Backing up

[BigV]

How does 1 -- DVD burning meet the goal of backing up a home computer?

How does 2 -- Online backups do a backup of a home computer?

How does 3 -- RAID backup a home computer?

How does 4 -- SSD backup a home computer?

Before I start hassling you about "you're wrong!!!" I just want to know how you get to the desired end result of a backed up home computer using the examples you posted. Fair warning, I'm going to ask the follow up question about restoring from the same backups. I believe it's only fair, since a backup strategy that doesn't include how to restore is only a fig leaf.

Originally Posted by Rexmons

BigV, i'm not trying to "shit on you" or "flex on you" but trust me i know what im talking about, i do this for a living.

You'll forgive me if I reserve my trust for the time being. I will however generously offer you my attention and an open mind for you to demonstrate your point. You have the chance to convince me and educate Cloud and the others here. Please, continue.

[Rexmons]

BigV,

There are primarily two kinds of "backups" you can do. One involves cloning, or making an exact copy of your HDD (aka ghost image), and the other involves just backing up your personal data (favorites, my documents, desktop items, PST folders, and any other data files you may have hidden somewhere on your HDD). Almost all of computer manufactures provide you with what’s called a Recovery CD/DVD, which is really just a ghost image of your HDD. The recovery disk will reinstall your operating system, all your device drivers, and any crappy software that usually comes with your computer. Because they give you this recovery disk, the best type of backup to do is usually the one, where you transfer over just your files and not make an exact copy of your HDD. The reason for this is that you don’t want to transfer over all the junk too. Over time, your HDD fills up with several unnecessary temporary files, cookies, spyware, viruses, and other useless stuff. Most people notice that over time there HDD’s will begin running slower than when they first purchased there computers, this is usually why. Now to answer your questions about how you can backup using the methods I listed before, here’s how:

Originally Posted by BigV

How does 1 -- DVD burning meet the goal of backing up a home computer?

DVD meets the goal in two ways:
1. you can either clone the HDD and make your own recovery disk using a program like Norton Ghost, or
2. You can just burn your personal data onto the DVD and make a data disk.

Originally Posted by BigV

How does 2 -- Online backups do a backup of a home computer?

Online backups are primarily used to save normal data files (music, video, pictures, and office files) but you can also backup a .GHO file, which is an image of your entire HDD.

Originally Posted by BigV

How does 3 -- RAID backup a home computer?

Raid, or Raid 5 to be more specific requires multiple HDD’s to hold a little piece of data about another drive, then if that drive goes down, they can fill in the blanks. Here’s a diagram:

Originally Posted by BigV

How does 4 -- SSD backup a home computer?

SSD or Solid State Disk is no different from a regular HDD except that it has NO moving parts. This means the failure rate is VERY low. In essence a SSD is like a giant USB flash/thumb drive. Takes a lickin and keeps on tickin.

If you have any other questions, please feel free to ask.

[dar512]

One thing I haven't seen mentioned is that you don't have to back up your whole hard drive - just your data files (anything you created). For most folks this will be

Word files
pictures
movies
mp3s
email

I just backed up yesterday. In my case I ended up with two DVDs of mp3s and one DVD of source code, text documents etc. That's ~ 12 gig versus backing up both hard drives which would have been ~ 60 gig.

Everything else is stuff that I can reinstall from the original CDs or by downloading from the net.