Score one (well, maybe half) for backed up data.

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andrew027

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Topic # 199028 1-Aug-2016 15:41

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A few years ago I decided that I needed to be more responsible and back up my PC. I bought a cheap WD Elements external hard drive and started doing weekly backups of the folders where my data was. Well, my PC died recently so I got to test my backup yesterday. There is always that nagging doubt that you don't know if your backup plan is working until you have to try and restore from it, but I'm happy to say that although my strategy was quite basic, I have managed to get everything back and restored to my new notebook.

Well, I say "everything" but I wasn't backing up my Outlook .pst file so I have lost quite a few emails. Hopefully I can get someone to recover that from the old hard drive for me.

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Reply # 1602392 1-Aug-2016 17:29

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A backup isn't a backup before you find out if you can restore from it. Should always be tested. :D

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tripp

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Reply # 1602395 1-Aug-2016 17:38

Backups are always good.

I sync everything via google drive using boxcryptor (for encrypting the files) then have a program on my main machine to backup to a cold storage account I have. If it all turns bad then I can get the files back in 4 - 6 hours.

For emails I use my google apps account web interface. That way I don't have to worry about .pst files etc.

networkn

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Reply # 1602415 1-Aug-2016 18:24

Datalab have a fixed price disk recovery fee through it's resellers (Of which I am one). We have never been let down yet.

davidcole

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Reply # 1602416 1-Aug-2016 18:24

tripp:
Backups are always good.

I sync everything via google drive using boxcryptor (for encrypting the files) then have a program on my main machine to backup to a cold storage account I have. If it all turns bad then I can get the files back in 4 - 6 hours.

For emails I use my google apps account web interface. That way I don't have to worry about .pst files etc.

For gmail I use gmvault. It downloads sell my emails to a PC, which is attached to crash plan - 1.8tb and counting of cloud backups.

alasta

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Reply # 1602426 1-Aug-2016 18:33

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I've been using computers for 30 years and never needed to restore a backup yet, but I'm sure one day someone will pinch my laptop so I'm always prepared!

1101

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Reply # 1602772 2-Aug-2016 11:37

MS historically, havnt helped much in this regard , for home PC's
Flacky backup apps, backup app thats really quite buried, backups that wont backup (say) moyb data that arnt in user files
type backup into 7,10 search , you get nothing . 7,8,10 have an excellent disk image backup, but its hidden and not the easiest to do a one off or manual
only backup (say on a laptop thats often not at the home station with the USB drive)

So its no wonder so many resort to 3rd party apps for backup, apps that just arnt up to the job.

Chances are 3rd party backup apps wont backup the pst while Outlook is left open.

littleheaven

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Reply # 1603398 3-Aug-2016 10:32

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Going forward, there is a third-party add-on you can install in Microsoft Outlook that backs up your chosen email folders to a hard-drive destination of your choice. It runs every time I shut Outlook down. I have mine backing up to a OneDrive folder, so that backup is then cloud backed up. Haven't tested a restore yet, though.

Interestingly enough, the other day my OneDrive lost a document I was working on. It was there, and then when I clicked on it, it vanished and said it had been moved or deleted. Cue panic, but I thought to check my little WD passport hard drive which does incremental external backups, so I opened my OneDrive folder on that, and it was showing as a deleted file, but it still had a restorable copy. Phew!

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xpd

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Reply # 1603403 3-Aug-2016 10:43

(sigh) Wife got hit by a cryptolocker variant (very new one, only turned up last month) this week, been telling her I want to put a decent backup system in place.... she lost a heap of work but thankfully not MYOB so the work can be re-done, just annoying. Oh and a bunch of videos from our family trip earlier this year...damnit.

Thankfully, afterwards I was browsing through my OneDrive, and found a backup I must have done of her User folder some time back so most of her photos etc are safe.

Ive made an image of the drive with Acronis on the off chance a decryption tool appears (but unlikely) and replaced her existing HDD with another for now.

Just remember though, OneDrive is NOT a backup solution - if a virus hits your OneDrive folder, that change will be replicated to the cloud....

My home server has its C drive backed up nightly to a separate drive using Macrium Reflect - primarily because its running my domain email from it, the rest of the data on the server is just media that Im not concerned about losing.

