What are you using to back up your hard drive?

[Janiece Young]

I know I have asked this question before, but technology changes so I'm asking again.  What are you using to back up your hard drive?  Are you backing up to a service like Carbonite?  I know there are others out there too.  What are you using and why?  What is the cost?

[Marge Teilhaber (TILE hobber)]

3 external hard drives + Carbonite.

I use Second Copy for the hard drives.  Once the "profiles" are set up, it's a breeze.  I turn on one of the 2 drives that uses AC or plug in the third drive that's USB only, Second Copy pops up and asks if I want to run the profiles, I click yes and walk away from the computer or waste time on the internet, which is not one of the profiles.    When it's done, I turn off or unplug the external drive.  I switch each night which drive to connect.  Nothing is zipped.  No CDs.  Just nice reliable backup.

[Janiece Young]

Hi, Marge,

What is Second Copy?  Is it a drive or is it a cloud back-up?  I have not heard of it.

Thanks,

Janiece

[Marge Teilhaber (TILE hobber)]

It's backup software.  I don't install anything that comes with any hard drive.  

http://www.secondcopy.com/

I will write to them about this unfortunate line on their home page:  

Backup your data

GEEZ!!

Other than this, Second Copy is great.

[Janiece Young]

Okay.  Marge, you are using this software to back up to another external drive.  Am I right?

[Marge Teilhaber (TILE hobber)]

I use Second Copy every night to back up from my desktop computer to 3 external hard drives.  I rotate them and use one each night.  The first backup takes a very long time.  Each backup after that is very quick.  I have the profiles set to "exact" backup, meaning Second Copy copies source (desktop computer) to destination (whichever external drive I've connected) and deletes obsolete files from the destination, so external hard drive always has an exact copy of what's on my desktop computer.

[Janiece Young]

Thank you, Marge.  I am sorry to be so dense.  Thank you for patiently explaining it to me.  :-)  It sounds like a really great system.

[Marge Teilhaber (TILE hobber)]

My pleasure, Janiece.  And yes, I do sleep well!     The two drives that are AC, they're always plugged in but they're turned off at all times except when I've turned on one of them for backup and the rare time I need to turn one on during the day to retrieve something.  Besides peace of mind for total nightly backup, they come in the very next most handy when populating a new computer with my stuff.