How do u backup your data + backup data suddenly lost

Hey, what I usually do is, I copy the important data to another usb hard disk which I have.

Just today I moved one file from my PC to the hard disk. I plugged the hard disk to another pc and bang, the file wasnt there. I checked my source PC and the file wasnt there neither.

Now what I think is that windows isnt reliable in copying the data and there are chances of loosing it even if I backup to another disk, like what happened in the above case.

What guys do you use to backup data reliably?

I use acronis and wireless or wired backup my data to my server at home once a day automatically. It syncs data.

Well not sever but my NAS.

Network Attached Storage.

its basically a home server that u can access anywhere. Mines is 1 TB

When I'm on the road or in hotel I can network into my NAS to play music or watch movies or grab files.

Look into it. Its real real cheap to buy or build one Like a few hundred

you need to safely remove your hdds because sometimes the data might be in the write buffer and not the disk itself. that's probably why it disappeared.

anyway, i just use windows 7's backup-and-restore tool. does a backup once a day when i'm asleep.

if you need to restore that file you can always try an undelete tool.

For data on my PC I use Windows XP backup utility and leave it to run overnight. In the morning I run a batch job which copies it to two of five 1 TB USB removable drives and another PC on my network. One of the drives is then taken off site (to my Mothers).

At anyone time I have a backup on USB drive and another computer. It's a complete backup of everything.

On top of that the install for all my tools / important docs / Websites / etc are backup up to Amazon S3 so even if all my other backups fail I have most of what I need.

The important thing with backups is to make sure you can restore so every mow and then I will take a backup to another PC and do a restore to check the backup isn't corrupted.

Takes more work but most of it can be automated.

With data backup never assume anything.