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littleheaven

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Reply # 1603422 3-Aug-2016 11:05

xpd:

Just remember though, OneDrive is NOT a backup solution - if a virus hits your OneDrive folder, that change will be replicated to the cloud....

My home server has its C drive backed up nightly to a separate drive using Macrium Reflect - primarily because its running my domain email from it, the rest of the data on the server is just media that Im not concerned about losing.

Good point. I use LiveDrive as cloud backup for my big behemoth 2008 Mac Pro (my personal computer - still going strong with the addition of an SSD and extra RAM). It also has a bootable cloned hard drive inside it, and a Time Capsule backup. That's where all my precious photos and videos live.

I use OneDrive mainly as a sync tool for my copywriting work which is done on a Win10 laptop, and that's backed up to an external HDD, but I hadn't considered that it could become virus infected. I should really look at extending my LiveDrive licence to cover that computer as well, for super safety.

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CutCutCut

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Reply # 1603428 3-Aug-2016 11:15

Just getting in on the thread here, it sounds like I have similar backup systems to the rest of you, but what is the best way of avoiding cryptolocker catastrophes? I have all the important photos/videos etc backing up daily to an external drive via crashpan and to another drive weekly which I then disconnect and take off site. I'm thinking if a crytolocker virus get on one PC it would soon infect the crashplan files on the external drive and possibly also networked drives on my server?

timmmay

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Reply # 1603431 3-Aug-2016 11:20

Cryptoware is why mirrors are not a backup.

You can use Mailstore Home to backup your email from multiple accounts to your Windows computer. I don't know if it can look at PST files, but I think it probably can. I have it archive email from Gmail, various IMAP servers, and from Thunderbird local storage.

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richms

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Reply # 1603467 3-Aug-2016 11:59

I just have crashplan going to the cloud for everything. Well not the dodgey movie collection, but the flac's are going there since I took an eternity sorting and tagging them etc.

The non critical PCs I have crashplan backing up to 2 other PCs since there is a limit on the family plan of 10 PCs to their cloud. The others are the ones I just use to play music on in the shed etc which are larlgly not used now because of a firetv or chromecast.

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andrew027

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Reply # 1603543 3-Aug-2016 13:30

littleheaven: Going forward, there is a third-party add-on you can install in Microsoft Outlook that backs up your chosen email folders to a hard-drive destination of your choice. It runs every time I shut Outlook down. I have mine backing up to a OneDrive folder, so that backup is then cloud backed up. Haven't tested a restore yet, though.

Thanks @littleheaven - what's it called? I may investigate that, depending on the answer to this question:

I've recently started using outlook.co.nz and added my xtra and gmail accounts to it. Am I right in saying that if I had another hardware failure, my mail is "safe" in outlook.co.nz and old emails could be accessed from a new PC once I installed the Outlook app on it and pointed that to my outlook.co.nz account?

While that wouldn't technically be a backup solution, it does give me some "business continuity".

richms

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Reply # 1603553 3-Aug-2016 13:34

The one thing that really worries me with the likes of crashplan to the cloud is that if the crypo locker stuff was smart enough to see that you used it and sucked the API keys or password from it and then used those to trash all the backup volumes on the crashplan australia servers before announcing that it had done its work.

When I asked support about how to protect backup volumes from deletion incase the computer was compromised they were strangly silent about the problem.

I also do not like how the family option allows any PC to be able to restore files from all the others.

Richard rich.ms

timmmay

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Reply # 1603566 3-Aug-2016 13:54

richms:

The one thing that really worries me with the likes of crashplan to the cloud is that if the crypo locker stuff was smart enough to see that you used it and sucked the API keys or password from it and then used those to trash all the backup volumes on the crashplan australia servers before announcing that it had done its work.

When I asked support about how to protect backup volumes from deletion incase the computer was compromised they were strangly silent about the problem.

I also do not like how the family option allows any PC to be able to restore files from all the others.

A better option for you might be to use a backup program that does incremental backups, then upload the backup files to Amazon Glacier with vault lock turned on. Documentation says "The vault’s state will be set to Locked, and the policy will remain in effect until the heat death of the universe.". If you don't pay your bill they may close your account and delete the data, but you can't turn off the "data can't be deleted" flag.

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