BEST BACK UP PLAN?

[LuckyLady]

What is the best back up plan you can recomend for your laptop PC, especially to include any and all programs. What programs and such are not supported on a external sata drive or any external storage drive...

Any recommendations?

[jmr3]

I use Acronis on a stand alone drive. Have not needed it yet, but sleep better knowing it is there.

[longfisher]

Not sure what you're backing up, but the strategy should depend upon that first and foremost.

In my work, I use Norton Ghost to back up the entire main drive (C each night to both another internal drive and to an external drive. But I also use Mozy to back up the contents of the external drive. And, I keep a copy of the contact data base on a thumb drive too.

Unfortunatley, Mozy recently started charging a lot for the storage. So, I'm looking for another. The IT guy who helps us out once in a while recommended Acronis. Heck, I'm ready to switch just because Mozy's prices seem to keep going up.

But my long term strategy is to do what we do in the Cloud. Actually, it's not such a long term strategy. I signed up with Oracle just last week and starting the 1st of March all our database will be uploaded to Oracles Softward as a Service CRM online site. There's enough space there to also store much our documents, which are incredibly numerous after so many years of working in insurance.

I'll also give up all the darned updating of my Microsoft Office Suite (currently 2007) and use Microsoft Office Live. Free and constantly updated.

For my purposes that leave Adobe and our accounting package on my system as requirements. And, I'm trying to "cloud" those too.

I'm going to let someone else do all the updates, upgrades, security and other stuff which in the past few decades has done nothing up eat up my time (about 30 % I recon). And, that's not even mentioning the cost of hardware and its maintenance.

Desktop computer seems like an outdated concept now that cloud computing is a reality.

LF

[clt_capt]

I still have major issues with the Security of Cloud-Based Services. I work for a large company that offers some cloud services and I deal with security issues daily in protecting my customer's data.

I still think there are a few too many loopholes in most contracts and TOS agreements to be completely sold on Cloud Services at this point - Especially for Data Backup, Email, Social Networking. Some of the recent issues on Facebook are a great example - where a "minor" change in policy allowed "friends" to compromise people's reputations.

Ghost on an external USB drive for my personal backup and an internal Backup software like Connected Data Protector for Corporate use.

[charlie1144]

backs up her pc on an external drive. byte and a half. it can be set at any setting to back up whatever you want to back up. BTW byte and a half refers to a terrabyte and a half.

[gottaflylee]

External drive aren't enough by themselves, I found out the hard way when my hard drive locked up. What ever happened, it took the external drive with it. From now on, Carbonite along with an external drive is what I will go with...