Backup drive question

[So]

We've been religiously backing up one of the main office machines weekly using a manually inserted flash drive.

The backup flag comes up for a while and then disappears, so we assumed that backup was all good.

We are migrating to a new machine and when I looked on the backup flash drive I note that the most recent backup is showing as 2017!

Clearly we need a different backup drive and regime. Suggestions appreciated.

[eps]

What OS and what are you backing up?

[droopsnoot]

A significant part of any backup routine is the test restore. I found that out the hard way (well, my customer did) but it looks like you've been fortunate here.

[rxe]

Yes. An unrestorable backup is useless.

Ideally, you need to do a test restore (onto another drive) regularly. Most backup software will do some sort of validation for you. HOWEVER - this will validate that what you asked it to back up is backed up correctly. It won't make sure that you are backing up the right stuff.

Comedy anecdote - many years ago I worked on a system with a massive tape silo - one of those really cool robot arms that picked tapes out of a rack and stuffed it into a drive. Every evening, gigabytes of data was put on the tapes (that was the 90s when gigs were a lot). Thankfully they did a full disaster recovery test one weekend, and discovered that the one thing not being backed up was the tape catalogue for the backup server. So they had 10,000 perfect tapes, and absolutely no fking clue what was on them. Easily fixed, but would have been a catastrophe if the test had been for real.

[maccas99]

Would recommend moving towards a cloud solution such as OneDrive or similar, it will be a case of set and forget and then you can get to your data anywhere...

[So]

maccas99 said:

Would recommend moving towards a cloud solution such as OneDrive or similar, it will be a case of set and forget and then you can get to your data anywhere...

We are migrating to a W10 machine and it seems to want to force us down the cloud route.

What I really want is for things to be like they were on W3.1 where we have "my documents" and that's where the machine tries to save stuff automatically.

I'd like to have a physical local drive to back up to.

I don't trust MS and OneDrive. Sooner or later they'll abuse our data, have a massive security breach or pull a Photobucket ransom move. [/paranoia]

[deckster]

So said:

We are migrating to a W10 machine and it seems to want to force us down the cloud route.

What I really want is for things to be like they were on W3.1 where we have "my documents" and that's where the machine tries to save stuff automatically.

I'd like to have a physical local drive to back up to.

I don't trust MS and OneDrive. Sooner or later they'll abuse our data, have a massive security breach or pull a Photobucket ransom move. [/paranoia]

Not to come across all young and cool (I am neither) but you really do need to get with the times, grandad.

If you don't trust MS, then use Google or Box or Dropbox of one of any number of other cloud services. Ideally, use two or three of them. They are much, much better than you at storing data and host a huge amount of of massively valuable information. By all means, your backup strategy should include local copies but really cloud is so easy, quick, and cheap that there is no earthly reason not to use it these days.

[sociopath]

deckster said:

So said:

We are migrating to a W10 machine and it seems to want to force us down the cloud route.

What I really want is for things to be like they were on W3.1 where we have "my documents" and that's where the machine tries to save stuff automatically.

I'd like to have a physical local drive to back up to.

I don't trust MS and OneDrive. Sooner or later they'll abuse our data, have a massive security breach or pull a Photobucket ransom move. [/paranoia]

Not to come across all young and cool (I am neither) but you really do need to get with the times, grandad.

If you don't trust MS, then use Google or Box or Dropbox of one of any number of other cloud services. Ideally, use two or three of them. They are much, much better than you at storing data and host a huge amount of of massively valuable information. By all means, your backup strategy should include local copies but really cloud is so easy, quick, and cheap that there is no earthly reason not to use it these days.

Agreed, as another grandad (58!)

It sounds like I have more back ups for my home data than you do for your business.

I have 2 NAS systems at home, one as a raid and robocopy between them nightly, and I use a cloud backup as well. And that's just for music and photos and basic home documents.

Can't believe anyone would run a business these days and have less.

[So]

sociopath said:

deckster said:

So said:

We are migrating to a W10 machine and it seems to want to force us down the cloud route.

What I really want is for things to be like they were on W3.1 where we have "my documents" and that's where the machine tries to save stuff automatically.

