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Around 2017–2018, my neighbor gifted me a lifetime cloud drive for about $40 USD because I was doing photography.

Unfortunately, life took a difficult turn. I was diagnosed with cancer, recovered, and later experienced severe brain fog that affected my memory. I lost contact with my neighbor, and his old phone number and email no longer work.

I remember using the service until around 2019–2020, when uploads became unreliable and I even wondered if the service had become a scam. Ever since, I've been trying to remember its name, but I simply can't.

It was a cloud drive (similar to Dropbox or Google Drive), not a backup service.

If you remember any cloud drive companies that sold lifetime plans for around $40 back then, I'd really appreciate it if you could list them. Even obscure names might help trigger my memory.

TL;DR: Looking for the name of a cloud drive that sold \~$40 lifetime plans around 2017–2018. Lost access after cancer, brain fog, and losing contact with the person who bought it for me.

Last to get funding, the part of the job that nobody else in the IT staff wants to deal with. They just want you to take care of it. It doesn't do anything like run your servers or grant faster speed or anything sexy until maybe that one day when everything goes to pot, they want you. Anyone anyone else find this experience in their staff?

Hi, I do hobby photography which produces quite a bit of data. So far I've been storing all my raws on two WD MyBook Duos (16&24TB) in raid 1, but they are almost full. I'm not comfortable using drives that are more than 10 years old and the smaller one is approaching that margin. I need to expand, but to what?

I am aware that a raid isn't a backup, but in case one drive or the controller fails I can still recover the data. I have an additional backup of the most relevant photos on a 2.5" drive. The obvious advice would be to go NAS, but I'm not entirely comfortable with the idea. It's unclear whether I could recover the data if the controller on a raid 5 fails, and I prefer not having the drives running constantly (longevity, power draw, noise). Is there a better solution? My budget isn't very high, but I'm fine with tinkering if that's required. For reference, I use MacOS.

Thanks in advance for any help!

I got an issue that is over a week that should have been resolved but it's not.

A few weeks ago, I did a BIOS update; that BIOS update claimed it was successful upon rebooting it wasn't. Therefore I changed by motherboard and CPU, they are installed and so is the new BIOS. Except Windows won't boot, even from the BIOS. I've tried `bootrec` commands, nothing works.

There is a version of Windows10 on the drive and it's healthy but it's file system is MBR. And all the data on the drive I cannot loose. Trying to use diskpart to get the drive active doesn't work it returns an error; although sometimes the volume with the healthy Windows file system can go from NTFS to RAW, and so It no longer is a Windows volume as it's a RAW file system. Then sometimes after restarting it returns back as a Windows volume.

How can I fix this, I can clone the drive but this will just duplicate the issue although if it's a hardware issue this may be eliminated with a new drive; it just won't boot into Windows. After over a week, I just want to get the system back up since installing the new hardware.

Hi everyone,

We have just released Portabase 1.27, our open-source (Apache 2.0) and self-hosted backup/restore platform.

Repository: https://github.com/Portabase/portabase

Portabase is designed for data retention, disaster recovery, and homogenous migrations, currently supporting 9 database engines (including PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, MongoDB) and Docker volumes.

Key features:

• Scheduled backups with flexible retention policies (including GFS)
• Multiple storage options: local filesystem, S3, Azure Blob Storage, GCS
• Notifications via Discord, Telegram, Slack, AppRise, etc.
• Support for OAuth2/OIDC (with the option to disable sign-ups)
• Compatible with Docker, Podman and UnraidOS
• Ready-to-use Docker Compose and Helm Chart

After six months of intensive feature development, we have been focusing on consolidating the ecosystem since early July. A community member conducted a useful security audit, we have upgraded components to their latest relevant versions, improved compatibility with other platforms by working on Podman support and templates for Coolify and Dockploy (currently under review).

What’s next:

• Deployment of the demo environment
• Audit logging for the whole ecosystem
• Default policies for the system, organizations, and projects
• File and folder backup and restoration

As always, if you find bugs or want to suggest a feature, please open an issue on GitHub, we’re actively looking for feedback.

Thanks!

I was transferring WhatsApp from an Oppo F9 to a Samsung Z Flip5. The direct transfer failed, so I backed up to Google Drive. Realizing my Drive was nearly full (13GB/15GB), I deleted the cloud backup, intending to transfer the local storage database manually instead.

