Hi,

How do you guys do a back up? Do you back up to an external hard drive or do you use an online storage like Drop Box?

What would you recommend? I want something that is quick, preferably free and automated. Thank you! :)

I have a love for dropbox and knows no bounds :$ well, the only annoying thing with it is that I can't download the actual box to my uni computer - as I'm not an administrator on it, but you can still download it offline.

So I used dropbox, I also have 3 external hard drives (2 x 1tb and one 80gb) - so I backup dropbox to them once a week. - I have a huge fear that the dropbox company will suddenly go out of business over night or something and steal all my data.

also its obviously not great if you have highly confidential data.

I also back up my writing on googledocs.

Sneaks :)

Do you have a subscription account with dropbox? Also, how easy is it to make a back up of dropbox itself?

I usually back-up all data files and revised thesis docs onto my external drive. I also email myself the data files when they are complete so I have a copy stored on my email. I also use dropbox and found that if the file is shared the other users ie sups could inadvertently delete files. I have also had the same thoughts as Sneaks, what if dropbox disappears!! I think to be safe use a few methods!

I don't - so far I have enough work to fill about 50% of the free space - this includes my entire endnote lib on pdfs, all my word docs and SPSS files for 3 other projects including my PhD.

(well I have some other stuff not on there, but the stuff I've worked on in the past 8 months is on there).

Its easy to back up - I just copy and paste all the files into my external hard drives.

I'm tempted to look at sugar sync because you can edit the documents online - at the mo with dropbox, because I can't download the program to my uni PC I have to download each file, save it to my uni PC, work on it and then remember to re-upload it before leaving, which is a hassle. But this is mainly caused by the evil IT man at my uni not letting me download the actual box from dropbox.

I also use Dropbox, and I find it a wonderful way of working, especially as it joins synching and backup. Dropbox gives 2GB free, but there are ways of increasing space such as linking with Dropbox through facebook etc (I had put some information online a couple of weeks ago on how to do this). It is quite easy to do a backup of Dropbox itself. It is like having a folder called MyDocuments, but instread it is called Dropbox, and you just copy and paste. What I just recently found out (and saved my ass) was that Dropbox keeps backup files of anything you delete or so for 30 days :) Good luck to whatever you choose. I would definitely suggest dropbox. For added peace of mind, perhaps you could use an external hard drive and backup on it every now and then (the beauty of dorpbox is that you do not need to remember to back up...it does it all automatically).

you can also do a dropquest to gain a further 1gb.... don't know if they still do it, but I did it only couple of weeks ago:
http://lifehacker.com/#!5735676/dropquest-is-an-online-scavenger-hunt-that-awards-up-to-1-gb-of-dropbox-space

I would recommend finding a walkthrough, since if you don't, it's just too good an excuse to procrastinate all day!

When I was finishing my PhD I used DropBox all the time for backups, supported by frequent backups to a dedicated external hard drive, and emailing important files (like updated chapters) to my uni account (I was based at home).

Unfortunately dropquest has now closed. But I hope they do another one soon. The 1GB i got was great :)