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Easiest way to clone drives with a PC is via a Clonezilla live USB, it's free.
Backblaze is the best bang for buck cloud backup service last time I looked.
Best backup strategy is having 2x external backup drives (1x SSD, 1x spinning rust). Keep the fast SSD locally and do regular incremental backups to it; this is your 'warm' backup. Keep the spinning drive off-site somewhere, and backup to it when you can; this is your 'cold backup'. Then also have a cloud backup in case all else fails. This way, your data is stored in 3x separate locations, one of which is in a secure datacentre. The likelihood of all 3x getting toasted is nigh-on zero.
The challenge is seeing how long you can keep this regimen up before ceasing to be arsed...
ectoplasmosis-
Thanks, I'll have a look at Backblaze.
I already have this system to some extent. PC and laptop share a lot of data. I used to run a NAS but that died so then moved to a simpler external caddied drive, which is now full, so I moved to a larger, pocketable SSD USB drive and I also do regular Glacier backups so if the place burned down I'd still have a pretty recent copy. My partner does less frequent backups (okay I do them) so there's a lot of manual stuff happening and I'd love to automate it more.
hippy
Cheers. Sounds like a plan. I just have to remember how I cloned my partner's one. :S
As per the Android thread I need to come up with a better plan for moving data between laptop and PC (maybe just ditch the PC and use a better laptop only) and some kind of cloud backup that isn't as slow as Glacier but doesn't cost the earth. That way when a boot drive dies I don't care, I just resync the files from the other machine or cloud location and build another machine.