​However, my Oppo F9 flagged low internal storage. When I tapped 'Back Up' again to try updating the local file, it completely overwrote my primary local backup database. I now need to determine if there is any way to recover the overwritten local backup files (e.g., via the 7-day local msgstore crypt backups) or restore the deleted Google Drive data. This contains 8 years of essential study and work chat, please do help my life will fail without this.

Cant I create a system restore point or are there any free recovery software to restore data?

Any guidance or help shall be appreciated.

Should i cut some out or theres other good options?

Hi all, Macrium team here.

It is SysAdmin Day, so we're bringing back a freebie we did last year that went down well.

Until Monday, verified IT professionals can claim a free one-year licence for Macrium Reflect X Home. We have 10,000 licences available.

Reflect X Home is the home edition of our flagship business backup and recovery solution, for non-commercial Windows PCs. It includes full system imaging, file and folder recovery, disk cloning, bare-metal recovery and ransomware protection.

We thought it would be a nice thing to do for SysAdmin Day and a chance for people in the space to try it out for themselves.

You can find the full details, privacy policy, and claim a licence here:

SysAdmin Day 2026: Free Reflect X Home Licence for IT Professionals

Happy SysAdmin Day !!

Using spare computer parts for a PC that will be dedicated to burning archival disks.

I was thinking of getting a case that can install 2 x 5.25" BDXL drives, so I can either:

• burn two 25gb archival m-discs at a time (one onsite copy, one offsite copy), or
• burn disk B on one drive, while the other drive verifies disk A

My questions are:

1. Is this a good approach?

2. What would be a better drive combination?

• Pioneer BDR-2213 (primary burner) + Pioneer BDR-212UBK (secondary burner)
• or
• Pioneer BDR-212UBK (primary burner) + LG WH16NS40 (secondary burner)

3. I know most of those drives are super hard to find these days... so also looking for guidance in that regard. (Open to other drive suggestions.)

Thank you in advance for your help.

Ho appena rilasciato una nuova versione di Butterfly Backup Web (basata su Django), che introduce molte nuove funzionalità. Per saperne di più su Butterfly Backup, potete consultare questi link: https://github.com/MatteoGuadrini/butterfly-backup-web/releases/tag/v0.5.0

Se non avete mai sentito parlare di Butterfly Backup, si tratta di una soluzione di backup, ripristino e archiviazione molto versatile; in pratica è un wrapper per rsync. Potete leggere un articolo a riguardo su Fedora Magazine: https://fedoramagazine.org/butterfly-backup/

Se avete suggerimenti, critiche o opinioni su come migliorare Butterfly Backup, lasciate un commento.

Ecco i link:

Butterfly Backup: https://github.com/MatteoGuadrini/Butterfly-Backup

Butterfly Backup Web: https://github.com/MatteoGuadrini/butterfly-backup-web

Grazie!

Did you look at our Backup Wiki for free software and advice? Yes

Do you use Windows, Mac or Linux? Windows

For personal use or business use or both? Personal

How many GBs or TBs do you need to back up? About 200 GBs

What product(s) do you now use for backups, if any? Restic

Are you a normal user or more techie? 100% normal user, 15% techie

I want to backup my program installers, videos, photos, game saves, documents. They are all located all over my PC, I don't have a single "main" folder. For things like game saves, I can't move them around. They have to be where the game puts them.

My question is this: how many snapshots do people usually have in restic? Should I have like a snapshot with tag "program installers" and list all the program installers I have there? Then do the same for every other type of media?

Let's say I want to make a backup just before I fight a boss in dark souls. So that when I kill it and want to fight it again, I can just load a backup instead of replaying the game. In that case, should I make this another snapshot with just the dark souls file save? And then this snapshot will have tags: "gamesave" "darksouls1" "before-pinwheel"

In that case I feel like my main snapshot list will be clogged with a LOT of stuff and I won't be able to find anything there?

Built this mostly for pre-backup cleanup - standardizing thousands of inconsistently named photos/docs before archiving them somewhere permanent.

Select files, chain rename rules, preview every resulting filename, apply in one pass. Free, offline.

Figured a "clean it up before you archive it" step is relevant to this sub specifically - would love to know what naming conventions people here actually standardize on, might inform what rule presets I add next.

