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MrsPeel

MrsPeel

LOVE LOVE LOVE!!!
Pollywog
Joined
May 7, 2012
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...more than one back up system?

Most of you know I back up online with Crash Plan. My external hard drives (which were old), one died last year, another a few month ago. I am, (as we speak!) restoring to a new EHD I bought.
Now, it was suggested to me that one should have more than online back up.
Backing up to an external hard drive here though, Time machine slows my Mac too much....

When I went to buy this new EHD, there were lots of personal cloud devices..... do any of you has experience with it?
is it worth having it?
can you use the stuff or you need to download?
I use my external hard drives as storage, like for example every kit I used, I move into one EHD, but if I want to scrap I can easily open it and drop the files in my work surface....
can you do that with Cloud?
or is it just like an online back up (BackBlaze/Crash Plan)

Do you recommend any EHD?
I love Seagate but the ones they are making now are so aesthetically ugly :(
I heard horrors about Western Digitals....
 
My system:
I have a little EHD (Seagate 1.5 TB) that I use as my scrapbook stash. I only keep photos and scrap kits on it.
I have a large EHD (Seagate 3 TB desktop plugin) that I use as my computer backup. Once a month, sometimes more often, I plug it in and move everything new over to it. This holds everything! Documents, scrap stuff, photos, things from computers I don't have anymore! Everything.
I use Backblaze to back up my whole computer and EHD's. Every month I restore about 5 files from different spots to make sure it's working.
The test: My little EHD failed earlier this month. I didn't get concerned. I simply restored the files that hadn't been moved to the big EHD yet to my computer. It took about 4 hours all told. So, right now I'm keeping stuff on my computer until I get another little EHD. I'm going to buy a Seagate 2 TB. It's hugely recommended for PS4's so I figure it should work great for my needs!

I do use some cloud services, but not as primary backup. I use Amazon (Prime benefit) for my photos because I like to use the app and watch them on tv. I'm working on uploading my layouts to it. I use Dropbox for my phone photos. I like that it syncs automatically, and I don't worry about my phone SD card becoming corrupt (has happened to me before!). This year, I've tried out iDrive through Justjaimee. It's combination cloud and backup service. I don't mind the cloud portion, but the backup portion was taking forever on my computer. So I gave up on that side. I also upload all my finished layouts to Flickr in full image, printable format.

I also print. I slacked on that some this last year, but I'm going to get my habit back this year!

My goal is 3-2-1 backup. 3 copies, 2 different media, and 1 offsite. I don't know if I really have 2 different media, but I've had too many DVD/CD's fail, so I don't bother with them. I figure digital and printed should count!
 
Just like Courtney said she does above, I also have a little portable EHD (Toshiba 1 tb) that I keep scrap kits and photos on and I carry it with me to and from work, because I scrap while at my office a lot and use it at home on my laptop at night to scrap. THen I have a Seagate 3 tb EHD that I keep everything on including the photos and scrap supplies that are also on my little portable EHD. I use it as storage and work off of it when I'm scrapping on my desktop pc. I have a second EHD that I back up the first EHD too which I unhook and keep in my firesafe (I update to it once a month) and then finally I have Backblaze which backs up my entire desktop PC and main EHD. I have never used a cloud backup like amazon or adobe.
 
I use a Silicon Armour EHD to keep photos, projects and supplies on. I regularly back up (once per month) to a regular expansion hard drive at work. I like the Silicon Power EHD as the are heavy duty and are supposed to be waterproof.
 
I have 2 EHD's I literally wipe out just about anything that comes on the drives and do my own back up on them. I actually have very little on my actual computer because i hate lag time. My kits are all on EHD's and I save some to disk even though not many because they are so huge for them.
 
