It took me some time before I got to a stable and convenient backup system. I think I got there now. It’s hassle-free, complete and entirely automatic. This is the setup I use now for backup and synchronisation between all my portable gizmos.
1st level
Dropbox to synchronise my essential documents between
- home PC,
- 2 VAIO laptops,
- IPhone
- IPad.
I have less than 2 GB of essential documents so the free version of Dropbox is fine. I find the synchronisation very fast and more reliable than using the Windows offline files feature or Live Sync. This acts as a first form of backup since all files are saved on the Dropbox server by default. Dropbox files are always available offline under Windows. On the IPad/IPhone versions of Dropbox you must manually tick the files to make them available offline. By essential files I mean
- technical Books
- travel documents, flight tickets, travel insurance policy, conference tickets….
- Visual Studio projects
- OneNote files
2nd level
Daily incremental backup on an external hard drive of all documents on my D drive using the backup tool that comes with Windows 7. The drive is a 1TB Western Digital. This protects absolutely everything in case my main drives fail, which is a very likely occurrence.
3rd level
Off-site backup with Mozy, just in case my flat burns or I get burgled. This is an industrial-scale backup: documents, video, raw sound files, VM files, everything gets saved. I currently have 130GB saved on Mozy. At the time I bought the subscription, the backup size was unlimited. No matter how big a video is it will save it, it’s just a matter of time. It took me about one week to finish the initial backup. After that it does very quick daily automatic incremental backups.
I’m happy about this system so far, it’s entirely automatic and very exhaustive.
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