Hi Peeps,
 
I don't backup as often as I should, and when I do I do it manually, copying various folders to at least two separate and different make/model USB hard drives.
 
I got Acronis free with a new SSD a bit back and I only used it, at the time, to mirror the drive I was replacing.
 
In order to unlock the Acronis backup tools I have to cough up a small sum, which I don't mind doing, but I thought I'd see what peeps are doing here first, just in case there is something better out there.
 
 
Other solutions I have been looking into are personal NAS drives and the "Cloud" but I end up scratching my head and give up on those.
 
cheers
 
andy

Good question Andy, I'll be interested in any replies. I do a weekly back up of important files and folders to One Drive, an external HD and also Box.net, and W10 does a weekly image backup to another HD, but I feel I should be doing more.

Easus Todo Backup is FREE

http://www.todo-backup.co...ee-backup-software.htm


Aoemi Backuppper is also free

http://www.backup-utility...e-backup-software.html

jamesg1213
Good question Andy, I'll be interested in any replies. I do a weekly back up of important files and folders to One Drive, an external HD and also Box.net, and W10 does a weekly image backup to another HD, but I feel I should be doing more.

You do a lot more than me then James
 
Cloud solutions sound ideal and, last time I was in PC World buying a couple of new external hard drives a young lady who worked there questioned why I was still going down the hard drive route when there are so many great Cloud services available. She had a point, I guess, but my main problem is internet speed. My download is quite good at  30mbps but, at the time, my upload speed was a dire 2mbps (now increased to 6mbps, but still not that great).
 
Photographs, music and Sonar files are my largest space eaters. At the moment I have something like 28,000 photographs taking up around 200gB. My Sonar projects folder is another 112gB of stuff. So I don't like the idea of the various Cloud solutions.
 
 

cclarry
Easus Todo Backup is FREE

http://www.todo-backup.co...ee-backup-software.htm


Aoemi Backuppper is also free

http://www.backup-utility...e-backup-software.html

Thanks Larry,
 
I saw those two in one of my searches last night and they do indeed sound okay.
 
Do you use either of those?

I have Macrium Reflect (paid version) for backups.  There is also a free version that many techies seem to be using from reports on computer forums.   I do full drive backups (all partitions) regularly to two different USB connected external hard drives.  I alternate backups between drives, thus if one drive failed I still have a backup (be prepared for Murphy's Law).  My Sonar projects are on a different drive and I just manually backup (copy) the projects to one of the two USB drives.
 
There was a recent thread in the forum Computer section about cloud backup.  Some like it others, like myself, do not. 
 

I love my google drive. I store all my projec ts and audio files there. Since I use the same account on 2 systems no need to transfer files plus I get a physical backup on each computer including googles cloud :)

I've used Aoemi Partition Assistant for quite awhile.
It just recently failed me...or so I thought.  Apparently
the connector on my SSD had broken so, after doing a clone
couldn't get it to work.  I had to dig the plastic connector 
out of my SATA cable with the a Safety pin...that was fun.

But it works well...so I'm sure the Backupper should be fine too...

Copied from a post I put on SoundOnSound previously:
 
I use OneDrive extensively for storage / backup / sync.
The sync tools occasionally 'lose the plot' and may need time (or tinkering) to get them to sync again, but mostly it's very reliable.
I don't use OneDrive sync on the primary Sonar folders (they change a lot during music sessions, and the sync tool is constantly trying to keep up).
My 'sonar' login doesn't have OneDrive running (I try to stop all non-essential services), but at the end of each session I copy the relevant folders from my Sonar project folder over to one of the folders that are sync'd by OneDrive (under my primary user account). I then log in as my primary account and leave the PC running for a while to sync to OneDrive (getting my work offsite as quickly as practically possible after the session finishes).

I take local backups (approx. monthly) of all data to USB drive (and store at work) to provide 'point in time' historic, offsite backups (and also mitigate against any issues with OneDrive.

The only risk left is Malware (in particular Ransomware) - if this hits then it is likely to sync the infected / encrypted files to OneDrive before I know it's happened. The offsite (monthly) backups help against this, but that could be a lot of work (up to 1 month) to lose....

So lastly, I have a secondary drive in the PC that is only accessible by a specific 'backup' user (and it's encrypted with BitLocker). Weekly (or more often) I login as the backup user and XCOPY all my data onto the secondary drive.

So I have (almost) real-time backups to the cloud, weekly backups to an onsite backup, and monthly backups offsite.

Paranoid?? - Probably....
https://www.soundonsound.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=49440&hilit=onedrive&start=25
 
 
Added to that, I've since found another option. With Office365 Home you get 5 users - and I'm only using 2 (me and the Mrs) - so I've created 2 further accounts as 'backup' accounts (with different email addresses and passwords). You can then use a free online tool like MultCloud (https://www.multcloud.com/home) to copy my entire OneDrive to my 'backup' OneDrive (this is all done in the cloud and doesn't use your PC or internet connection at all).
Again this occasionally has issues - mainly with open files (such as OneNote which may be running on my phone) - but is another great way to keep backups (and make use of the 'free' storage from my subscription).

Ever since my computer was stolen along with my external backup drive, I've become a paranoid triple-backer-upper.
 
Acronis has been doing fine for me, although I haven't had to restore anything yet, and that's the crucial test of any backup software. Back in the day I used tape backups, and while it was painless to restore an entire disk image it was a PIA to retrieve a single file or directory. But for automatic backups at least, Acronis is easy and unobtrusive. Just be sure it's not doing it while you're recording.
 
Acronis is not my only backup strategy, though. I use batch files and xcopy /d to make copies of my most critical data onto the removable drive as well as to another computer. It was the copies to another computer that saved my life after the burglary. Sadly, I hadn't had enough disk space there for my music projects, so they are gone forever.
 
Sample libraries are another challenge. I lost a lot of those in the robbery, but fortunately most (but not all) vendors let me re-download them. So when I get a new Kontakt lib nowadays, I copy it to DVD as soon as possible and stash all those disks in shoeboxes far away from the studio.