DIY “mission critical” file backups

In the last blog, I discussed purchasing an additional PC for home business use.

So that both PCs are backed up individually AND synced one to the other, I am using two different programs.

Every 15 minutes, each PC backs up its file changes to an attached SSD drive using the program Free File Sync.

After file changes in specified folders like Desktop, Documents, Pictures, those changes are copied from the new PC to the old one using a program called DSynchronize.

And the old PC copies its changed files to an internal SSD drive every 15 minutes.

Therefore, I effectively end up with 4 copies of all my data files, which will certainly keep me from loosing them. A year ago I lost around 25% of my files when that particular computer had a hard drive failure.

I also use a program that runs on my Android phone and on the new computer. I can make changes from either device and the changes are synced using the program Syncthing.

While I am using the Donation version of Free File Sync, there are free versions of all three programs.

With this combination of programs, I can rest easier knowing my data is safe and business continuity is achieved via this DIY Mission Critical Backup process. 👍😉

The other type of backup software is used to create an image of entire hard drives. More advanced users many times use more than one hard drive. One drive stores the Operating System with user programs and the other drive stores user data. Periodically creating a backup image of the system drive allows for quickly replacing a failed drive and restoring the operating system. For my current needs, I decided to just use two PCs, but, I plan to discuss some of the more popular backup programs at a later date.

For other info on file synchronization software see this post Free File Synchronization Software.