Your thoughts: Easiest way to backup MSOffice Docs

dslomer64 said:

Lady Fitzgerald said:

The easiest way would be to get a basic Carbonite.com account and let it automatically backup your data on one of their cloud servers. Their plans start at $60/year (that is the plan I use). However, just one backup copy isn't the safest way to protect data from loss.

To be reasonably safe, your data should reside in three places: your computer, an onsite backup, and an offsite backup. Carbonite (or CrashPlan or Backblaze) can be used as an easy, fairly inexpensive way to get an offsite backup. ...

Am I kidding myself that using Google Drive (free) is a good idea? Every once in awhile I notice its system tray icon is "faded", meaning that it isn't running, probably because I lost the wireless signal. Other than that, I've had no surprises.

I also use external hard drive.

Yes, you are kidding yourself. You've just had no surprises yet. The two greatest problems with using Google drive is, 1. Google is infamous snooping on its users (and Google drive isn't particularly secure), and 2. free services are notorious for disappearing with little or no warning. Google is notorious for discontinuing its own free services with little warning. A basic paid backup service is much safer, more reliable, and can cost as little as $60/year. That's only $5/month and most of us have at least one vice we would be better off without that we can steal that little money from.

Just keep in mind that no one should rely on just one backup, including cloud backups. A minimum of two backups physically separated from the computer and each other are needed to reasonably ensure the safety of your data.

Stevekir said:

I want to backup all my documents, not just MS Office ones, and it is no more difficult to do that than just the Office ones.

I have recently bought Second Copy after a trial. It cost about £23 only and I am very please with it. (It was recommended by two people on sevenforums. It is exceptionally easy to set up, entering info such as what disc etc. in simple dialogue boxes labelled "What", "Where", "How". It can be set up to carry out the backup(s) periodically or manually. I have two external, desktop, USB hard drives, one as a first backup and the other as a second backup. As I don't want these running continuously when the computer is on, I switch them on, select all the backups, and manually tell Second Copy to do the backups while I go on to other tasks etc. Its works a treat. Here is a clip of the my backups:

EDIT: Having seen the post immediately above, I would never rely on an external system for backups. As the poster says, the second party could go bankrupt, die, or just quit. Keep it in-house, I say. I also have set up Windows' Backup and Restore procedure to backup the C: drive at 4 pm every day, and create a restore point now and again, for example just before installing something. Its all very easy after things are set up.

Good job! You understand how backups work. The only way you could improve on what you are doing is to keep one of you backups offsite (such as a locked desk draw or locker at work, a bank safe deposit box, or at a trusted neighbor or friend's house) and switch the two backups out frequently.

I understand and agree why you wouldn't want to depend on a second party external system for backups. However, good, reliable, paid cloud backup service can be used to provide an offsite backup that is easily maintained and will be more up to date than most offsite backup solutions for a fairly low cost. This would be in addition to having a local backup(s) so, if you were to lose any one of your backups, you would still have another one to fall back on.

I use Carbonite to supplement my offsite backups. If I were to lose all my local data and backups, it would take me forever (ok, just several weeks to a couple of months) to recover all my data from Carbonite. However, if I just had my offsite backups to recover from (HDDs in a safe deposit box at my credit union), I would still lose any information I had added or changed since I put the the HDDs in the vault. However, if I should lose all my local data (such as my house burns down, taking out my computer and local backups), I could quickly recover bulk of my data from the offsite HDDs and then download the rest from my Carbonite. I would be able to fully recover with no loss of data in just a couple, three days instead of weeks or months. An added bonus I get from Carbonite (there other good paid cloud backup services, such as CrashPlan or Backblaze) is I can access that data from my notebook when I'm on the road and have a secure internet connection.

Stevekir said:

I have recently bought Second Copy after a trial. It cost about £23 only and I am very please with it. (It was recommended by two people on sevenforums. It is exceptionally easy to set up, entering info such as what disc etc. in simple dialogue boxes labelled "What", "Where", "How". It can be set up to carry out the backup(s) periodically or manually.

Yeah, excellent program. I used it for 10 years.

I see you have 8 profiles set up. I originally used 5 or 6 myself, but I eventually whittled that down to I think 3 after I decided that there wasn't much point in separate profiles for most items considering my directory structure--all data on one drive.

I think I ended up with profiles named something like this. I have 3 physical drives: C, D for data, and E for backups.

All Data (this would include 100 percent of D). Destination E.

Firefox backup: backs up my Firefox browser installation and bookmarks from C. Destination E.

Thunderbird backup: backs up my Email installation found on C. Destination E.

I gave up on Second Copy only because I was eventually asked to pay again for a new version (for Win 7 I think) and I'm too cheap.