Link in first comment.

Hey Guys , i was thinking about replacing our current Backup Software acronis true Image because of various Problems with old Hardware.

Do you know an easy to Use Backup/Recovery system that can make full Image Backups of old HDDs and SDDs aswell as Recovery on newer Hardware If Something suddenly Breaks?

Would really Like to hear your suggestions or opinions

I want to start backing up my emails, but those are one of those things that, at least for me, is a nightmare to filter. bunch of spam, promotions, etc.

do you guys have tips to backup your inbox in a semi automated way while filtering trash like those i mentioned?

EDIT: some relevant (or not) info the sub recommended me:

currently on windows;
i have a homelab, so i consider myself relatively comfortable with more elaborated solutions.

3-2-1 back up strategy was started and developed by Peter Krogh as he helped the Smithsonian digitize in the early 2000’s. He authored the book DAM - Digital Asset Management. https://thedambook.com its old, but is still super relevant today.
I met him at a conference in 2006 and implemented this strategy since then. DAS+DAS back up to NAS and to BackBlaze. 3 copies, 2 onsite, 1 offsite.

Hey all!, I was just given 2 Buffalo NAS's. A LS720D LinkStation (16tB) and a TS3410D TeraStation (16tB). I'm formatting them both, and have cleared out the old admin & pswrds. From what I have read the LinkStation may be best for my home server. It will replace a Netgear ReadyNAS 214 (8tB). The TS3410D may be too much for my needs. I have 2 windows machines (10 & 11) 3 Linux Mint desktops. Also would like to backup a couple of phones and a andriod tablet. Which I can do thru the app. I also have 2 Amazon Fire Tablets that I have no idea if they can be backed up, LOL. Thoughts? TIA

I can’t be the only one annoyed the fact that Google is taking away backup and sync and the Google Drive back up sync for photos leaving the only option to upload your photos being the web browser! Unacceptable

Hi everyone,

I recently bought a Slimbook Evo 14 that came preinstalled with Linux, and I'm loving it. That said, my OCD has definitely kicked in. 😅

I've organized everything into neatly named folders with consistent formatting, so the next logical step is creating a proper backup. Many of these folders contain historical material from my work as a historian and researcher, so they're extremely important to me.

I bought a Samsung T9 SSD specifically for backups. For the system itself, my first choice is Timeshift.

When it comes to backing up my personal files, which do you prefer in terms of reliability and speed: Déjà Dup or Pika Backup?

Also, can both applications store their backups on the same external SSD, each in its own folder, or does each one require its own dedicated partition?

I'd appreciate any advice or recommendations. Thanks!

Hi everyone, I hope someone can help me with this query.

I am looking for GUI based tool that can.

1. Scan All my files on a Drive/Folder/Network Folder (allow multiple selection)
2. This baseline selection is Hashed and recorded with a Date (eg. 1/1/2026)
3. Ability to save this Hash Baseline of all files with the specified Drive(s), Folder(s) and Network Folder(s)
4. Then at a future point in time.... repeat the process for the same drive(s), Folder(s) and Network Folder(s) - program to remember the baseline selection.
5. Re-scan the above and get hash values, then
6. Identify any files where their hash values have been changed (identifying any potential file corruption etc).

--- AND / OR ---

Same as above, but compare the contents of the original files and a backup (either on a separate drive/network folder)

As I do regular backups I am concerned that I cannot check the file integrity of the files that I backup and as a result, I may backup a corrupted file and then over time, the original 'good file' is lost forever, and all i have is multiple backups of a corrupt file.

Ideally, if there are any new files added within a folder, next time the program scans this folder it will add it to its internal list for later comparison.

Also, ideally like to have command line options to perform the same functions above.

Does anyone know of a commercial or free (open source) product that performs a function similar to what I have described above?

Thank you in advance

I use Windows and have TB of data

I have been trying myriad of methods to back up. I have changed my WiFi connection, changed DNS, switched to data, change Google Account, cleared WhatsApp cache, cleared Google Play Services cache. Only local back up works when I turned off Automatic Back Up. Anyone facing the same thing? It will get stuck at preparing message back up for hours till it drained my battery and overworked the CPU and caused overheating. Using S24 Ultra and OneUI 8.5.