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Every so often I like to make a post to remind people to backup their files.

It was more than a few ears ago now that my hard drive failed and I lost somewhere between 20-50gb of files, mostly photo's for ever. It's that long ago I have forgotten how much I lost, but it's something I would rather not repeat.

Having just received an early birthday present of a new backup drive, I thought it time to repost the warning.

So, make sure you make adequate and regular backups of files you wish to keep because if they do go, they are gone forever.

Steve...

 

Don't just use one backup drive, use two (they fail). I also backup files from/to every laptop in the house so every one of them has a copy of what's on all the others.

 

For people that have never back up there files, is there a quick way to do it to flash drives etc Do all files in one go

 

Hi Jiffy,

There are literally hundreds, if not thousands of ways to backup files, but the simplest way is to copy one folder onto your backup media (DVD, Flash Drives, Spare Hard drives, Portable Hard drives, Clouds).

1st. Know the size of your backup media, and the folder you want to put there, obviously the folder will need to fit. Then right click the folder, select "copy", then locate your backup media, right click it and select "Paste". It does not get much easier than that.

Now, depending where you keep your files, for example if they are all kept in "My Documents" then just copy that folder to your backup media. If they are not all there, then copy them from wherever they are, to one folder, then copy and paste that to your backup media.

This is just very basic, there are many hundreds more solutions if you google it, you will find one that suits your way of working.

Mine is now automated, I just set it and forget it and have backups in several places.

Steve...

 

I back all mine to flash drives

How do you do that please? as when i do mine i just use the control button left click the mouse and back up mulipull files a one time

 

I use a USB connected portable hard drive. Part of this system allows you to setup "Jobs", so that at a given time that I specify, it will backup the areas that I have also written into the jobs. Or I can have the drive monitor my pc for changes, and it will backup those changes too.

When you consider that my loss of files that I mention in this topic starter, where mostly photographs, I find this backup system works best for me as I automate most of my photography work, on the pc side. I download the photos to the pc and after that they require very little intervention from me as photoshop automates the file conversion from RAW to JPEG along with a few other things. Then my backups are also completed automatically.

This means I spend less time on the computer and more time with the camera.

Steve...

 

I just tried to fire up the old laptop & got "user service failed the login" Can only log on as a guest

 

I sorted that out myself some time ago using this method http://community.spiceworks.com/how...ailed-the-logon-user-profile-cannot-be-loaded

and

 

Cheers Scrunge All sorted

I'd done it before, but forgot how to do it, did the same thing as last time and wiped the entire file had to copy it off the one below

 

I saw that problem and thought 'that looks familiar'. I take the view that whenever something like that happens I just don't trust that machine any more and make sure everything is backed up in at least 2 locations.

I've also wondered if removing the hard drive from a laptop/PC and inserting in a USB docking station would get around being 'locked out'.

Worse case scenario is repeatedly backing up stuff where it's all become corrupted over the top of previous backups. Had that happen at work many years ago.

 

I use to use a big USB drive to back up my Photos but the problem with that was there is always a danger of dropping the drive or it getting knocked so I moved to a even bigger NAS drive on my home network. Now not only are my files backed up but they are always available on the network to my whole family and any device I choose to use including the TV. (Also back up alot of files online to one drive (sky drive).