Cloud data backup solution

[mauf]

I bought my wife a new laptop to replace her desktop PC. The HD on the old desktop has most of our music and digital photos on it, as well as some miscellaneous videos and MS Office documents that should be preserved.

My wife bought an external HD to back up the data on the old desktop and had Geek Squad at BestBuy configure it. As far as I know, it works -- but I wasn't able to figure out how to get the data on the external drive to migrate to the new laptop.

Two questions:

1. For a variety of reasons, I want to switch from an external HD to a cloud-based backup solution. Does anyone have recommendations for such a service? I'd guess I have about 100 GBs of data to deal with. Cost is a concern, but less so than reliability and user-friendliness.

2. Should I bother to figure out the old external HD, or should I just upload everything from the old PC to the cloud, then download it from the cloud to the new laptop? I realize this will take a while, even with a broadband connection, but I don't have a ton of confidence that the old external HD has backed up everything it should have. Is my broadband provider (Verizon FiOS) going to throttle me after a while, or is this something I can plausibly do if I let the download/upload run in the background for a few days?

I'd be grateful to answers to my questions, as well as general advice (I may not know enough to be asking the right questions).

 

[AlNipper49]

I bought my wife a new laptop to replace her desktop PC. The HD on the old desktop has most of our music and digital photos on it, as well as some miscellaneous videos and MS Office documents that should be preserved.

My wife bought an external HD to back up the data on the old desktop and had Geek Squad at BestBuy configure it. As far as I know, it works -- but I wasn't able to figure out how to get the data on the external drive to migrate to the new laptop.

Two questions:

1. For a variety of reasons, I want to switch from an external HD to a cloud-based backup solution. Does anyone have recommendations for such a service? I'd guess I have about 100 GBs of data to deal with. Cost is a concern, but less so than reliability and user-friendliness.

2. Should I bother to figure out the old external HD, or should I just upload everything from the old PC to the cloud, then download it from the cloud to the new laptop? I realize this will take a while, even with a broadband connection, but I don't have a ton of confidence that the old external HD has backed up everything it should have. Is my broadband provider (Verizon FiOS) going to throttle me after a while, or is this something I can plausibly do if I let the download/upload run in the background for a few days?

I'd be grateful to answers to my questions, as well as general advice (I may not know enough to be asking the right questions).

I personally use CrashPlan for my home stuff. Its nice, works and also has sent cool features (I.e. iPhone client that let's you browse files).

You won't get throttled for backing up so little.

As far as moving over from the old PC there are a few ways but I'd suggest moving to cloud first last. It really should be most simple getting the USB working.

Never call Geek Squad. Literally bottom of the barrel and you WILL get screwed.

 

[geoduck no quahog]

Very happy and impressed with CrashPlan.
 
Also handles external drives and multiple computers.

 

[trekfan55]

I have been using Mozy for years now and found it very easy, not too expensive and easy to use for backup/restore.
 
For example, I bought a new laptop and the transfer of all my files, pictures, media, etc. was seamless.

 

[Time to Mo Vaughn]

The Wire Cutter recommends Crash Plan as well.
 
http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-online-backup-service/

 

[SumnerH]

I would recommend not switching from in house backups to the cloud, but adding a cloud option. Companies go out of business or suffer long outages; homes burn down and destroy both drives. A belt and suspenders solution is worthwhile if you really have anything you care about backing up.

 

[Couperin47]

I would recommend not switching from in house backups to the cloud, but adding a cloud option. Companies go out of business or suffer long outages; homes burn down and destroy both drives. A belt and suspenders solution is worthwhile if you really have anything you care about backing up.

 
Amen, what is required is an off-site backup, the cloud is just the easiest way to accomplish that these days. Keep in mind, most or all of these services do no more than backup your data files, if you have no operational computer available with all your apps already installed and configured when you need the backup, this can be close to useless. What you must have, to recover from any catastrophe is a 'bare metal' image of your boot drive to recreate a functional machine. This means either a Windows Image or even better an image made by Shadow Protect, Paragon, Macrium Reflect, EASUS ToDo or even Acronis (least favorite) as these can restore to different hardware (when your 3 year old laptop or desktop bursts into flames, odds are you're going to restore to something different). If all you need to backup is pix, vids, simple text files and spreadsheets, this is, of course, not very important. OTOH if you need to get that billing system recovered....
 
Now these services will backup the backups such software creates... but image backups are ...large (generally around 75% of the size of the used space on your boot drive), and it can be quite a while til such backups get up into the cloud...

 

[canderson]

Instead of a cloud system for backups I throw all my necessary files onto two external HDDs and put in our safety deposit box. This is in addition to our home Time Machine backup(s). I rotate the drives every 4 or 5 months when we go to the box.

 

[AlNipper49]

Just use CrashPlan and have it backup to both cloud and a USB drive (both trivial to setup). You can also CrashPlan to a friends house or something if you want.

Then just to be safe manually copy the files to the USB drive every month or whenever you remember it.

We have the 92 year old mom of one of our CEOs doing this with literally no problem. (Of course when I'm almost dead I probably won't worry about backing shit up

 

[Couperin47]

Just use CrashPlan and have it backup to both cloud and a USB drive (both trivial to setup). You can also CrashPlan to a friends house or something if you want.

Then just to be safe manually copy the files to the USB drive every month or whenever you remember it.

We have the 92 year old mom of one of our CEOs doing this with literally no problem. (Of course when I'm almost dead I probably won't worry about backing shit up
 

 
When you're 92, I guarantee your shit will be backing up...

 

[LoweTek]

So what is the consensus on the best tool for creating a boot image which will restore to a subsequent PC?

 

[Couperin47]

So what is the consensus on the best tool for creating a boot image which will restore to a subsequent PC?

 
All of them are good, I dislike Acronis because it actually modifies the OS kernel, which I consider a big no-no. Shadow Protect is the most techie with the least user friendly interface, but it can also do a lot more. Paragon is available in like 5 versions and is also pretty techie. Macrium Reflect has a dead simple interface and is quite similar to EASUS ToDo... except ToDo locks itself to the specific machine you install upon, while Reflect can be used on more than one 'puter. The built-in system image in Win 7 & 8 can only restore to the same hardware, of course, and is much much slower.
 
another issue is that restore onto new hardware now introduces the issues of possibly/probably moving an image from on old IDE/AHCI Bios motherboard to a GPT UEFI motherboard, most of these now fully support this in their latest versions, so you need to make sure you're getting the latest.
 
Also note most of these products do NOT include the 'restore to different hardware' in their basic editions, you have to examine the feature set, for example Reflect requires the "Pro" version, ToDo requires the "Workstation" edition.

 

[Couperin47]

Additional info:
 
Every program I mentioned was one I have owned and used. There are a whole bunch of free and other programs that do imaging, but don't include the ability to recovery to different hardware.
I've never been much interested in those, that feature is not only necessary for the "burst into flames" disaster, but allows you to migrate your entire environment to new hardware, and some of us
have thousands of hours invested into what's installed and how it's configured.
 
Anyway: here's a link to an excellent recent discussion of everything that's on the market and will give you a feel for all the options (from that article I see Shadow Protect has really improved their interface...otoh it's still the most expensive program by quite a bit and home users really don't need this powerful a tool), as it happens I've already mentioned just about all the programs with the 'restore to different hardware" feature:
 
https://www.raymond.cc/blog/10-commercial-disk-imaging-software-features-and-backuprestore-speed-comparison/

 

[AlNipper49]

We have certain support packages that require ShadowProtext to be purchased and used on each workstation. We have lost clients over it - that's how strongly I feel about it.