What are your backing up tips?

[bagellad]

Quick backup tips - So a customer wants you to store all their pictures, word files, business files etc off their old computer. Is there any program you use to automate this process? Or just do a lot of "find" searches? Maybe copy the whole hard drive? I am looking for how you do it on-site if possible.

[Bryce W]

I would give this application a run: http://www.technibble.com/repair-too...ek-autobackup/
Of course, check the files afterwards.

Be sure to let the client know that you are backing up the most common things (my docs, emails etc..) and that they need to let you know if they have any software they want backed up like Quickbooks data files.

[mh348]

What do you reccomend for the Storage medium, an external HDD or a DVD. At one of my clients they do a Backup daily onto a DVD, but this requires someone to change the discs, how safe is it to use an external hdd

[i2omani]

Originally Posted by mh348

What do you reccomend for the Storage medium, an external HDD or a DVD. At one of my clients they do a Backup daily onto a DVD, but this requires someone to change the discs, how safe is it to use an external hdd

DVD life span will start to get corrupted after 2 yrs, thats if it is just laying on the shelf, i will think it will be less if you are using it!

[bagellad]

thanks for the help, looks good. In regards to where to backup I would suggest an external harddrive with automated program or a regular offsite backup place with a monthly dvd backup or something. Just my two cents.

[mh348]

Originally Posted by i2omani

DVD life span will start to get corrupted after 2 yrs, thats if it is just laying on the shelf, i will think it will be less if you are using it!

They have 6 discs, one for each day of the week. So every Monday they use the Monday Disc, Tuesday the Tuesday Disc and so on, that way if there was something wrong with the last backup, they use the one from the previous day.

[Andyuk2007]

can you use an external hard drive with this program at all so it backs them up to that ?

[mh348]

With Acronis, whats the best backup option & how do I set it to overwrite previous backups?

[tartis]

If it is important data, you want to always have multiple backups. If not, you may overwrite your good backup with bad data.

They also need to decide a retention schedule. How many years do I need to keep this data? If it is a business, there are laws governing email and data retention. You should always store backups in an off-site location in case of fire or disaster.

[bagellad]

These are all good ideas, seems like there is a real opening for back up solutions since its the whole preventative thing.. you don't have to wait for them to have a problem with the computer etc. Do you guys have any packages for backing up you offer? Like setup and so much storage? Different backup solutions?