I am very particular about the backups of files that I have. The main reason for this is my fear of losing digital photos, but in general, this is how I approach it. (and to be clear, I am forever refining)
Goal for my backups: at least 3 copies of all files I deem critical, one of those copies must be offsite. (meaning out of my house)
The original is my original files/folders on my computer.
First Backup (local)
My first line of defense took a while to get to. I was forever copying files to USB drives and trying to keep those in sync. It was a little bit of a pain, but it worked. Finally I wanted to have a nice local network place to backup my original files. I settled on Drobo. A DroboFS to be specific. The great thing about the Drobo units is you can add, or hot-swap hard drives as you use them. Drobo makes RAID simple for duplicating your data across multiple drives and you don’t have to sweat over it. Very good systems. Not the cheapest.. but well worth it.
I setup drobo to monitor and sync certain folders (like my photos folder). I think I eventually landed on manually copying new files to Drobo just to feel like it’s a little more precise. Not sure why but sometimes it felt like I wanted that extra assurance.
Second Back (offsite)
For years I tried the likes of Carbonite, Back Blaze, etc. While they worked, they were not quite what I was looking for. I wanted not only backup, but some cloud storage. This is where Bitcasa comes in.
Think of Bitcasa as an online USB drive that is infinite in size. No more worrying about how much you put there. The other cool thing it does is allows for mirroring of folders on your computer to the cloud. This is the backup piece of Bitcasa. I mirror my music, pictures, documents, movies, etc. They are accessible on any other machine I use with Bitcasa and no worrying about an offsite backup now .
Evernote is a daily use product for me. I’ve been using it since it’s very old days.. prior to it’s current incarnation, but I LOVE it’s new (new in 2007?) direction. The idea is that you place anything and everything into Evernote and don’t worry about remembering it. Evernote will make it available on all of your devices.
Recommendation: Must have notes/memory app
SITE: http://www.drobo.com
I use the Drobo FS for in-home redundant backup. The great thing about the Drobo units is you can add, or hot-swap hard drives as you use them. Drobo makes RAID simple for duplicating your data across multiple drives and you don’t have to sweat over it. Very good systems. Not the cheapest.. but well worth it.