Taking a line through the hearts broken over lost data on our forum, I thought it might be useful to pool our knowledge on how we protect ourselves against data loss.
Here's how I do it, without NAS or RAID.
For music CDs, rip to PC-HDD:
For PC/Laptop:
I use Syncback profiles to synchronize important directories between my laptop & PC, and between my PC and external disk. So I have triplets of all vital data at any given time.
I sync every time I add or change anything, usually daily, but at least three times a week.
In the DOS/Win 3x days, I used to use Robocopy (command line), which was pretty powerful too. There were hardcore sysadmins who'd swear by it.
Luckily, I've never lost anything significant to a hard-disk crash, and I've had quite a few over the years! Even if I stupidly delete something without using the recycle/trash bin, one sync operation brings it back!
Oh yeah - I should mention that I sync data+pics+movies+music between PC & external HDDs, but only data between laptop & PC because of the laptop's small HDD.
Here's how I do it, without NAS or RAID.
For music CDs, rip to PC-HDD:
- EAC+AccurateRip - Rip CDs to WAV
- Foobar - Encode to FLAC, create tags
For PC/Laptop:
- Copy important directories (work, music, pics, movies) onto separate physical drives, internal or external
- Use SyncBack (free edition) to regularly backup/synchronize the source and target directories
I use Syncback profiles to synchronize important directories between my laptop & PC, and between my PC and external disk. So I have triplets of all vital data at any given time.
I sync every time I add or change anything, usually daily, but at least three times a week.
In the DOS/Win 3x days, I used to use Robocopy (command line), which was pretty powerful too. There were hardcore sysadmins who'd swear by it.
Luckily, I've never lost anything significant to a hard-disk crash, and I've had quite a few over the years! Even if I stupidly delete something without using the recycle/trash bin, one sync operation brings it back!
Oh yeah - I should mention that I sync data+pics+movies+music between PC & external HDDs, but only data between laptop & PC because of the laptop's small HDD.
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