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Michaelcfffg
03-12-2014, 01:29 PM
A good friend whom I trust sent me the following note to warn me about not relying on this well known and very well advertised computer back-up service, and I thought I'd pass it along wherever I could. Forewarned is forearmed! So as to not run afoul of any allegations of libel, etc., I've cleaned his note up to remove the name of the service. They also should not be confused with the product that was used to put people into suspended animation a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. I'm sure that it's probably not the same company after all this time.

"If you are running *********, the back-up service. They have just burned our "house" down [not literally of course].

This company advertises itself as a computer file back-up service. Their logic is good. I mean, if your computer crashes, where will you go to back-up your files? With just a few clicks, you should be able to retrieve your data.

That's not exactly true. As we have been deceived. We entrusted them with all of our pictures and videos, for the last 16 years. They don't have them. They took our money, they claim it's all safe. But, somewhere in the fine print, if you crash your computer, and don't re-install ALL of your files, which eats up all of your download allotment, and then some, they will PURGE your data.
What the hell, have we paid you for? Refund my money? No can't do that because of little loopholes in all of the legal gibberish, that everyone blindly checks off on.
What did we lose? EVERYTHING! Pictures and videos from Rhonda's dad's, and my mom's 80th birthdays. Pictures of, at least 16 Christmas's. Along with pictures of all of the grandkids, house pictures, everything! GONE!! Thank you Carbonite. My wife is beyond sad.
So, take your money, and buy an external hard drive (or a second internal one), writeable dvd's, memory cards or some other form of data storage, and put these charlatins out of business.
Please forward this to your whole email list. If you do business with someone that advertises for this company, advise them they are advertising for crooks. Maybe I should ask the NSA for my files back. I'm sure they are there."

WILCO
03-12-2014, 01:59 PM
I've cleaned his note up to remove the name of the service.

You need to re-read your post................

legend 550
03-12-2014, 03:49 PM
I have 2 passport external drives that I back every thing up on. My brother has one and one stays in my safe deposit box at the bank. I also have his. I would [B]NEVER [B] trust an online service with my important documents and pictures. If it's stored in the cloud I guarantee somebody else can see it or steal it.

MtGun44
03-12-2014, 04:03 PM
I'm sorry they lost their files, but what where they thinking?
Also, anyone that thinks that they have ANY privacy with any
kind of online storage is fooling themselves.

Like most things in life - if you depend on someone else for something
REALLY important, you will eventually get screwed. I would never
even consider such a service for anything I really care about.
When a Sony brand 32 Gigabyte microSD chip is $23 at Walmart, I
cannot imagine why you would trust important files to an outside
service. 3 or 4 of those things will hold an amazing amount of
pictures, and use no power and have no moving parts. If really
important - duplicate files on a pair of them and keep one at home
and one somewhere else, in case the house burns down.

There is a free software tool from Microsoft called SynchToy that will
keep your files backed up and synchronized between multiple
locations pretty painlessly.

Bill

pretzelxx
03-12-2014, 05:39 PM
I found bluray discs are amazing for large file storage. Fairly cheap in comparison for that much data. 40Gb disc is about a dollar, the drive to write is about 60(last I checked) and they have a scratch resistant coating. Amazon sells it all pretty cheaply.

popper
03-12-2014, 07:05 PM
uh, those flash drives fail frequently. be sure to get a name brand.

Goatwhiskers
03-12-2014, 08:16 PM
My computer guy told me to use a disc to back up any important files. Flash drives and ever back-up hard drives can get screwed up. GW

canyon-ghost
03-12-2014, 08:36 PM
Writeable DVDs are a good place to put pictures, you can drop them right back into the computer after a crash.

MtGun44
03-12-2014, 10:58 PM
Been using flash drives since 2005, have many, none ever failed or lost any
data. Hard drives. . . . . . that is an entirely different story.

