Backing Up Important Files Etc.

A standalone NAS (Network Area Storage) is one solution. It's a box of disk drives that hang off of your network and your various machines periodically write backups there. You can increase the storage capacity as your needs grow.

I'm not worried about the storage. I have that covered for the under a terabyte amount of data I have on my and my wife's computers.  A couple USB drives AND second hard drives in each computer are adequate for my needs.

Most computers have built in backup programs (I use TimeMachine on my Macs).
These allow you to set it up for easy recovery, either go back a few days/weeks/months for that item you deleted or a full restore to the last way you had it set up if you happen to fry an internal drive. Beats starting from scratch. These all can use external drives (USB, networked, etc.)

I am an absolute CAVEMAN with computers, but there are very important files that you MUST keep, and a lot of them that are so so in importance. Figuring out who is who is the hardest part for me.

All drives can, and will fail. Probability of a really good (expensive) drive failing goes way up, if it's the solo copy of it on earth. 

I hate the $$$$Money$$$$ suck that you see around computers where prior the "lifetime software's" are now offered in month to year installments, but lifetime is seemingly gone, and going with it was quality, a company that actually GARA about your files, and their continued protection, or any other word or adjective that described a product anyone stood behind.

So No I don't have a name for you, but if you copy that image onto several drives, the probability of all of them failing is pretty low, so you can make copies of the really important stuff, and if a drive does fail, then that is the time to copy, so you don't become victim to lost importance. 

Files can also be printed, and paper even though it's very NON cool, can be kept safe for a long time. so you have the data. 

Yes being a Caveman also makes restoring anything a tedious process, but at least you have the data to restore.

Oh yeah, F the "cloud" it's not in my possession, so it's gone. All the fine words used to describe all of the software makers also apply to Cloudies. See I said I was a caveman. :-)))))

I made my own years ago - it was pretty basic but worked for everything I needed at the time - Windows only.

It just ran through the files in a folder structure and copied them over if they'd changed, with a couple of simple options, running at set times or on demand.

Just sat in the systray and right click for run now options.

For mirroring the entire system to rebuild though - Splint's right, most systems come with something built in now.

I've used several different backup packages over the years.  My favorite was Crashplan but they decided to move away from consumer backups and target their services (and pricing) to small business.   You can still use it for personal use but the price was pretty high the last time I looked into it.  Their software was completely unobtrusive and super easy to understand but put a little dot next to every folder and file that was flagged for backup so you could easily see what was and wasn't in your backup set.  The dot was green when the file had been backup up and yellow if it had been changed since the time it was last backed up.  The backups were in the cloud but another great feature (that was actually free)  was that you could designate any other computer anywhere in the world as a backup location.  This allowed you to backup on a friend's or family member's computer as an extra backup.   The computer could be sitting in the next room or across the country.    BTW, backing up to multiple locations is important.  

Now I am using Acronis Cyber Protect.  It provides cloud backups but  you can also use local drives, including USB or flash drives.  One thing that sets it apart from the others I have used is that you can create drive image backups.  You can set up image imcremental backups to only send affected  sectors to minimize how much data has to be sent and you can control how often it creates a new complete image.    These image backups give you a complete backup of the entire hard drive so if one crashes, you can restore the image to a new drive and recover the entire computer, operating system and all.  That could be a little slow from the cloud so I use a NAS for that and only backup certain directories to the cloud.  Another feature of Acronis is that it also monitors for and blocks activity that looks like ransomware attacks.  It also comes with several utilities for disk management, including a tool to migrate a disk image to a new hard drive and a tool to manage and change partition sizes on a physical drive.  The one downside is that the software can be a little complex to understand at times so might not be the best option for someone who wants a complete turnkey solution.  

Best option for protection from failed disks is a RAID arrangement (redundant array of independent disks).

Most NAS systems have this as a common option. The data is written to several disks and can tell you when anything has become corrupt.

Unix/Linux fans have lots of nice stuff like "rsync" that have been around for decades and now are even GUIified to make management simple. Basically create an archive, then only periodically save the stuff that has changed. A restore then will assemble the original with the assorted changes based on whatever date you choose.

Best protection is having a separate backup off site.

Disk drives are good, but a general rule (very conservative) is a life expectancy of 5 years. Tape on the other hand is usually rated at 50 years for the current generations. I spent a number of years (several decades ago) dealing with archiving of several peta-bytes of data onto DAT drives (8mm, then 4mm) and always had trouble with the drives themselves so I'm leery of the 50 year claims.

Thanks, Splinter.  I'm most concerned with backup up data files and photos added or updated. For example, a couple decades back, I printed an index of just my word processor documents. It was 366 pages (I only wrote fifteen or so thousand of them, most were related to research and topics I wanted to keep track of).

