May I Recommend…
It never fails, about once a week I see a thread on one of the message boards I frequent about someone losing all their photos, scrapbook layouts, or scrapping supplies due to a hard drive crash, or other computer related catastrophe. I can almost feel their pain and tears. It’s heart breaking. Most of the time they lose everything because their files were not backed up. Or, they had a partial loss because they are only backing up once a month or so.
I back up my files once a day. I know that seems like a hassle but it’s really not. I use a program called Second Copy by Centered Systems to do it for me. It runs in the background automatically according to the specifications I set up. There is a set up wizard that makes it easy even for a beginner to set up, and advanced users can easily customize their backups.
You can download a fully functional free trial, and license fees are $29.95. (Multi-license pricing is available) That’s a great price compared to what you’d have to pay for file recovery after a crash!
December 2nd, 2007 at 3:39 am
So nice to visit and check how things are moving along. I see your recommendation about Second Copy. I have been reading all the info. I currently have a backup program and it takes forever to finish the backup using DVD. So, I purchased a Maxtor 300Gig ext drive with its own backup sw. Backup w/o any problems, but it copied everything each time and now my drive only have 15 Gigs free. So where do you backup your computer files? Also, is that $29.95 the full amt? When I did a recovery using the DVDs it was a mess; plus, info was missing. I didn’t intend to ask so many ?s, but I thought the ex drive would solve the problem, but only gave me a new one. My internal drive is 360Gigs, partitioned in C,D,E, F. K is external because of 2 DVD Drives, plus 3 for flash, Stick, Media portable. I have so many backups on DVD in storage boxes. I had a bad hd and had to send my computer back to Sony, and is now about 3 yrs old. I guess I should get some rest. I just realized it is 6:38 a.m. and I haven’t gone to bed yet. So glad I decided to go online and check my email which had piled up because of my weekly Oncology Infusion treatments. Have a lovely weekend. HUGS!!
December 2nd, 2007 at 9:33 am
Hi Grambie,
With Second Copy, you can choose what directories you want to back up and how you want it backed up. It’s very flexible. For instance, I do not back up my entire drive. I only back up My Documents (within my docs are all my scrapping supplies design files, etc.), Pictures, Downloaded Files, and some email files. I have told Second Copy to compare the files on my EXD with the files on my HD and only copy those that have changed. So, the first back up took quite a long time, but now the daily back up only takes a few minutes. In the event of a crash, I have the restore software and then I would have all the backed up files on my EHD. But, with Second Copy, you can also tell it to save the changed files as well as a compressed version of the old files. Like I said, you can do a very basic set up or really dig in and customize your back up.
Nice to see you reading.
December 2nd, 2007 at 12:16 pm
i try not to keep much on my HD - i burn my scrapbook kits and photos to DVDs, but i am planning to purchase the new Dell Terrabyte stand-alone drive early next year. 1 tb = 1000 gbs, so you can see how much you can store on the Dell 200 tb external drive! That means i will be able to load all my DVDs back onto the TB external drive, which will be exempt from HD crashes since it’s an external drive. That will make it much easier to find my hundreds of scrap kits, photos, etc. But, backing up or burning photos and kits is really important, even with a ‘back-up’ system.