I think my search for finding a way to backup my data after Mozy has ended with Handy Backup. Since I discovered that Mozy was changing their pricing policy, and determining that the new prices were going to be too high for me, I have been looking for an alternative way of backing up my data. I knew that I needed software to assist with backing up my data, and I also needed a new plan to work with the software, so with Handy Backup I think I have found a new method.
When developing my process, I didn’t want to stray to far from my current one, with the exception of the online storage. With the amount of data (320+ GB) that I need to backup, and the fact that it is growing substantially each year, it seems only offline backup would work. By the looks of it, Handy Backup is just the software I need.
Many Backup Options With Handy Backup
The one thing that I like when I started Handy Backup was the amount of options that are available within the software. You can create many backup tasks, and schedule each one to backup various folders and files at different times. For those that keep forgetting to backup data, this feature is really great.
If you wish to backup your files to different media and locations, Handy Backup provides many options for you. Hard drives, optical discs (CD, DVD, blu-ray, and even HD DVD), FTP and network drives. You can even use their online storage solution to securely store your data. I probably won’t use this option as the cost will still be too high for me to use, and the amount of time it would take to backup my 320+ GB of data would be too much.
With data backup, there are also several options that include compressing your data into a single ZIP file or multiple ZIP files. If you are looking for security, then you can also apply Blowfish encryption to your data once it is backed up. You supply the password, which is required to access your backed up data.
There are many more options that Handy Backup provides, but I’ll go into how I will be using Handy Backup to manage by data backups.
The Options in Handy Backup That I’ll Use
With me cancelling my Mozy account next year, I’ll be losing one of my offsite backup locations. Exclusing Mozy, I currently have one offsite backup and the main onsite backup. I store my data on a portable hard drive for my offsite backup, and on an external hard drive for my main data backup. With Handy Backup, I continue with a similar setup.
I will create separate tasks within Handy Backup to handle various backups to my hard drives. I will implement a second portable hard drive that I will also store offsite to compensate for the loss of Mozy.
Each task will backup to a separate hard drive, and each task will backup one a specific set of files from my main backup to the offsite backup devices. This will allow me to easily backup only what I need to backup, and since I have organized my files the tasks should be easy to create.
Once I connect my offsite portable hard drives to my computer, I will run the tasks associated with that hard drive to copy the files from my external hard drive to the portable hard drive. This is how I have done it with Mozy, so in essence my backup process isn’t changing too much. Once the data is backed up, I will then move my portable hard drive for storage offsite.
Handy Backup will allow me to backup my data easily and efficiently, which is the way I like to backup my data.
Tags: Backup Software, Data Backup, Handy Backup
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on September 26, 2011 at 12:16 am
Hm.. Interesting. I’d like to give it a try later. Thanks for sharing this with us.
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on September 26, 2011 at 3:54 am
If I will prefer to choose the online back up how many space will they provide?
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on September 26, 2011 at 10:14 am
This will be very useful to any backup process because this do the work for you. However, you should really know how to utilize this accordingly if you want to benefit from it and if you want to satisfy yourself with it. Thus, I agree that online back up is more utilized by the users because it is accessible.
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on September 27, 2011 at 7:28 pm
Great post, Paul! I haven’t been backing up my stuffs at home after I reformatted..*gulp*
This post is a great reminder for me to start a backup scheduling system again tonight!
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on September 28, 2011 at 1:29 am
Very informative post…Thanks for sharing…..
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on October 4, 2011 at 2:15 am
This is the first time I have heard of this post…I have to check this out and learn more of this then…
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on October 11, 2011 at 12:37 am
Hi…Thank you for sharing this kind of information to us…
on October 18, 2011 at 1:36 am
Hi…This is really interesting for me and I hope I can share this too…Thank you very much for the post!!
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on October 18, 2011 at 8:13 am
Thanks for visiting, Sophie.
on October 18, 2011 at 8:10 pm
We all know that there are many backup options with handy backup and this clears out almost everything about them…Thank you!!
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on November 14, 2011 at 4:54 am
There are different alternative ways of backuping data.Look for that suits your needs.
on November 14, 2011 at 8:15 am
I agree. Backing up data is all about creating a process that works for you, and using what works for you.