The Medway Handyman
wibbled on Sunday 04 April 2010 13:35

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.

Everytime it reaches the stage 'Insert DVD' it them claims the DVD isn't
empty. Tried loads of different makes & the DVD slot works OK with
everything else.

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

If the latter, any suggestions to a PC numpty?



For quite a robust little system, if you have WIFI, then a WIFI NAS hard
disk-in-a-box could be quite cool. It would give you the potential to put in
the garage or shed, giving it some protection against accidents and fire or
flood that might take out all your computers in one go.

Happy to look into this a bit more if you're interested. This method and any
method that uses an always-on hard disk has the potential to automate
backups daily so you don't forget, though good reporting is essential - eg
it should email you if something didn't work.

And back up your accounts to both the NAS and the USB stick for double
protection.

In the meantime, personally I would use 2 USB sticks or one of a very decent
quality such as the Corsair stick-in-an-ali-tube:

http://www.corsair.com/products/survivor/default.aspx

I have an earlier version, 3 years old. Almost indestructible and waterproof
when in the tube and the flash RAM is good quality too - and faster than a
lot of the cheaper flash so copying data is several times quicker than a
cheap and nasty stick (I've compared a few).

--
Tim Watts

Managers, politicians and environmentalists: Nature's carbon buffer.