On Sun, 4 Apr 2010 13:35:39 +0100, "The Medway Handyman"
wrote:

I save anything vital like my business accounts on to a memory stick, but I
don't backup general stuff - which could be an inconvenience if anything
happened.

I have Norton 360 which has a built in back up feature - but it doesn't
work. Drives me mad.

mutter mumble 'Norton' being like a virus itself mumble ;-(


So, would I be better off with one of these online backup companies or
buying some kind of external device?

Bit of both maybe?

For your important stuff Dropbox could be handy.

Up to 2G is free (plus you can earn more capacity by getting others to
sign up etc) and it's basically a folder that gets synchronised
between your PC / Mac / Linux and the WEB ... then to any other
machines that share the same Dropbox. ie, You drop a file into the
folder and it appears on the web (password protected etc) and say yer
Mrs PC. I've only been playing with it for a while but it looks ok.
Someone will probably come along and tell us why it isn't a good idea
though. ;-(

http://www.dropbox.com/

If the latter, any suggestions to a PC numpty?

For true 'get yer *data* somewhere easily ... and restore easily' I'd
go along with the other suggestions and an external USB drive of some
sort and a Clickfree transformer:

http://www.clickfree.com/products_transformer.php

Perfect numpty appeal:

Plug transformer into USB drive.
Plug combo into PC.
Click 'Yes' (one time) to the agreement.
Sit and watch .. (first time will take a while, subsequent ones less
so).

... As it goes round your drive finding all the pictures, documents,
videos and a large quantity of other stuff one might consider data and
stuffs it all on the external drive.

You can then top it up at whatever intervals you want (/remember) and
do other machines as well (and store the backup off site?).

Worst comes to the worst, or you buy a new PC, plug the thing back in,
tell it to restore (choose the machine name from it's list) and either
put all the files in a new folder to sort though at your leisure, or,
let it put them all back where it got them from (even across different
versions of OS).

It doesn't do the OS though, just your data (and the most important
bit presumably). [1]

I've used mine several times when wiping a machine and I'd have to say
it's pretty seamless (your mileage may vary etc).

It's not subtle like may other systems but simple enough to use easily
and much much better than not doing anything at all (often the
alternative).

They do the concept (software built in) with a hard drive as well but
I preferred the flexibility to be able to use the dongle thing over
several drives.

Cheers, T i m

[1] You could use the raw external drive and 'some software' to take a
snapshot of yer new / clean system then use the Clickfree thing (to
the same drive) to back up yer data as you go?