I'm with you, George, regarding the cloud. It's just someone else's computer drive. And, if the Net is down, I have zero access. Too, if I don't pay the bill. . . . 

Nope, I'll stay with second and external drives.  [I, also, have CD's stored at family and friend's, so a fire wouldn't take everything.

Mirroring the entire drive, occasionally, is a good idea.  Doing that when only a few hundred files have changed in a month, on the other hand, can eat a lot of time and computing power.

I don't want Gates Of Hell's crew managing my files.  They seem intent on ticking me off every chance they get. Their email program is like something a beginner coder would write.  Their general system is better described as bloatware. At least the got their heads PART way out of the sand and its said restoring a system doesn't take it back to its original state - empty.

A RAID system is way overkill for me. I'm just updating a mirror image on two home-hobby computers, and updating photo and data from two people. 

On tape/serial drives - Ha!  I think I came across one of my old tape cartridges from back in the days, a week or so ago, while cleaning part of the shop.  

I so looked forward to leaving that tape behind for a disk drive, though it wasn't as bad as the serial drive I used on my TI-99 headed toward fifty years ago.  Still, even that trumped the met tapes I used when I worked for the feds, as a repairman for the, at the time, most portable computer in the world [around 300# and with its whopping 180 k of memory].

Knock on wood. I've had about fifteen hard drives and the only one that ever failed was on my sister-in-laws old computer.  I've even had several that lived 15 years.

My good luck may be, as others noted, because Murphy didn't feel it worth his time to visit a computer with two drives [and a click and drag apart].

I suspect it'll only be a matter of time before someone puts out units with permanent optical disks, since, mechanics aside, they information will store indefinitely and, since they only have to fire up for backups, there's little wear and tear on their mechanical portions.

Optical is good, early CD's had failures of the coatings and the reflective plate would oxidize, but their main problem is low capacity. Tapes are in the 16 terabyte per cartridge range, but yes, I still find old VHS and cassettes which makes me cringe.

One thing is no matter what you store your stuff on, one day it will be obsolete. Always good idea to migrate the old archives to new storage once its technology settles in. 

I'm kinda a hoarder of old computer hardware. Can't really sell it for more than scrap, so if the space allows I'll keep it for some future use. For a while I was making some profit selling the old stuff, things like floppy drives (8") and even Zip drives. Always someone out there that is desperate to recover a box of old stuff and don't have the hardware to do it.

Hard copies are analog and wonderful, though bulky storage. A document can always be rescanned. Photos too, but being digital, everyone has 1000x more that when you had to pay to get them developed.

Like I hinted at, hard copies off my drive would fill a room. That three hundred sixty some index I mentioned was made about twenty years ago. I'm, probably, double that now. 

I am making hard copy files of my tool inventory, including photos so, if I vacate this earth, my wife might be able to look at the layout section and figure out those digital calipers are not Harbor Freight battery eaters, those hand sanders sell for absurd prices used, and that cabinet saw is not a Sears knock off. 

Then there are the pages about health care using those herbs and things slow witted doctors mock.

Fortunately, I can put the entire contents of both computer on a single terabyte drive.

Brings up a good point about having a video inventory of your "stuff". Just add some commentary about what it is worth to avoid the estate sale low ballers. 

I was told by a wise someone years ago to take a bunch of pics and video your shop on a somewhat routine basis. Open the drawers and doors and record the virtual tour. Besides also having some sort of a written inventory, having the pics and video that is somewhat recent helps in potential recovery of ‘lost’ items, as well as valuation should that arise. Not full proof but better than nothing.

I have a three ring binder. It's got categories (sanding, polishing, carving, etching, granite, drill,. . . .). 

I cut photos from catalogs and glue stick them in so wifey has a clue as to what they went for new.

I have some notes to remind her some items may take a month of Sunday's to peddle, but, the shop space is doing nothing anyway.

The main thing is to make sure asshats that like to play the "I'll give you twenty for that [Festool] sander don't pull it off.  And, of course, those CBN wheels on the variable speed, four wheel grinder weren't free, but who, aside from us, would know?

Who was it that had the signature line:  I biggest fear is that when I die, my wife will sell my tools for what I told her I paid for them.?  

It's those "special" tools I worry about the most. My biscuit joiner and Domino look a lot alike to the uninformed!

Among all the $2 garage sale specials are some multi-$100 treasures

On a couple of occasions, I have told people selling a tool at a garage sale for way too cheap what it may be worth and that they will get way more if they list it on FBM or Craigslist.  

Nathan, you are a gentleman and a scoundrel! (to us bargain hunters).

Fortunately around here they are proud of everything and will charge double the value just to avoid being taken.