I need to sort this to save me a lot of grief as or when (inevitably, looking into hard drive longevity) my laptop gives up, however this may happen.

 

My last one (HP Pavillion) overheated as it got left open and on, in the house, and got caught in the sun later in the day. I switched it off immediately and moved it to a cooler location but on switching it on again......nothing (iirc) the mother board was fried anyway. Maybe if i had left it switched on but still moving it to a cooler location it may have survived.......and not worth the cost of repair, tech advancements and all that.

 

Anyway......If it is possible mainly i would like to, and learn how to

1.                     back up my favourites / bookmarks and quick links
2.                     back up my passwords (Saved in google at mo) (hoping not to have to write them all down)
3.                     back up / copy some documents ie CV
4.                     know if / what else i should back up / copy, and what else is possible to back up / copy......ie can i copy Adobe Reader (for instance) or would this just be freshly downloaded?

And somehow i lost my Office / Word Starter as i think it got corrupted a while back....i could do with this as is better than wordpad

Does this Starter usually come supplied or only on specific devices?

Note atm i am still on Windows 7/64bit Asus X53E - i5

 

Advice on the cheapest sensible back up device / product to use would also be appreciated, along with any other assistance for a not particularly tech minded person

 

Thanks

I 've got two old HDD which I use to save data.One is redundant from when I update to a SSD. The other is an E by cheap clean pull . It tests OK, BUT I save my data t0o both, as I know someday my SSD will fail. I've already had a Kingston 120GB hdd fail under warranty. The clean pull is updated regularly and sits on a shelf on my PC  kit. The idea is if the main fails, thn I've got a backup, and data from two is better than data from one. And Mr Ransomware can go and do one.

How much "data" do you have?  (That is if you ignore the OS and programs).  

 

Depending on the the size of the data you could store it in the cloud ( OneDrive, Google drive ) or / and either on a USB stick or USB HD. Depends again if it's really important data ( that's irreplaceable) or just something that'll be a bit of a pain to reproduce if lost.

 

 

You can pick up Office365 quite cheaply which includes Word either as a outright purchase or on a subscription. The sub comes with 1TB OneDrive license. The downside is you have to continue the sub else the drive disappears.

 

 

If your passwords are saved in Google they should be saved in the cloud and should be available to you if you log in to your account on another PC in chrome.

 

 

Edited 8 April, 20197 yr by io1901

Well, FWIW my experience of USB SDDs is that the biggest issue is the connector from the cable to the SDD failing mechanically. 100% failure rate inside 3 years using multiple drives.

On passwords, I have  saved them to an Excell file which is on a usb stick.

On 08/04/2019 at 16:12, io1901 said:

If your passwords are saved in Google they should be saved in the cloud and should be available to you if you log in to your account on another PC in chrome.

 

This is good to know....I do not usually log in to Google (unless automatic) so i will have to check this, along with this / my password. Cheers

Btw it's a good idea to enable dual authentication in Google if you are going to let Google save passwords etc in the cloud.

I have a second hard drive in the dsesktop case, and once a week the system stores a complete backup to this drive from my main drive, all done automatically by https://www.easeus.com/. Then whenever I remember I take the latest backup and move it to my network drive.

Rusty - my backup lives on  two HDD which sit on a shelf beside my PC. Every so often I back up and then take the backups out of PC. Reason- if not connected to PC, then there's no chance ransom man can  infiltrate the data,I've built up over  a lot of years.

23 minutes ago, VWD said:

Rusty - my backup lives on  two HDD which sit on a shelf beside my PC. Every so often I back up and then take the backups out of PC. Reason- if not connected to PC, then there's no chance ransom man can  infiltrate the data,I've built up over  a lot of years.

I do a similar thing with external USB HDDs but I have thought for a while whether I should store these backups 'off-site' in case we have a fire or similar disaster. The only place that I could store them securely away from the house for free would be with a relative and I am not sure about that!

Use a password manager. they'll export to a backup file you can save somewhere. I use Password Safe, it's a bit clunky but free and works for me.

 

As for backups, Using something like OneDrive, iCloud, GDrive is a good add on. If stuff is really important you should have 3 copies. One on the machine, one on the external drive and one in the cloud. Sounds like overkill until you have a proper ****-up like a house fire or just a big power surge.

 

If you're going to use a cloud service turn on their Multi Factor Authentication (MFA), might be an app or a sms code (that's not as good these days) or even a physical token (Yubico, Titan)