Do they ever listen?

Rik · Nov 30, 2011, 18:14:04

A couple of weeks back, Sue's hairdresser brought her notebook round for me to 'fix'. It wouldn't boot, so she'd re-installed Windows and couldn't understand where all her photos had gone. I explained, tactfully, and suggested she buy a Clickfree backup drive (I'd not recommend them normally, but they are good for technophobes). She lost the pictures of all her grandchildren.

Today, she turned up with her daughter's notebook, which wasn't booting. The BIOS can't see it, Linux, as a result can't see it, so I could do nothing to recover the data. Needless to say, she hadn't done anything about the backup regime I'd suggested. Just possibly, a local repair shop may be able to coax the drive into life, but to judge by the noises it was making, I'm not hopeful.

So, that's the daughter's pictures gone too...

When will people learn backups are (a) vital and (b) not difficult?

Niall · Nov 30, 2011, 18:17:48

I've got my main drive, my backup drive, my external drive, my mums netbook and a spare hard drive for the pc I keep forgetting to build. Lots and lots of backup

Rik · Nov 30, 2011, 18:22:42

Five copies a day here, plus one extra on Sundays.

Steve · Nov 30, 2011, 18:29:02

One incremental per hour when the machines are in use. Apart from the music server which is once daily.

Rik · Nov 30, 2011, 18:32:51

How do we convert the rest of the world, Steve?

Lance · Nov 30, 2011, 19:21:24

We don't and we just laugh at them when they fail.

pctech · Nov 30, 2011, 20:11:11

I don't do as I preach either.

Need to backup to DVD.

Simon · Nov 30, 2011, 21:42:50

I have a separate backup hard drive, but I have to admit, I'm very bad at actually backing up.

Moonshine · Nov 30, 2011, 23:12:44

There is surely no-one more of a technophobe than I, yet I back up my photos onto flashsticks and I also have an external hard drive which I back up about once a week (though regarding the latter, I have no idea how to retrieve the stuff I've backed up on it, should my computer fail!).

Rik · Dec 01, 2011, 08:48:25

Simple drag'n'drop.

FritzBox · Dec 01, 2011, 21:20:29

Never back up, I just don't keep anything on em I'm not prepared to lose

Moonshine · Dec 01, 2011, 22:53:56

Quote from: Rik on Dec 01, 2011, 08:48:25
Simple drag'n'drop.

Well, you learn something new every day!

Rik · Dec 02, 2011, 09:21:04

And, for my next trick...