How often do you back up?

A question about : How often do you back up?

.......do a full back up your PC?

The reason I ask is I see so many problems on here that seemingly take forever to resolve, whereas with the big 'if only' of having a back up available, a fix would have been simple.

TOG

Best answers:

• back up my spreadsheets and a few finance related documents. Possibly about once a month if that. Everything else is left as is. 98% problems sorted by windows restore system thingy
• never, still cant find an way to do it easy on XP - where have they hidden the one touch backup button?
• Decided to restore my computer yesterday - I'm always trying out new programs then unistalling them so i thought it was about time for a clean start.
  Used Restore disks, added SP2, updated everything, removed free trials
  then took an image using Acronis True Image
  then put on the latest versions of Media players, Firefox, Office and most the other software I use.
  then took a second image
  The idea is that after any problems I can very quickly restore the second image, stick the backup of my My Document files on it and off I go
• @sra
  If you do incremental images after the initial full, you can go back in time to any one of the incremental images and it will fully restore your disk up to that point in time.
  TOG
• I'm reasonably savvy with computers but even I took a few days to realise that my new PC had a buit in function to make a full set of recover CD's and DVD's as the paperwork totally neglects to mention it !!
  I wonder how many other people have the same option on their PC and are blissfully unaware !!
• I only backup personal files (e-mails, spreadsheets, documents & images). The reason for this is simple, I have become lazy. By not creating backups it requires me to more frequently reinstall my system ( 30 minutes every 4 to 6 months) as apposed to hours spent backing up & recovering data.
  A computers performance is affected with time, so carrying out full installs means I have a top performing machine at all time.
• All the ones who know a bit are posting here, but what about people like me who don't know their incrementals from our mentals? You can be as technical as you like, but in the end if it looks complicated people like me just aren't going to do it! What are the simple solutions to this?
  How much do you "lose" when you turn off System Restore, like I have had to do when getting trojans?
  Is it really necessary to reinstall everything like Tony does - isn't there a way of keeping computers up to scratch without doing this?
  I make occasional back ups on CD of stuff, but how much and what should we be backing up and how often?
• These are good questions Fran, one mans pleasure is another mans poison so to speak. My solution is perfect for stand alone "generic" machines, but perhaps not so suitable for the likes of "Dell", "Time" or whatever brand. The same applies to a server or network PC where is would be much more critical to run frequent backups!
• It's hard for me to recommend Acronis because I haven't seen the most recent version. I thought it would be hard because it comes with a big long manual.
  In the end all I did was:
  Start it
  click 'Create an image of partition or hard drive'
  click 'c drive'
  click 'save to "fixed hard drive"' (cause I wanted to save to another hard drive)
  set the slider to 'maximum compression' (= takes longer)
  and it started.
  In actual fact I really only clicked 'next', 'next' ,'next' because most of those options were pre-selected
  Acronis copies everything including the operating system so if I ever have to use the backup, the computer should be in every respect EXACTLY how I had it when I made the backup.
• I bought an external hard drive - Maxtor One Touch 80gb storage for Ј75. This came bundled with Dantz Retrospect backup software. My backup strategy is as follows
  Daily backup - everything in Documents & Settings (all users). An incremental backup runs automatically every day at 2.00 am Mon-Sat. On Sunday a recycle backup runs - this reuses the media (the Maxtor drive) to prevent endless incremental backups being stored.
  Weekly backup - complete image of Drive C. To be honest, if I had to completely restore my main drive, I would probably reformat and reinstall from scratch and then restore the Daily Backup of Documents & Settings.
  The Retrospect software has a "wizard" to help you set up these automatic backups. They run unattended, even if no user is logged on.
  So, for Ј75 and about an hour's initial setup, I have no worries
  I'm not keen on OEM Restore options as they generally restore everything to the state that existed when the PC was shipped, so any saved files created by the owner are lost.
  I used System Restore at the weekend on another PC (friends), as Windows was not fully loading. I'm not yet convinced that this PC is completely stable, so I've backed up the data and will reformat that drive when the extra memory arrives!
  Cheers
• Can I also ask, of those who make backups, how many keep them on top of / next to / in the same room as / the PC they are backups of?
  Such backups are fine in the case of HDD failure, but may be of little use if the PC is stolen (and the CDs / external HDD / whatever go with it) or, God forbid, in the event of a house fire. If your data is "irreplaceable" or would cause personal or financial loss, you should keep copies off-site - think about asking family or friends to store a CD or two for you.