Bill

uscra112
03-13-2014, 01:11 AM
Been using flash drives since 2005, have many, none ever failed or lost any
data. Hard drives. . . . . . that is an entirely different story.

Bill

Same here.

My SIL had Carbonite when he lost the hard drive on his home desktop. I installed a new HD for him, but despite having a pretty fast fiberoptic cable connection to his ISP, it took about 36 hours to download his backup. After fussing about for a few hours, we finally had to conclude that it was Carbonite that was throttling the bandwidth.

I simply run three identical machines, and update the offline machines via flash drive, which is slow but sure. (Data only)

MaryB
03-13-2014, 02:19 AM
Flash drive storage is NOT permanent, they can and do lose what is written to them over a long enough time frame. So unless you rewrite it every 4-5 years I would not go that route. External USB drives works as the mentioned burn to a DVD(make sure to verify the write!). I run a raid array so if I lose a drive I can run on the mirror until I replace it.

CGT80
03-13-2014, 03:40 AM
This thread reminded me that I needed to backup my computer. It has been a long time. I was working on getting a new computer setup for our business. Mine has acted kind of funky.

I lost the hard drive today[smilie=b: and I hadn't backed up yet.

It has an IO error. Windows can't see it properly and Ubuntu/linux can't do anything either. Just my damn luck. Now I need to find a company who can recover my data. Unfortunately I can't just let it go. My neighbor's kid is a programmer and computer tech. I will have to try to get a hold of him. I read about companies that can recover data, even if they need to disassemble the hard drive. Does anyone have experience with recovering a hard drive like this? It is a western digital Raptor 320 gig SATA internal for my desktop computer. I hope they can get most of the data back.

I backed up some data to a USB drive, but I will look into a USB hard drive after this.

MtGun44
03-13-2014, 11:11 PM
Very expensive for the disassemble and read type job, most can only afford it if
there is very important business records on it.

Bill

MaryB
03-14-2014, 01:28 AM
Depends on the drive, if t hey have a spare motor/IO board for the drive t hey can swap it in and read the drive cheap. Swapping platters gets expensive and needs a clean room.

smokeywolf
03-14-2014, 02:06 AM
I would never trust a remote storage company for backup or any business or entity offering remote backup or cloud computing services. Uploading your files to a storage/backup/cloud computing company is likely the same as uploading those files to every Fed LE and spy agency on the continent. Those companies should be required to Mirandize you prior to your upload.

I use a combination of flash drives and USB portable drives.

smokeywolf

Moonie
03-14-2014, 11:45 AM
I'm a backup admin, use a combination of online storage (think local backup server or external disk) AND physical media, preferably kept offsite (somewhere else in case your house burns down). For really important data a safe deposit box isn't a bad idea. An external Blueray burner can be had for around $100 or so and will backup 25GB or 50GB per disk, depending on the disk.

Restoring data from a crashed computer isn't too hard, from a failed Hard Drive is harder, from a fire is impossible. How much trouble is your data worth?

Just Duke
03-14-2014, 03:55 PM
Oh My! Maybe I should contact NORAD and see if they have enough data storage to store pics of all my old GF's.

David2011
03-14-2014, 10:45 PM
Flash memory of any kind is not backup. I've lost plenty data plenty of times with it, mostly because of the computer to which the data was being transferred. Since I was only using the flash drive to transport files that were stored safely elsewhere, they were easily copied and replaced. In each case every file in the folder that had not yet copied to the computer was unrecoverable from the flash drive after the OS glitched. I don't believe in those cases it was the fault of the drive alone but an interaction between the computer hardware, the OS and the flash drive. Computers have been my day job for over 20 years. Almost the entire time has been spent as a systems analyst for a Fortune 100 company.

Last time I sent a hard drive to a data recovery company (December 2012) it cost $1600.00 for a 250 gig drive. Makes real backup look pretty cheap. Always store your backup separately from your computer in case of fire or theft- never keep it on your laptop bag!

David