computer question for the board- help my wife, please (1 Viewer)

[bonesnjnts]

my wife, an attorney, does all her work on her laptop, as her main office is in Philly ( we are in michigan)

her laptop died- guy coming out today to look at it but last 48 hours have been stressful.

she doesn't want my advice--about having back up laptop with all info on it, or files in the cloud, or well..anything

someone who knows computers like I know bones and joints want to chime in?

thanks--appreciate all coming advice

 

[Joe E.]

best of luck on this mate

similar position here. my wife loves her dinosaur machine because of the large numeric keypad (accountant). I had to upgrade the hard drive to a SSD (solid state drive, less moving parts to break) when her hard drive crashed before and she lost every picture she had. I would list your suggestions as #1 and #2, and maybe offer #3 my wife's selection and back up all data to a my passport/portable hard drive

cheap option if she won't utilize the cloud or alternative data storage to keep from loosing access or even worse loosing data files.

 

[moose]

I don't get this. She works at a big enough firm that you live in Michigan but she commutes to Philly and yet her firm doesn't have an IT department that daily backs up all files onto a secure server.

Is this post from 1995?

 

[bonesnjnts]

I don't get this. She works at a big enough firm that you live in Michigan but she commutes to Philly and yet her firm doesn't have an IT department that daily backs up all files onto a secure server.

Is this post from 1995?

small firm but national clients - has office in michigan also but just for her.
thanks for the advice.

 

[Slick51o]

my wife, an attorney, does all her work on her laptop, as her main office is in Philly ( we are in michigan)

her laptop died- guy coming out today to look at it but last 48 hours have been stressful.

she doesn't want my advice--about having back up laptop with all info on it, or files in the cloud, or well..anything

someone who knows computers like I know bones and joints want to chime in?

thanks--appreciate all coming advice

as an attorney I can tell you that I back up our server plus back up everything again on the cloud and bring a back up laptop to trial....

I'm also paperless so would be f'ed if I just had one computer with all my client's files on them

small firm 4 attorneys

 

[crussader]

Important files have to be backed up. There's no way around it. Unfortunately, the only way this is often accepted is through an experience like this. Let the computer guy stress the importance of backups when he comes out. He can probably offer the most appropriate solution for your specific situation.

 

[Nex]

If this is her work tool, you absolutely do want a backup machine so she has minimal downtime between the primary machine dying and the new machine being set uo.
This however does nothing for your files. If the hard drive of the laptop dies, the files are lost.

For the files, use a private cloud (never upload confidential files to a 3rd party cloud provider!! you want to keep those files on your own hardware). Get a little NAS, configure it with RAID 1 or 5, and have the primary laptop sync all her important files to it continuously. Synology for example will supply a file syncing software pretty much like Dropbox along with their NAS devices. If you move to a new device, just install that sync client and have it download the files from your NAS again.

This is the absolute minimum to data backups for important files.

 

[crussader]

...she doesn't want my advice--about having back up laptop with all info on it, or files in the cloud, or well..anything..

Now is not the time for advice. Get her back up and running first. Then she may be ready for a conversation about how to prevent it in the future.

 

[Nex]

Some people will only learn certain things through experiencing massive pain.
Data backup is a stellar example.

 

[CraigT78]

Google Drive or Dropbox after you have her back up and running. Files are stored locally and in the cloud. The only thing you can lose is work that is done on a local file before it has a chance to sync. Example: You write a paper on a plane and drop the PC in the airport toilet before connecting to WiFi.

 

[ttttubby]

If you are concerned about the hackability of publicly available backup options (dropbox/google drive/one drive etc) there are options where you can build your own server, with a partity drive in case of drive failure, and roll your own cloud service using a client based on the same underlying technology used in bit torrent. I've got an unraid server at home that is able to do this, though I've been happy to use dropbox and onedrive for backing up essential data of my own.

 

[BGinGA]

I transport files across several laptops both at home and at work.... and the only files that ever get saved to a local hard drive are backups of the solid-state flash drives that I use to store everything.

