Poll: How Often do you do a full backup of your hard drive?

[Aaron73153]

In the wake of the controversial new bill in congress, questions have come up regarding if the record caompanies can leally hack into your computor. This poses a daner to losing your entire hard drive and only if you have backed it up or :"ghosted" it recently are you able to guard against immence damage. How many people are ready if the record companies start hacking personal PCs?

[gorphon]

continuously... since IVe only got a 30gig drive and have a few hundred gigs of media I have no choice... Honestly Im not to worried about record companies hacking my computer, the wording of that bill talks about 'hacking' the netoworks I believe, not individuals. In fact, I dont think even the United States Congress would let them get away with the hacking ofindividuals... at least I hope not. And if they did, could you imagine the united front they would be then presented with? Can you say daily ddos? They would be fools to target individuals when at any given time there are several million in the U.S. alone sharing files. So until I get the cash for one of those new 200gig drives Im just gonna keep burning cds.

[TC75580]

I just back up the larger files that I download, not music, because I like having a library of all my songs. I've got an 80GB drive (actually, 2 of 'em, but one is on a 500MHZ pc :mellow ), but I do run out of space rather quickly. And yeah I'd like the new 200 drive too :wings

[wesr]

this may sound kinda dumb, but how do u backup ur entire hard drive. do u put it on cd's or what. what is the process.

[crackerjacker]

i back up like once every couple of days.

[notbob]

doesn't do a lot of good when your backup drive is the one that breaks--mine was a 120 and poof! it up and died without warning, after chatting with lots of others, i discovered its very common w/ maxtor 120's (like mine) western digitals (all) and ibm (all)

maxtors warranty was second to none--i had a free 160 (no extra charge) in 2 weeks to replace my 120

[jabba|xtra]

I only backup my personal files. I also backup my music because redownloading 560 songs would take forever on a 56k. Also i backup the installers for large programs.

[wesr]

what do u do to backup ur hardrive. do u buy another hard drive and put it on there or what

[Aaron73153]

WESR,

To answe your question, you can use window's built-in utility by going to start ->programs -> accessories -> system tools -> backup. There are also many different private programs that do a better job than the integrated program. Yes you can backup your entire hard drive or just selected files onto CDs or Zip disks.

[gorphon]

like norton ghost for backing up an entire drive... Im told it works pretty well wesr. But- and I havent used it so someone correct me if Im wrong- you need an amount of freespace equal to the amount you want to ghost. Anyways, Im sonething of an archiving fiend and have been burning cd's damn near daily for 6 years, ever since my one and only run in with a virus. w32.cib.worm or something. Ive been very careful since then. buddy of mine got the same worm, a week later his hard drive started smoking. literally. you out there ghost23?

[cheapprick]

Backing up is essential, exactly for the reason jabba|xtra said. Featuring having gig upon gig of data and having your hard drive going to hardware heaven. Then trying to start over. Crying time.

[evilmegaman]

I don't have to. i have warranty and get a new harddrive anyways and by then I can have a bunch of stuff in mind to d/load.

[HolyLiaison]

Personally, I don't back up jack. Even stuff I think is important on my hard drive doesn't get backed up. Maybe once in awhile I'll burn a music CD or two, or a SVCD of some sort, but everything stays on my hard drives. And almost everything I think IS important has to deal with my websites/swapciety. And those files are backed up online in multiple locations. Everything else is downloaded. Which means, if I have a hard drive go out, I'll beable to download it again no problem. And music wise, I have over 23,230 mp3's on my HD's currently. And I could give a flying **** if they were there or not. Cause there's allways going to be somewhere to get them again. Which is why I'm here at ZeroPaid. Plenty of software with backups of all the stuff I currently use online and ready for me to download. No worrying.

Now for the 56k users, I understand why you would want to back up your stuff. I feel your pain. :)

[MoonMan]

I backup at least every 2 weeks. It has become essential for me to, I am very paranoid of viruses, harddrive failures, etc etc. So I backup everything on CDs. Currently I have 3 spindles (50 CDS each) of backup information (including music and movies).

I know I am a tad too paranoid but I think some of you guys (or girls) think harddrives can never fail, errors can never occur, or the famous Windows system restore will save you.

I enjoy backing up, it gives me peace of mind.

[macazar88]

i back up all my pireted software on cds so when i reinstal windos all i do is load then off the cd.

[TheBrain2K]

we've got 2 computers and one of them is running 24/7.
i've got a very good backup-program (Second Copy 2000) and over the 100MBps-Network and with a total of about 260GB it's no problem to back-up to the other computer.

so every important files from the 2 harddiscs first go in a backup-folder on the second hd, then i synchronize with the other computer.
so if one hd or even one whole computer crushes all data is there again.

you may think i'm mad, but since the hd gave up work without reason and no data could be restored (that was when we had only one computer) and the whole family was very angry, i think it's better to 'waste' some space for backups than getting all old data from internet again and write everthink important again.

but: i don't have any (new) backup on CD.

[Caitlyn Marble]

hmm, I probably should backup sometime soon, since I 've got a lot of hard to get things and I'd probably loose my sanity if any of them were to be harmed....

I got a bunch of CD-RW's for the purpose, but they don't like my burner. :hole

[method]

Ima jump on the "OY... BACK UP OR YOU'LL REGRET IT" bandwagon... After 3 years with a 20GB HD and no problems.. it happened.. everything died - Source code I'd spent ages on, the lot.

Also... for those who haven't had a major data-loss catastrophe make sure you keep your drivers and shit safe in case you ever do lose your OS from a HD failure (or whatever!!), 'coz hunting the net with hardware serial numbers trying to find drivers isn't much fun either ;)

plan for it.. i never thought it'd happen and from the results of the poll.. most people don't think it'll happen to them either i guess!?!

[LaPpeN]

neVer :black

[Havoc]

editttttttt

[Power Penguin]

I back up personal documents to a second HD, but the main threat isn't HD failure, I sometimes mistakenly delete things, or delete things when i'm tidying and regret it.

As for the entire HD - don't care really. I have XP on CD, and if I lose a HD I'll just reinstall XP on the new one, and start the collection again. I never watch a movie twice, and I only listen to 1/10 th of my MP3 collection.Software can be got back too. The important thing for me is that I don't lose "My Documents".

[wonderboy2005]

ehh... i dont back up in the true sense... but i kinda do. i coppied all of C:/ on to my 2nd hard drive, exept c:/windows, cuz i got the backup disks. most of my games are backed up onto cds, and same with most of my music. the big thing is tho... my movies. 10 gigs of movies, not one is backed up... i should probly do that....