nero back it up 10 how often should i back up?

[antec74]

hi, I have just started using back it up 10 by Nero I have a spare 2tb drive the settings were set to every 2 hours and I didn't realise this at first so it was using a lot of space!
how often should I back up, every week every month?

thanks

[shaithis]

Does it do incrementals?

If so (and I'd like to think it does if it set itself to every 2 hours!) then at most 1 inc per day with a full every 1, 2 or 4 weeks.

And that is pretty hardcore for a home backup. Even doing a full one week and then 3 weekly incrementals would probably be fine for most people. I personally do a weekly full and then daily incrementals but I look after backups for a living, so err on the side of caution

[Jonj1611]

I use incremental backup and it depends what I am backing up,not sure about Nero but I have another backup program with around 6 different backup jobs, one for photo's, another for documents etc.

Documents will back up once a week, photo's one a fortnight, programs I have downloaded(legal lol) once a month etc.

[kalniel]

hi, I have just started using back it up 10 by Nero I have a spare 2tb drive the settings were set to every 2 hours and I didn't realise this at first so it was using a lot of space!
how often should I back up, every week every month?

thanks

What's your rate of change and how much change can you cope with losing?

[antec74]

thanks for the reply's, kalniel I am a photographer but I don't need an everyday back up prob every week or 4 weeks would do, I am new to backing up, I am an idiot really but now I do it all the time it may save my ass! lol
thanks any more tips would be great

[antec74]

if I set it for maybe 60 hour intervals?

[peterb]

It depends how often you are adding new data, and how much hassle it is to recreate data that hasn't been backed up.

For example, if you are creating original content on a daily basis, you might want to do incremental backups hourly or at least once per day. As a photographer, you probably have your images on an SD card or similar, which you transfer to your computer, so you have a backup in the sense you have two independent locations of the data. In that case, you might want to back up to a separate disk before you re-use the SD card.

You can't really lay down a hard and fast rule - it depends on your circumstances.

[Saracen]

My view us exactly as Peterb said, and kalneil and shaithis alluded to, which is .... it depends.

It depends on what you do with the PC, what's stored on it, and how mych time/money it would cost if you list a day, or several days.

I use what I call a structured approach, which is a combination of backup, and sync'ing specified data directories with an external storage device (another PC, in my case, but it could be a NAS, or just an external hard drive.

So, some sync software looks for changes (additions, or files changing) in specified directories, and syncs those with the external storage automatically. In my case, that is directories containing work (photos, articles written, etc, accounts data, email directories, etc). The contents of those could cost a lot of time/money to recreate, if I could recreate them at all.

But most things could be backed up daily or even weekly without much issue.

Also, again depending on what you do with the machine, backed up to what?

Another drive in your PC? It will orotect you from a drive failing, but what about fire/flood , or if your PC is nicked?

An external hard drive? What if you have a fire? Is that HD stored off-site?

Backup strategy is, IMHO, always about working out what risks you run, what it'll cost you if this happens, or that happens, and how much money, time and effort it is worth spending protecting against it. And the alternative options you can go to are many, and varied.

[GeorgeStorm]

As the others have said, there is no 'one rule fits all' here.
I'm just starting to look at backing stuff up, a mixture of media, documents and photos.

You can backup as often or as little as you like, obviously the more often you do it the better with regards to minimising losses, but at the cost of processing power/time/space.
Once Christmas is over I'll have a backup of all of my stuff in another location which will only be updated once every couple of months, which obviously will result in potentially quite big losses, but compared to now (where I have no backups at all) it's an improvement.
The reason I don't do it more often being cost.

[Saracen]

Also, any backup methodology has to be practical, and pragmatic.

There's no point to having a fantastic backup regime if it's such a pain to do that you don't do it regularly.

A scheme that's simple and less regular, but used, is better than a complex scheme that falls into disuse because it's such a pain keeping on doing it.

It's a balance.