I'd like to have a physical local drive to back up to.

I don't trust MS and OneDrive. Sooner or later they'll abuse our data, have a massive security breach or pull a Photobucket ransom move. [/paranoia]

Not to come across all young and cool (I am neither) but you really do need to get with the times, grandad.

If you don't trust MS, then use Google or Box or Dropbox of one of any number of other cloud services. Ideally, use two or three of them. They are much, much better than you at storing data and host a huge amount of of massively valuable information. By all means, your backup strategy should include local copies but really cloud is so easy, quick, and cheap that there is no earthly reason not to use it these days.

Agreed, as another grandad (58!)

It sounds like I have more back ups for my home data than you do for your business.

I have 2 NAS systems at home, one as a raid and robocopy between them nightly, and I use a cloud backup as well. And that's just for music and photos and basic home documents.

Can't believe anyone would run a business these days and have less.

You so clearly are trying to be cool. I bet you wear skinny jeans and a baseball cap round the wrong way.

It's a bit more robust than you suggest, but still inadequate, which is why I am looking at it.

[Pachydermus]

So said:

It's a bit more robust than you suggest, but still inadequate, which is why I am looking at it.

So said:

We are migrating to a new machine and when I looked on the backup flash drive I note that the most recent backup is showing as 2017!

How much data are you wanting to backup?

[So]

Pachydermus said:

So said:

It's a bit more robust than you suggest, but still inadequate, which is why I am looking at it.

So said:

We are migrating to a new machine and when I looked on the backup flash drive I note that the most recent backup is showing as 2017!

I said a bit more.

[Pachydermus]

So said:

Pachydermus said:

So said:

It's a bit more robust than you suggest, but still inadequate, which is why I am looking at it.

So said:

We are migrating to a new machine and when I looked on the backup flash drive I note that the most recent backup is showing as 2017!

I said a bit more.

how much data? if it's just one machine then something like backblaze would do the trick and has versioning available which a lot of the other online backups don't do.

[So]

Pachydermus said:

So said:

Pachydermus said:

So said:

It's a bit more robust than you suggest, but still inadequate, which is why I am looking at it.

So said:

We are migrating to a new machine and when I looked on the backup flash drive I note that the most recent backup is showing as 2017!

I said a bit more.

how much data? if it's just one machine then something like backblaze would do the trick and has versioning available which a lot of the other online backups don't do.

We've several machines but they are not networked currently. We used to have an IT bod who worked for us and our IT was better then. It needs to become better again, we recognise that.

So, immediately I want to create an up to date backup from the W7 machine and recreate those files on the W10 machine.

Also, I copied the backup from the W7 machine to the W10 machine but it appears not to translate to W10. Someone on another thread has explained how to do that.

In order to get rid of the 16GB backup on the new machine completely, should I factory reset it and start again?

In order to achieve my immediate requirement, are we saying that a cloud backup will be better than physical?

[sociopath]

So said:

sociopath said:

deckster said:

So said:

We are migrating to a W10 machine and it seems to want to force us down the cloud route.

What I really want is for things to be like they were on W3.1 where we have "my documents" and that's where the machine tries to save stuff automatically.

I'd like to have a physical local drive to back up to.

I don't trust MS and OneDrive. Sooner or later they'll abuse our data, have a massive security breach or pull a Photobucket ransom move. [/paranoia]

Not to come across all young and cool (I am neither) but you really do need to get with the times, grandad.

If you don't trust MS, then use Google or Box or Dropbox of one of any number of other cloud services. Ideally, use two or three of them. They are much, much better than you at storing data and host a huge amount of of massively valuable information. By all means, your backup strategy should include local copies but really cloud is so easy, quick, and cheap that there is no earthly reason not to use it these days.

Agreed, as another grandad (58!)

It sounds like I have more back ups for my home data than you do for your business.

I have 2 NAS systems at home, one as a raid and robocopy between them nightly, and I use a cloud backup as well. And that's just for music and photos and basic home documents.

Can't believe anyone would run a business these days and have less.

You so clearly are trying to be cool. I bet you wear skinny jeans and a baseball cap round the wrong way.

