What are the tips/tricks to make sure my digi stuff is backed up in a timely manner this time? Last time it took 5 months and only a small amount was backed up so don't want to go through that again. I do have an ehd that will be a back up too
@littlekiwi What service did you go with? If it's Backblaze, you can adjust your throttle in settings to increase the speed, but it's still going to take a while and is dependent on your ISP and what speeds you have for uploading and downloading. Just a general rule that I follow is to routinely check in. While the initial backup was being completed, I checked on it frequently every week. Now that the back up is complete, I log in bi-weekly or monthly to make sure that my requested drives are being backed up and that they are current based on my drive contents. Also, I never unplug my EHD. Do if you are frequently unplugging it and plugging it back in, you'll need to be sure that you are giving the backup service plenty of time to do just that, back up. Good luck, hun ~ and I'll try to answer any more questions you might have!
Its Backblaze that I use. Think my problem last time was I hardly had my laptop on so didnt give it ample time to back up plus my modem would randomly go out (got a new modem to install once we have our new laptops which should solve that problem)
If I'm correct in the various countries down under, your upload/download rates are a lot slower than most of ours in the US and if I'm reading you right you're on dial up also? That means it will take a good bit of time. Even with our super fast speeds at our house, my initial backup with Crashplan may have taken a month. My suggestion is to only back up in smallish chunks, and as Cheryl says keep your laptop and EHD on til that chunk uploads. Have your shutdown time and then keep repeating the process. Slow but it will get done!
@cookingmylife No not on dial up thank god, I'd die if that was the case. Thats a good suggestion on backing up in chunks cause there was stuff that was backed up that was just system stuff that I didnt actually need or want backed up
You can choose the drives and folders you want Backblaze to back up. So you can start with maybe your photos first, followed by your layouts, and then digi supplies?
ok now that i'm up to setting up the backup, how do i choose just my documents folder on backblaze (everything I want backed up is in there), all i've seen looking around is a place to exclude folders but not knowing what i'd need to exclude i haven't gone any further.
If your option to to exclude what you don't want, exclude everything except what you DO want to include each time. e.g. exclude everything except folders of photos before 2000. Then next time exclude what you already backed up i.e. those pre 2000 images. It may help you to keep a chart of what you're doing each time.
I have close to 1 TB backed up. I back up to 3 ehd's so with my pc I have 4 copies. This way I know I'm protected. Over kill? Maybe, but things happen. I also keep 1 hard drive not in the home in case of fire.
Backblaze is set up to back up all your data so you don't have to pick specific folders. Just choose the drive you want backed up and let it start, being sure you leave your computer plugged in and your sleep mode is disabled. This is a good article for making sure you have the fastest backup: https://help.backblaze.com/hc/en-us/articles/217666478-Performance-Settings-Win-
@littlekiwi glad you started this thread. I am really needing to decide on an online backup service!!
Jennifer @littlekiwi (and anyone else interested), I set up my Backblaze to exclude certain file types cuz I noticed they were taking forever to back up and I knew I wouldn't need them. Examples: appinfo,pva,pvs,pvi,pvm,fdd,hds,drk,mem,nvram,hdd,swm,ppkg,lua,dat,xml,db,sdb,jfm,kdz,enc,json I just typed those file extensions into the EXCLUSIONS field as BB suggests. (FYI, from the BB Control Panel, just click Settings>Exclusions and then click on the "exclude file types" box--lower box in my field, btw; then, type the file extensions you don't want backed up.) Also, if all you want is your Documents folder to be backed up, then, right below the top box you can click on Add Folder and type in the folder name you do NOT want backed up. It's too bad you can't say "Only back up TIFF, PSD, PNG, MOV or MP4 and JPG files" (or whatever files you use to scrap/take pics and maybe some DOC files for Word lol). That'd be nice. Anyway, I also added the firefox, downloads, microsoft, windows, and appdata folder. That helps with some of the big-but-unnecesary files getting backed up to BB. One thing to note: BB does NOT back up large files every day. So be careful about stopping/starting your backup cuz you may mess up having TIFFs or PSDs backed up (that happened to me). But this is my setup. Do what works for you, and hopefully your backup takes less time and backs up what you need!
I use Amazon Photo as my primary pic/video backup. I had bought a 4-year plan with CrashPlan, but they lost 2TB of my data, which I discovered when my PC's hard drive failed. I had checked my backup on their website just the week before, and everything was there. They said it couldn't be restored. I know of 2 other people they did that to, and I suspect they delete data for people using a large amount of their unlimited storage plan. I'm currently in the process of uploading to Backblaze and bought an annual plan. I'll see how it goes. I back up to multiple EHDs now, and I keep one at my office. IMHO, Dropbox is the best. My Dropbox was on my office PC, and we got hit with a Ransomware attack, which also locked up all of my files on Dropbox's website. They were able to completely restore everything in a few hours. I just can't use them anymore because of their 1TB limit, and I have about 6TB of data.
