Computer Maintenance?

[Lee]

So ive just finished cleaning and backing up my laptop for the month and wondered how often everyone else cleaned and / or backed up their machines?

I tend to backup my laptop once a month and it gets cleaned every 2-3 weeks or so.

I cant beleive the amount of pure shit i had in my temp folders too LOL

Regards,

Lee

[JustMe]

Greetings:

I do nightly off-site backups of everything in my home office lan.

All temp files, cache, unallocated drive space, and the like gets wiped every 3 days.

Probably overkill, but habits from my previous life are hard to break.....

[Lee]

Hmm interesting..

Ive been looking at that as an option for doing backups over the last couple of months, how complicated is it to setup that kind of backup scenario?

Regards,

Lee

[JustMe]

Greetings:

It doesn't need to be complicated at all Lee, depending on how you do it.

I've always laughed at people that did backups, some even nightly, then placed the backup tape next to their computer. To me, it kind of defeats the purpose of doing the backup in the first place.

Sure, it protects you if your hard drive fails, or if you somehow managed to get some nasty on your box that trashes everything. But it does nothing for you if the place goes up in flames. Which, believe it or not, is the #1 way corporations lose data today.

The last company that I ran, we literally had someone take our backup tapes out every morning, walk them to the bank, and put them into our deposit box. I don't go THAT far anymore.

What I do now, that is the easiest solution for most smaller companies, is utilize an online backup service. They have software you install on your computer that finds all of the new and changed files, or files in a specific backup directory, compresses them, encrypts them, then uploads it to their location.

This way, you have a backup that's secure, and off site. Suits my needs prefect for now.

There are a LOT of companies out there, so if you search for "online backup" you'll find them.

My personal favorite is a company called iBackup (disclosure: I know people affiliated with the company. However, I don't profit from them it any way.)

http://www.ibackup.com/