2 years without a backup

[yesthattom]

Of all the computers I use or own (seven, if you are curious) only one runs MS-Windows(1) and I haven’t backed it up in 2 years. I know this because every time I boot it up the backup software I use warns me how many days its been. I haven’t backed it up since the only application I use backs up its own files to a network device that I trust.(3) However, today the counter said it has been more than 2 years, and I realized that, hey, I would hate to lose all the photos and videos that I’ve collected in the last 2 years.

So now all my machines are backed up again. It feels good.


(1) I use it for paying bills since Quicken for Windows is so much better than Quicken for Mac.

(2) All my my computers have some way to do backups, usually to an external disk drive that only gets powered up when I do backups. Some of them back up to other computers or file servers and one has a tape library that has, I think, a terabyte of capacity (which used to be a lot of storage).

(3) For the Unix geeks out there, I use Cygwin to run a /bin/bash script that runs rsync to copy all the Quicken data files to a machine that is far away from this one.

Comments

[ljtourist.livejournal.com]

I see the backup bug is going around. jwz's post really got me off my butt, so I dragged my off-site USB drive home to do another backup since it had been way too long. While doing that, I discovered that my in-machine mirror disk was dying, so today was a trip to Fry's for some replacements. I have one complete copy ready to go back off-site, and another one being made now.

It does feel good.

[snowboardjoe.livejournal.com]

(1) I use it for paying bills since Quicken for Windows is so much better than Quicken for Mac.

Ain't that the truth? That's still one reason I keep my windows box running in my closet and run RDC to get to it (that and my weather station runs there too). How Intuit does such crappy work for Mac amazes me. Guess they figure they have a hold on us Quicken users. :(

I'm still liking my Mozy backups--don't have to think about it. :)

[la-directora.livejournal.com]

Interesting. When I de-PC'd my house, I got Quicken for Mac. And I've had absolutely no complaints whatsoever. What did you find was lacking? (I'm wondering if there are features I simply don't use, and that's where the deficits are.)

[snowboardjoe.livejournal.com]

Mainly related to features and the interface. A friend of mine installed it a year or two ago and it completely screwed up the calculations of some investments. There are a lot of articles out there on the Internet that complain the feature set of Quicken for Windows compared to Quicken for Mac. New features in the Windows version take years to show up in the Mac version (particularly with online banking).

Development for the Mac is just way behind, appears to be a very low priority and it's been like this for years.

[penk.livejournal.com]

I recently got a DVD burner to start archiving pictures off. I do the rsync method to sync boomer down to an external USB drive here at home, but I wanted another layer of backup.

Hard to argue with 4.7gig on a DVD that gets written in about 12 minutes :)

[edhorch.livejournal.com]

We've been using Quicken for about ten years. We moved to the Mac version a few years ago and were apalled that it was missing features that the Windows version had had for five years. I look at every year's version at the local Apple store and it doesn't seem to be improving.

For us, the biggest galring absence was the cool new way that the Windows version tracks stock options. With the Mac version you have to use the old kludgey way you'll read about in the FAQs or whatever. So instead, we kept Windows on one PC, and ran a version of Quicken which only tracks stock options.

That is, until we had no more options. :(