It's a bit more robust than you suggest, but still inadequate, which is why I am looking at it.

I was just trying to suggest you might need to do a bit more, as your OP didnt suggest anything robust at all (you said you used a key) but feel free to go straight for the personal attacks.

What an ahole

[maccas99]

So said:

We've several machines but they are not networked currently. We used to have an IT bod who worked for us and our IT was better then. It needs to become better again, we recognise that.

So, immediately I want to create an up to date backup from the W7 machine and recreate those files on the W10 machine.

Also, I copied the backup from the W7 machine to the W10 machine but it appears not to translate to W10. Someone on another thread has explained how to do that.

In order to get rid of the 16GB backup on the new machine completely, should I factory reset it and start again?

In order to achieve my immediate requirement, are we saying that a cloud backup will be better than physical?

As an aside, you should also be looking at moving away from Win7 machines as they are now vulnerable due to no patching support....

[So]

sociopath said:

I was just trying to suggest you might need to do a bit more, as your OP didnt suggest anything robust at all (you said you used a key) but feel free to go straight for the personal attacks.

What an ahole

I was kidding, calm down.

[Pachydermus]

So said:

In order to achieve my immediate requirement, are we saying that a cloud backup will be better than physical?

ideally you'd have both - what will you do if your office burns down or someone breaks in and steals your computers?
Malware/ransomeware/whatever can also take out all your computers including the backups if they're on a connected pc.
This is also why you need versioning and not just mirroring as you might not immediately notice corrupt files before they're mirrored.

[So]

maccas99 said:

So said:

We've several machines but they are not networked currently. We used to have an IT bod who worked for us and our IT was better then. It needs to become better again, we recognise that.

So, immediately I want to create an up to date backup from the W7 machine and recreate those files on the W10 machine.

Also, I copied the backup from the W7 machine to the W10 machine but it appears not to translate to W10. Someone on another thread has explained how to do that.

In order to get rid of the 16GB backup on the new machine completely, should I factory reset it and start again?

In order to achieve my immediate requirement, are we saying that a cloud backup will be better than physical?

As an aside, you should also be looking at moving away from Win7 machines as they are now vulnerable due to no patching support....

That's why we are migrating stuff from the W7 machine; the plan is to get rid.

Before lockdown we were in the process of trying to locate a local firm to look after our IT. We may have to restart that search, because I have little interest or patience where IT kit is concerned.

[RizzoTheRat]

So said:

What I really want is for things to be like they were on W3.1 where we have "my documents" and that's where the machine tries to save stuff automatically.

You can change the default location for My Documents on Windows 7 or 10 (and probably others), even to a network location, so you could set up all machines in the office to use a shared drive or NAS by default and then you can back that area up even if the individual machines are switched off. I believe you can even have multiple machines sharing the same My Documents location if you want but I've never tried it.

I would also argue that an onsite backup isn't really a backup at all. If your office gets burgled or burns down you could lose the backup too. An online backup or USB drive that someone takes home is a cheap solution for a small office. For home use I backup everything to a NAS automatically (Second Copy) and then do more infrequent backups to a USB drive that I keep at work, plus anything important is also on dropbox meaning I can access it from my desktop, laptop or phone.

[So]

RizzoTheRat said:

So said:

What I really want is for things to be like they were on W3.1 where we have "my documents" and that's where the machine tries to save stuff automatically.

You can change the default location for My Documents on Windows 7 or 10 (and probably others), even to a network location, so you could set up all machines in the office to use a shared drive or NAS by default and then you can back that area up even if the individual machines are switched off. I believe you can even have multiple machines sharing the same My Documents location if you want but I've never tried it.

I would also argue that an onsite backup isn't really a backup at all. If your office gets burgled or burns down you could lose the backup too. An online backup or USB drive that someone takes home is a cheap solution for a small office. For home use I backup everything to a NAS automatically (Second Copy) and then do more infrequent backups to a USB drive that I keep at work, plus anything important is also on dropbox meaning I can access it from my desktop, laptop or phone.

To be fair, I need to spend some time familiarising myself with W10 when I have the time.