Like most computer specialists, we throw around backup suggestions frequently. Many employees give anecdotal advice in addition to the standard general suggestions. What we haven’t done is show how diverse even our own backup solutions are. Below are some of our methods and habits in preserving our personal data.
David: 2TB Time Capsule for Time Machine backups. Crash Plan cloud storage backup. Dropbox, Google Drive and iCloud/iTunes Match for current documents and music.
Mikhael: Internal Time Machine backup drive in place of optical drive. Dropbox for all documents. Image of HDD on external drive.
Steve: Time Machine backup to external. Google Drive for cloud storage of documents. Google Music for cloud storage of music.
Nate: Time Machine and SuperDuper! backup to the same external, which is partitioned. No cloud use.
Taylor: Time Machine to external RAID5, and also Time Machine to a portable drive that lives in his backpack. iCloud for documents.
Sherrie: Uses Dropbox and Google Drive.
Michael: Manually moves data to external drive.
Lonnie: G-Tech External Time Machine Backup and also uses iCloud and Google Drive for basic document backup.
Ronnie: External LaCie Time Machine Backup and iCloud for her iPhone.
Jonny: Manually moves data about once per month to a 1TB G-Tech External. Also uses iCloud for his iPad backups.
Tyler: iCloud for iPad backups and uses thumb drives for basic document backup on his computer.
Patrick: Time Machine backup to external LaCie drive. iCloud for iOS backups.
Jason: Dual internal cloned drives backup to external Time Machine backup. iCloud and Dropbox for insignificant files.
Of course, none of us really have to worry about backing up our communications, because we’re all paying for the government-funded PRISM cloud backup at the NSA. You may find some difficulty restoring from this one though!