What is the best way of backing up computer files? I'm getting a bit tired of sitting down every few weeks spending a long time backing up to CDs. I know you can get external hard drives which will back up automatically, but like the CDs, it seems a bit of a half-hearted thing - if someone steals the computer or the house burns down, then the discs and hard drive would go too. I know you can get some sort of backup services online - anyone have any feeling about these? I'm likely to have to change my laptop soon, and want to try and do this in a less haphazard way when the new one comes!

We have used Mozy (online) backup, which worked fine at the time for up to 20 gigabytes of data.
For local backup, we've used external hard drives for more than 10 years.
Btw we have two external hard drives, A and B, (windows machines) and backup to both (week A and week B).

For our Apple computers, we use a hard drive attached to our Apple Extreme base station. This has proved very useful in the past couple of years - the backups are entirely automatic on this system.

What computer do you have?

Not necessarily. Surely you don't keep your backups in the same place as your computer do you? When I make my backups I leave them in my private locker at school. My logic is that it's unlikely that both my house and the school will burn down.

Well, they're in the house, not right by the computer, but in the same room. I don't have any facility to take them to a different place. It's hard work though backing up every few weeks the whole computer to disc


Just a boring old Packard Bell laptop. It's about two years old, but it's got to the point where it's started to slow down and do strange things and generally protest...I've always felt that computers get to that point where they've had enough It gets a lot of use and carried about - I expect it might struggle on for another year, but I don't know what might go wrong by then!

Do you clean it regularly? Get rid of temporary internet files, all but the most recent restore point etc.?
(sorry if that's blindingly obvious)

Well, I do as much as do as someone who really knows nothing about computers, so I install the updates when it asks me to, have a clearout of files and general tidy up occasionally. There are very few things I use it for, but running Sibelius means it needs a big memory etc. If it wasn't for that, I'd have a much cheaper one and an iPad!

Maybe it needs more RAM (memory)? My laptop got very slow because we had added software and the children were using music and video software a lot. I doubled the RAM (very easy to do - almost as easy as replacing a battery) and it's much more speedy now.

Suggest as a first-off you do a defrag. De-fragment the hard disk.

Be careful of this. I'd advise against using the Microsquash defragger - I have two friends who lost the contents of their hard drives after using said software. It was about ten years ago, so probably that bug is fixed now, but I'd recommend you to back up everything you want to keep before a defrag.


I use this software - Karen's Replicator:-

http://www.karenware.com/powertools/ptreplicator.asp

You install the software then you can tell it what to back up and and where to. Then once a week click the icon and off it goes. The backup looks after itself while I go and make dinner or walk the dog.

I use it with two external drives.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?u...amp;x=0&y=0

Much easier than sitting there changing CDs or DVDs.

Seeing as this is slightly related...

I'm a computer novice, and have a 3 year old Fujitsu Siemens laptop. It's getting slow and I know it needs 'clearing out'... I do I do this? Basically, what can I do to make it run a bit faster?

We (and OH in a professional capacity) have used it hundreds of times over many years, and never had a single problem.

So had my two friends. As I said - it was ten years ago, so probably OK now - but I'd still stand by the advice to do a back up first.

I use CCleaner and Defraggler for keeping my computer ticking over:

http://www.piriform.com/

CCleaner gets rid of all the temp files, browser cookies and other stuff that clogs up your computer. Defraggler defragments the hard drive, I've found it to be much better than the standard Windows tool and gives you a lot more control over the process if you're into that. Both are free.

My computer is about 4 years old, about 6 months ago it started playing up, was really slow and blue-screened all the time. As a last-ditch resort I tried reinstalling the operating system (Windows XP) and it's worked fine since then. I understand some dedicated gamers reinstall the OS every six months or so to keep the comp in top working order, but I'm too lazy to do that. Obviously for this you need a disk with the OS on it, which may not have come with the laptop, but even buying a new OS will cost a lot less than a new laptop.

I use an external drive for backup, it might be worth keeping essential files on a USB flash drive that you can keep with you. Could you ask a friend or relative if you could leave a backup at their house? Even if it's just a USB flash drive with the bare essentials on it (saying that you can get a fairly large flash drive now for very little money, far easier than mucking about with CDs!)