So how often do you back up?

If your hard drive failed RIGHT NOW how many photos, videos or other documents would you lose?

I clone onto a spare HD every so often and keep 3 or 4, using casper (http://www.fssdev.com/)

slight overkill, but on the plus side it gets you back up and running in the time it takes to switch a sata (or IDE for that matter) cable from one drive to another.

I have two hard drives in my PC - one is only used for backing up key files.
I have a daily scheduled task that will back up key data on an Oldest, Older, Old, Current basis to that drive.
That protects me from a hardware failure on my primary drive, plus some protection if I, or more likely the kids, delete something they shouldn't, and being scheduled means I don't have to remember to do it, or even be around, as long as the PC is turned on, which it usually is.
I am also prompted to connect an external drive via USB weekly which does a similar back-up, and that is stored off-site to protect me against losing my data from fire/theft etc.
I use RoboCopy (from the WinNT resource kit, and still freely available on the Net) to handle the back-ups, so I'm not tied to any proprietory software and can copy files back as I like using command line, or Windows Explorer. It also means only files that have changed are shuffled around the system, so daily back-ups take just minutes, with the weekly one not much longer.
Looked at the cloning route as used by salmonbones, and although recovery is much faster than my method the time taken to do the cloning means that I'd probably rarely bother! Getting my PC back up and running is not time critical, and doing a clean re-install of the OS (WinXP) and apps is not a bad thing now and then, albeit I've never bothered yet!

Weekly - and, yes, I voted so - but when I get Leopard (at last) this week I'll have Time Machine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Machine_(Apple_software)) and so will have an hourly fingers-free service.

i keep all of my stuff on a slave drive and the really important stuff on the slave and also on an external...just incase ;)

Weekly - and, yes, I voted so - but when I get Leopard (at last) this week I'll have Time Machine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Machine_(Apple_software)) and so will have an hourly fingers-free service.

Do you mean Snow Leopard?

I never used Time Machine until now - preferring to do manual backs ups every week or so, but I've been converted. I hated the fact that my imac is near silent, but my external drive sounded like, well, a PC!

Sorted that by sticking it in a cupboard underneath the desk, so now I know that in the event of my mac dying I'm only going to lost the last hours worth of data at the very most.

I will still do a second back up of my important files (photos) every week or so.

I notice that 2 people have voted 'Never' - are you mad?

Do you mean Snow Leopard?

No... Leopard... I being a (very) late adopter - an upgrade to Snow Leopard probably happening in January when it's settled down.

I'll use a drive plugged into a hidden-away AirPort Extreme Base Station so any noise from that will not be a concern - maybe even a RAID 1 device so as to have a belt as well as braces. In theory I won't need another backup drive but I'll still keep an offsite backup of my essentials (oo-er missus) on a cloud server - that also being automated - and enjoying AES128 protection pre-transfer. Better safe than sorry.

When I ran Xp, I scheduled Norton Ghost to do it every other day or so, but now with Linux, I'm not sure (without googling) what softweare to use. I know I can just drag 'n' drop to an external...but I haven't a decent sized external drive to use.........yet.

I use Time Machine to an external hard drive... but only when i remember to get the drive out to do it. Usually once a week. Maybe once a fortnight.

I just sync my data folders between my two PCs, so if one goes down anything I might want is on the other.

But then all I have at home is photographs, video edit stuff and music files, with the odd financial balance sheet in Excel.

If I was running a home business or something, I wouldn't trust a backup HD with 'mission critical' stuff. Tape backups are still the number 1 backup media for business use for a reason.

Mine and my kids PC's all have a second hard drive purely for data storage. They are all on a home network and I run NTBackup via Scheduled Tasks on each PC weekly to back everything up to a networked external hard drive. I just have to remember to make sure the kids don't shut their PCs down on their designated backup night!

I have an external hard drive that I backed up everything onto from several machines. It then went missing and turned up in the footwell of the car several days later. Lesson learned.

I always back up. That way you can drive straight out.

I've got an external hard drive which can't fall over and get damaged or get lost because it's strapped down to the desk with tie wraps- I use that for all the big stuff storage and everything else is stored in my Dropbox, so there's very little that couldn't be resurrected from either.

I notice that 2 people have voted 'Never' - are you mad?

Now 8 people who voted Never, including me.

My partner bought me a memory stick to back up with. I can't remember where I put it though, and even when I had it to hand I couldn't remember the instructions!

I am the Forum Technophobe though! :roll:

Now 8 people who voted Never, including me.

My partner bought me a memory stick to back up with. I can't remember where I put it though, and even when I had it to hand I couldn't remember the instructions!

I am the Forum Technophobe though! :roll:

The thing to remember is that all hard drives will eventually fail. For most people the drive will out last the useful life of the computer, but the possibility remains that if your hard drive does fail, and you have no back up, then all of your digital photos (for example) could be lost.

You can either - take regular copies of your important files and place on a second disk - eg a USB drive

or use an automated solution which does it for you - OS X has Time Machine, there are probably similar options available for Windows

When I ran Xp, I scheduled Norton Ghost to do it every other day or so, but now with Linux, I'm not sure (without googling) what softweare to use.
Use rsync or grsync (for gnome).

I tend to run an incremental back every weekend or when I've changed a lot of files (eg after a photo shoot / a days coding etc). Backup to second internal drive.

Yes, I know, I really should mirror to an external drive/NAS or something too. Something else to save up for!

On Windows, ROBOCOPY is a great free utility.

The internal hard on this netbook is backed up on two external hards. one is kept at home and one with the computer.
I am thinking of buying a couple of high capacity pen drives and carry them about instead of the hard drive.
Unless it's a something special that I've added, I back up once a week.