 

[WedgeRock]

Get a little NAS, configure it with RAID 1 or 5, and have the primary laptop sync all her important files to it continuously. Synology for example will supply a file syncing software pretty much like Dropbox along with their NAS devices. If you move to a new device, just install that sync client and have it download the files from your NAS again.

This sounds simple and effective.

Approximate cost of this set up?

 

[Nex]

This sounds simple and effective.

Approximate cost of this set up?

Entirely depends on the amount of data you need saved.

There are different models available which vary in amount of bays (# of drives you can insert) and internal processing power (more power recommended if you choose to have data on your NAS encrypted or want to stream videos)

First off, I would not recommend loading a NAS with drives that are bigger than 4 TB. Even 4 is already borderline too much. I have drives of that size in my RAID 6 setup (8-bay NAS with currently 5 of them filled) and it's taking awfully long to restore the integrity when one drive fails. Now RAID 6 uses two drives exclusively for parity information, so when one drive fails and the system begins restoring the info of the lost drive on a new one, there's still one more drive that may fail (before the restore is complete) before actual data loss occurs. RAID 5 however only uses one drive for parity, and RAID 1 merely means the contents of one drive are cloned to another, so there are less safety nets. You want to keep restore time down in those setups.

So let's say you take 2 TB drives.

If you have a max of 2 TB of data to save, grab a 2-bay NAS model and load it with 2 drives in RAID 1 configuration. Actual data capacity: 2 TB (contents of drive one mirrored on drive two)

For up to 6 TB of data, take a 4-bay model, load it with 4 drives in RAID 5 configuration (one drive used for parity information)

There's also 8-bay models like I have, and even a massive 20-bay one if you need yet more. The bigger the NAS, the more expensive. Synology are readily available on Amazon, and on Synology's homepage you can get an easy overview and detailed technical comparison of models.

Add the price of the hard drives to the price of whichever model you choose and that's it.

When choosing a model also keep in mind data growth over time, and plan with enough headroom in mind to avoid having to replace your NAS because you are running out of space. You can configure the file sync software to store older versions by the way so you're not screwed if you accidentally overwrite an important file you have no other backups of. But for that you of course need more space.

Late edit: One further addition - include one additional hard drive in your initial purchase plan to have one ready right next to your NAS for when your very first drive fails. When it does, immediately swap it to begin the restore process and order another stand-by replacement.

 

[BGinGA]

Flash drives cost less than $50.

 

[Nex]

Flash drives can fail just like hard drives
Plus nothing about the backup is automated out-of-the-box

 

[BGinGA]

Exactly, and thank you for making my point. Spending hundreds of dollars for an overkill RAID backup system for somebody's laptop is stupid, when a couple of flash drives and daily use of the copy function is more than sufficient.

 

[Nex]

The shiniest backup solution won't help you anything if you forget to do regular backups, or only have way too old versions in a case where a restore is required.

And unfortunately, Flash drives - even multiple ones - or any sort of external drive you have to occasionally plug in to save your stuff away are something you need to remember. Something you need to actively do. People tend to forget, or even when reminded, to skip this, because it requires them to stop what they're currently doing; it is a chore.

Whereas an automated file sync with built-in versioning (like the Dropbox-like client and server software Synology and some other NAS vendors bundle with their products) doesn't require you to do anything as it will just run continuously in background, so your backups are always current and complete, and it doesn't even stop you from working while it's running.

If your professional existence depends on those files, you'd be a fool to make such a tradeoff only to have your backup strategy fail on you when you need it most.

 

[GoStumpy]

https://www.carbonite.com/

You're welcome

 

[Nex]

https://www.carbonite.com/

You're welcome

Backups only to third-party cloud... or removable external media.
Which is just minimally better as manually copying to flash drives or external hard drives. (Still requires you to plug the drive in regularly.)

Third-party cloud storage also is always a potential security risk, especially when working with confidential data. (You might come with the argument that a big company would be much more able to protect their systems than you as a lone guy can, but a big company with many customers and a lot of data is a much more attractive hacking target. If a bad guy wants specifically your files, you're not safe in any case - 3rd party or private cloud.)

If data confidentiality is not an issue, then sure, go ahead.