Computer savvy people, help needed please

grungebob

Its dawned on me since having our first child I really should start backing up our data and photo's etc as id hate to lose anything.
We already use icloud  for both our phones and they then get backed up sporadically too onto my iMac.

I know nothing really about macs/PC's and external hardrives so need some advice.
should i get something that makes use of the thunderbolt connection or is usb3 fast enough? dont think I ca nafford an SSD at the moment so whats the next best thing to get?

thanks

bloodandtears

do you have a usb port on your router??

If so you could attach a decent sized (1TB/2TB)  USB portable HD... and then access it via your devices and copy stuff to it.. 

failing obviously you could simply use the portable HD attached to your computer and back stuff up to it...

Axe_meister

USB is plenty for backup. And you don't need SSD either for backup.
However I would buy two drives.
When you have backed up to one, Take it off site and use the other. Take that off site and bring the other one back for the next backup. That way should the worse happen and your house burns down you know if have a recent backup off site.
i.e. give it a relative/freind or draw at the office

dern

Backing stuff up on to another hard drive does provide duplication but not necessarily safety. This is because these devices can fail, get stolen or have coffee spilt on them just as easily as your computer. I think I'd be looking at a cloud solution such as google drive. You get 1TB of cloud storage for $10 a month. That's about as safe as you can get with a solution that's accessible from anywhere with an internet connection.

olafgarten

Or you could get Crashplan, you get unlimited storage for 1 computer at 60 dollars a year and up to 10 computers for 150 dollars. 

crunchman

@dern true if you only have one HD for back up , but if you do what @Axe_meister suggested and have 2 hard drives, one of which you will keep off site you will be fine.  If you back up once a month then you will have 3 copies of everything except the last month (the PC and 2 HDs), one of which is stored on a separate site.  You aren't going to spill coffee on all three at the same time.

If you are happy to spend $10 per month indefinitely then that's fine, but for the cost of 18 months' cloud storage, I can buy two large hard drives that will last me for many years.

Stuff isn't automatically secure in the cloud either.  Look at what happened to people who used MegaUpload as their cloud provider.  It may not have been the most intelligent choice of cloud provider, but I remember reading of people who lost all their data when that got shut down.

The cloud has it's place - I use Dropbox for transferring data between devices but I want control of my own data and not be dependent on a third party cloud provider.