Western Digital is my go to. Years of faulty Seagates when I worked in hardware turned me against them. Like IBM (Lenovo) hardware too. I think it's crap. My western digital shave served me well all these yrs. I have a 3 terabyte EHD Book, and two more portable 1T passports. I use the 3T to backup files and layouts, and keep current working stuff on my passport in case I want to take it with me.
To answer your question though, cloud storage can be either/or. It can be like Dropbox, or really totally compressed backup of whole system or files. I use iCloud to back up the phones and store any copies of photos we take from our iPhones. Contacts and calendars are stored uncompressed too. My husband and I share one iCloud account, which I manage. I also use OneDrive from Microsoft which I use mostly as file storage and transfer for office 365 files, and of course Dropbox is really cloud too, which I use for photos.
Sounds like a lot of storage in a lot of places but I use each "cloud" pretty specifically and this reduces loss risk if anything crashes.
I also have free backup and recovery with my laptop to Dell cloud. Also, all my cloud accounts were free with either some software or hardware. OneDrive is included in my 365 account, Dell is included with my laptop and the basic is enough. Cloud backup is included with Adobe CC and PSE too but I really never use that yet. The only one I pay a bit more for is Apple ICloud, my husband takes pictures of equipment serial numbers for his work and that overfilled our storage there.
Sorry to be so winded. To summarize, cloud storage can be used however you want, and probably free.
 
i actually have 2 systems, Backblaze and Clickfree.

Backblaze is an internet backup service
clickfree is an actual EHD with back up software, you connect it to your computer when you want to back up and the software does the rest. It backs up files only, no programs or apps
 
I have crash plan. I leave all my photos on the sd card. I also have all photos on ehd and computer. Full size JPEG layouts are on Flickr which allows full size downloading all kits are backed up to another ehd too.
 
I only back up to EHDs. I don't have an online backup, which is a little scary, but it's been working so far. I store everything I own on one Western Digital EHD. Then I have an second internal HD in my computer that I sometimes backup to. Then I have a third Western Digital EHD that I keep at work (my offsite backup). I take my main EHD to work every Friday and use Microsoft SyncToy to backup to the EHD at work. I very rarely forget to take it on Friday, so I would never lose more than a week's worth of work.
 
Last year my EHD died. I had gotten a new laptop & had just finished moving everything from the old laptop to the EHD. Everything from the old laptop was gone, there was nothing on the new laptop yet. It was so awful. My Cisco certified husband couldn't fix it. I couldn't afford the hundreds of dollars it would take to fix it. Now I don't use EHDs anymore. my phone has the amazon photos app, so every picture I take goes into the cloud. I have the app on my laptop too, but I don't run it as often. I will probably get a SSD soon, but won't go back to EHD. I'm just too scorned.

A couple of months ago, my husband tried something different & was able to recover a few thousand images from the crashed EHD. I had him upload all of that directly to the cloud. I haven't had time to organize it, but there are folders I can make when I have time. Right now it's all just sorted by date. What saved me when it all happened was that I had uploaded so much to Shutterfly, Snapfish, & Facebook, that I still had so many pictures to treasure. Lesson learned, I'm uploading as much as possible.
 
I haven't read the posts, but I have been most of the day trying to get my house decent and clean, plus dealing with my Restore the EHD that died from Crash Plan ........
so I was restoring ... all very well, until I went to have a look at some folders because it called my attention the last modified date wasn't the right one (should have said yesterday or today ) and the contents only showed numbers in KB...so I open them: EMPTY.
I just had a look in the folder I restored yesterday , the Kits 2015...and am only on the letter J and already 22 kits that are empty or only have the kit's preview in them.....
Carol aka @Iowan had same thing with hers with Crash Plan.....
I'm afraid to look at the photos folders...as I would have to spend a week looking through to make sure all is there.... to add to this (which it may seem un important but my life revolves around the computer) my daughter's attitude keeps getting more selfish by the minute.

I am not very happy. and this is putting it mildly. So, if I am not around or answering your emails/chat messages...you know isn't you. I know this , too, will pass. It doesn't stop me feeling frustrated, even angry, though I try hard not to. Anyway. That is what is going on in this last day of the year.
I am so glad is finishing!!!!!!!

I ll come back to read so I can decide what happens next....
 
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