I'm almost embarrassed to be asking this question, but here goes.

A friend has never backed up anything on his desktop, and he asked me what to do. I told him what I do. I backup seven folders SyncBackSE and several external drives. He asked, "What about all your other folders?" Good question.

I'm satisfied with those seven folders because they're the important ones. The other dozen or so folders I could live without. Aside from cloning the hard drive every other day, what's the best way to back up an entire D drive or even the entire computer? I don't know how large his data drive is, but he would need at least two of the same size drives to use as backups.

What about automatic backups? I decide when to run SyncBack manually.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

I only backup my "data".

Shellback Loc: North of Cheyenne Bottoms Wetlands - Kansas

Pick up a NAS raid system and backup stuff you do not want to lose. The systems are on Amazon and reasonably priced. IF you’re really concerned about losing data/pictures/etc. you can use cloud storage and/or a place like
Iron Mountain

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Of course, but what is "Data." In my case, it's a couple of dozen folders, about 2GB. I don't know if I want to back up that much.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

Then choose what you can lose.
My data backups are under 300GB. I back up photos, docs, spreadsheets, PDFs, utility bills, bank statements, genealogy files, HTML code.....
And Carbonite has my back.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Sounds good.

markngolf Loc: Bridgewater, NJ

I have 5 external drives, 2 NVMe and 2 SSD. One NVMe is the C drive, one is a data drive, one SSD is for data and the other is photos. I do weekly redundant backups of all my drives to the 5 externals. One external has backups of all my drives. I keep it in my bank safety deposit, just in case. It is still not fail safe! 2 months ago I had a corrupt C Windows 11 installation. I had to download a new Win 11 file. Fortunately, my backups made for a pretty easy recovery.

Mark

KillroyII Loc: Middle Georgia

I use ROBOCOPY in scripts... and it is set to only record changes/updates (and purges deletions on all BUT 1 drive) and backup these folders:

C:\Users\USERNAME\Documents to 4 different drives
C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook to 4 different drives
C:\Users\USERNAME\Desktop to 4 different drives
C:\Users\USERNAME\Downloads to 4 different drives
C:\Users\USERNAME\Apple\MobileSync\Backup to 4 different drives
C:\Users\USERNAME\Music to 4 different drives (just iTunes here)
C:\Users\USERNAME\Pictures (assortment of scan results and downloaded files) to 4 different drives
C:\__XPS17-Install\ to 4 different drives (installation software and notes when software added)
C:\_Links-w_Batch_Files to 4 different drives
C:\_UTILITY to 4 different drives
E:\MUSIC to 4 different drives (nearly 200 Gb, where all the music I edit, add play lists, and put together thumb drives for cars)
E:\PICTURES to 4 different drives (nearly 400 Gb in 71,000 files, this is where pictures from my, and my wife and daughter's, cameras)

3 of the above 4 drives are external... 2 USB attached and 1 via our LAN/WiFi
One of these 4 drives gets swapped out with one in the bank safe deposit...

I do something like the above to backup a desktop and 2 laptops on a regular basis. I used to have the all run overnight/automatically but that has stopped (for now) with the change-out of some hardware.

KillroyII Loc: Middle Georgia

I like your plan... similar to mine. I share your weakness in the Windows installation (and other software) but I have the installation s/w for all of it and have a desktop and 2 laptops (1 mine, 1 wife's)) with redundancy of everything important... until whichever one failed is fixed.

dwermske

I am a retired IT professional with 40 years experience. I have worked in and managed data center resources. I believe in backing up everything. The system drive as well as data drives. I currently use Carbon Copy Cloner to completely backup each drive on a daily schedule. I have had to recover both system drives and data drives and if you routinely schedule your backups then recovery can be very easy. In my case I use both Carbon Copy Cloner to recover the disk image and then use Time Machine to recover any data changes from the time of the backup to as close to current as I can get. It's better to have too many backups than to have to rebuild a system or a data drive.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

It sounds like you have a good system. I don't have a safety deposit box because I don't have anything that valuable, but mainly, I don't like making monthly payments. 😋

markngolf Loc: Bridgewater, NJ

Mainly we have our will in the box. Since it is there, I thought it would also hold the extra external safely. Aren't your electric, gas and credit cards monthly bills? All my bills are monthly.
Mark

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

The basic question is whether to back up just the data or the entire system as well. In enterprise data storage, the object is to get the clients back online ASAP, so being able to restore the entire system plus data is important. For the average user, it depends on your appetite for reinstalling your OS and all your aps vs the extra storage required. If you choose just the data, at least have System Restore enabled in Window and backup your download file in addition to your data so you can easily reinstall your aps. It also helps to have a hard copy inventory of your applications and PWs - I suggest BelArc Advisor or similar. I also suggest that at least your off site disaster recovery (DR) copy have versioning or snapshots enabled AND you understand the deletion policy (if you delete a file in your primary storage, is it deleted in your backup and DR copy?)

By now, it should go without saying you should have 3 copies of your data - primary/working storage, a local backup, and an off site (preferably a Major cloud provider) disaster recovery copy. It just makes no sense to spend thousands (or tens of thousands) of $ on camera/lenses to produce DATA and be unwilling to spend the $ on a backup solution and a DR copy to secure that data if it has any value to you. The local backup is for a fast restore. The DR copy is for those infrequent but real occasions when both your primary and local backup are unusable. I’ve been in the enterprise and HPC data storage business for many decades, and it would take a small book to relate all the ways I’ve seen that data can be lost. You can prevent that by having those 3 copies.

If you back up data, it’s more than just the documents folder. You need everything in your user folder including program ap data, documents, music, photos, downloads and favorites and cookies for your browser plus data such as images stored on external drives.

Finally regarding storage media. First, forget USB sticks, SD cards, DVDs and CDs for important archiving - they may last 10 years, they may not. The most reliable storage is a MAJOR cloud provider or MDisks safely stored - everything else is secondary. At this moment in time that leaves SSDs and spinning disk. I think it’s becoming clear as we see the data from large installations that in general, SSDs are more reliable. Yes, there have been bad batches like any product from some manufacturers (think SanDisk) and yes, you’re unlikely to recover data from a failed SSD, BUT (a) that’s what backups are for, and (b) recovering data fro a failed spinning disk is so hard (if possible) that few people do it unless a business is at stake. Now if you have many, many TB of data or want to create a RAID group, SSDs may be prohibitively expensive, but the capacity per $ is doubling roughly every year - 4TB SSDs are becoming affordable. And the difference in performance between SSDs (especially m.2 NVME) and spinning disk is GIGANTIC. But if you have a preference or use case for spinning disk, investing in enterprise class disks is really worth the $. And if you’re buying an external disk, if you can, resist the urge for that $69 external and go for an a powered enclosure and an enterprise class drive that you insert in it - that way you’ll know what quality you’re buying.

End of sermon…

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

By monthly, I mean all those "cheap" subscriptions. You know, the dozens that are "only pennies a day." I buy programs; I don't rent them. I've found no good alternative to Quicken, so I have to pay $77/year for that. I used to buy it for $40. I have seen absolutely no improvements in Quicken, despite several so-called upgrades every month. Almost all software is now by subscription, unfortunately.

I'll have to call Spectrum to get my monthly bill decreased. All I have now is Internet, and my bill went from $105 to $120 within a few months.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Classic Spectrum - they’ll $5 and $10 you to death. Wish I had another choice for an ISP.