Effective backup strategy on Windows Platform

I been using Windows since Windows 95, and then 2.1 GB hard drive was hip thing to have in your computer and computers were nice to use but not the necessary to have.

Then suddenly in a year or so computer age stormed  the world, and it started to become the main stream, the hardware improved but there was another problem which was looking us in the eye, "The Computer Virus". A simple slip, like using a unsuspecting USB or floppy drive can kill your data.

Now we live in a digital age, and tables are turned where digitally signed copies of documents are the first copy and data has become more important than your computer/laptop it self. I can't even though of loosing all the pictures I took in these years, the Physical albums might not be useful to a comment thief, but a portable hard drive or your laptop is.

Two things are top most important to me,

1. Have a good Anti-virus or internet security system installed (I personally recommend kaspersky Internet security).
2. Use the Anti-virus security as a last barrier as protection from your computer, don't ask for data in USB drive, they the pro source to get virus from infected system, try to implement some layering, I use a Linux duel boot system and keep important data in windows partitions, because the funny thing is that Windows Virus don't affect Linux and vice versa, but avoiding the USB's are most effective way. 
3. Backup your data, and I will suggest a simple way below.

How and where to backup your data:

There are three type of storage you can use

1. Online storage (google drive is pretty cheap these days, but still expensive) 
2. Network drive (you can store a lot here)
3. Portable hard drive to make exact copy of your hard drive.

Online Storage

Online storage,like google drive, dropbox or Onedrive is pretty robust way of making the data backup and I recommend backup your most important data on it (if you are not too much concerned about the privacy of your data).

Network Drive

As online data storage are becoming cheap the data is also increasing and because of large data size and privacy concerns it is not always possible to keep the data on the Cloud. Enter Network Hard drive you can get a 2 TB soultion for $150 or so, and the files will be accessible online thought the portals selling company provide (I use WD live and the access is pretty awesome) but it is somewhat limited to the uplink speed of the broadband you have in the house, and there is a major issue of theft also.

USB Drive Option

Use a portable USB drive (of exact size, bigger will be just waste) to keep the exact mirror of the User data you have in your primary computer and keep it in a safe place, I use Seagate 500GB drive and Seagate dashboard tool to keep primary laptop data always backed up. Just plug it in and the Seagate dash board will sync all data in a while. The good thing this that it only copies user data, non os or program related. hence make it quick and non confusion keeping the files as it is, not compressing it, hence easy to retrieve later.

I will say, it will take combination of all the above to make a effective and relatively cheaper and safer backup environment, but problem is how to maintain the backup of continuously increasing data.

There are many software's which creates compress backups for you but sometimes they create a complicated formate archive which are not user open able and needs propitiatory software and the backup file just look like a archive and their is not independent way to verify the integrity of the backup you have taken, Its complicated, shitty and horrific and money consuming.

What you need a simple software just to sync two folder, thats it! Enter Free File Sync, It is a opensource filesync written for Windows, Linux or Mac

You can do three things

1. Mirror your source folder (it create a exact copy of source every time, all deletes and new files are reflected, use this if you are space concious)
2. Update your source folder (All new changes in sources are reflected in the destination, if you are not space concious, you can really have all the files from starting to end of days)
3. Sync source and destination (all changes on both side are reflected on both side, creating a true sync, you don't need this setting for backup purpose)

You have to create syncs(its really simple, just go through their website) of your full drive or folders you really wants to backup and run them once in a while, it is really fast and files are simply accessible just by looking at destination folder, no complex data format.

In this digital age your Hard drive computer is your fortress and your data is your people and you have to protect that at any cost.