备份(backups )的基本规则是您应该将它们至少放在两个不同的地方，它们不太可能同时被破坏。至少，这是多年来的传统观念，但云存储服务已经改变了这个等式。现在，您可以将您的数据交到大公司的可信赖手中！
好的，对隐私影响的看法各不相同，但事实是可以使用Google Backup and Sync将整个硬盘备份到(Sync)Google Drive，我们将向您展示如何操作。
云备份的好处(The Benefits Of Cloud Backups)
将数据备份到云有很多特定的优势。尤其是在涉及Google云时，但这适用于大多数知名供应商。如果Google将您的数据保存在他们的云存储服务中，那么它将受益于高标准的安全性。
虽然您在帐户中只能看到一份数据副本，但实际上在物理上独立的设施中存在多个冗余副本。因此，如果发生灾难或单个驱动器发生故障，您的数据仍然是安全的。事实上，你甚至不会注意到！
另一个主要优势是数据安全性。黑客或其他恶意行为者不太可能获取您的信息。当这种情况发生时，通常是因为您作为用户使用了弱密码或没有使用双重身份验证。这使得云备份比本地外部驱动器备份更安全。
云备份的缺点(The Downsides of Cloud Backups)
另一方面，在使用谷歌(Google)云作为存储信息的地方之前，您可能需要三思而后行的原因有很多。
一方面，尽管您可以确定Google以外的任何人都不会访问您的数据，但Google本身总是有机会偷看。您拥有的唯一真正保护是Google表示它不会侵犯您的隐私这一事实。你是否相信他们的话取决于你。就我们而言，我们建议在将真正敏感的文档上传到云之前对其进行加密，这样其他人就无法看到其中的内容。
云备份的另一个潜在问题是它取决于您的带宽。如果您无法访问 Internet，则无法访问您的文件。如果它们同步到您的本地计算机，这不是什么大问题，但如果您丢失了本地计算机并需要取回文件，这就是一个问题。即使有互联网接入，您也需要足够的带宽来转移全盘备份所需的数百个演出。
这可能不是家庭光纤连接的问题，但在许多情况下是计量或移动连接的问题。这就是为什么仍然值得将本地备份到外部驱动器(to an external drive)或其他备份介质的原因。
Google One 存储定价和选项(Google One Storage Pricing & Options)
每个Google Drive 用户(Google Drive user)都可以通过他们的帐户免费获得 15GB 的数据，但这几乎肯定不足以备份整个硬盘驱动器。因此，您必须为更大的存储空间分配付费。Google通过其(Google)Google One服务 提供更多空间。
以下是定价的叠加方式：
- 100 GB 1.99 美元/月
- 200 GB 2.99 美元/月
- 2 TB 9.99 美元/月
- 10 TB 99.99 美元/月
- 20 TB 199.99 美元/月
- 30 TB 299.99 美元/月
对于整个驱动器备份，2TB 选项是最好的选择，只是因为谷歌(Google)在它和 200GB 选项之间留下了巨大的差距。请(Just)记住，您可以在这个单一存储池中备份多台计算机、移动设备和所有邮件。您还可以与家人群组中的人共享该存储空间。所以 2TB 可能没有你想象的那么大材小用！
Google 备份和同步与离线文档与 Google 云端硬盘(Google Backup And Sync Vs Offline Documents vs Google Drive)
重要的是要阐明您可以使用Google Drive将云数据的本地副本保存在计算机上的三种不同方式。
Google Backup and Sync是您下载到计算机上的应用程序。您可以指定该计算机上的哪些文件夹应备份或与您的云帐户同步。您复制到指定文件夹或由应用程序保存在那里的任何文件都将在后台上传
Google Offline Documents 是一个Chrome浏览器插件，可将您的Google Drive文档保存在本地计算机上，以便您在互联网不可用时继续工作。肯定是必不可少的附加组件，但对于备份整个驱动器没有多大用处。
最后，我们有了Google Drive网络界面。您可能不知道这一点，但您可以使用 Web 界面上传您想要的任何内容，而无需在相关计算机上安装任何内容。您可以将多个文件和整个文件夹拖到Google Drive页面中，它会排队并上传它们。
在 Google Backup & Sync 上备份特定文件(Backing Up Specific Files On Google Backup & Sync)
如果您不想备份整个(entire )硬盘驱动器，您仍然可以使用Google Backup and Sync自动备份对您重要的所有内容。
- 首先，下载并安装Google Backup and Sync。
- 安装后，请确保您已登录正确的帐户。
- 接下来，选择您要备份的常用文件夹（例如照片或文档）。您还可以为您的Google Drive文件夹选择一个位置并创建自定义文件夹以根据需要进行同步。
- 设置完成后，只需将要备份的特定文件移动或保存到这些指定文件夹即可。上传后，您可以随时检索它们。
备份一切(Backing Up Everything)
对，现在我们来看看大的——备份整个驱动器。我们的意思是创建一个磁盘映像备份，您可以使用它来恢复您的计算机，以防硬盘驱动器出现故障或被盗。
首先，您需要获取一个应用程序来制作驱动器的映像。在这种情况下，我们选择了Macrium Reflect(Macrium Reflect)的优秀免费版本。有关如何创建整个磁盘映像的信息，请参阅其手册，因为这不在本文的讨论范围内。您可以使用任何您想要的磁盘映像系统。
这里的技巧是我们将磁盘映像备份定位到指定用于在Google Backup and Sync中同步的文件夹之一。Macrium Reflect支持增量备份，因此它将按设定的时间间隔更新该文件。当Google检测到文件已更改时，会将新版本上传到云端。
如果您不想经常占用带宽，您还可以手动将磁盘映像文件复制到指定文件夹或将备份软件设置为仅在您要求时执行备份。这是你的选择。
如果发生最坏的情况，您可以再次下载该磁盘映像，并在更换或格式化驱动器后立即回到原来的位置。给你！你现在像房子一样安全。
How To Use Google Backup And Sync To Backup Your Hard Drive
The cardinal rule of backups is that you should have them in at least two different places, which are unlikely to be destroyed at the same time. At least, this has been the conventional wisdom for years, but cloud storage services have changed the equation. Now you can put your data in the trusted hands of major corporations!
OK, opinions on the privacy implications vary, but the fact is that it’s possible to backup your entire hard drive to Google Drive using Google Backup and Sync, and we’re going to show you how.
The Benefits Of Cloud Backups
There are quite a few specific advantages to backing up your data to the cloud. Especially when it comes to the Google cloud, but this applies to most reputable vendors. If Google has your data in their cloud storage service, it benefits from high standards of safety and security.
While you only see one copy of the data in your account, there are actually multiple redundant copies of it in physically separate facilities. So if there is a disaster or an individual drive fails, your data is still safe. In fact, you wouldn’t even notice!
The other major advantage is in data security. It’s very unlikely that a hacker or other malicious actor can ever get to your information. When this does happen it’s usually because you as the user used a weak password or didn’t use two-factor authentication. This makes a cloud backup much more secure than, for example, a local external drive backup.
The Downsides of Cloud Backups
On the flipside, there are quite a few reasons why you might want to think twice before using the Google cloud as a place to store your information.
For one thing, although you can be pretty sure no one outside Google will access your data, there’s always the chance that Google itself is taking a peek. The only real protection you have is the fact that Google says it won’t violate your privacy. It’s up to you whether you take their word for it. For our part, we suggest encrypting truly sensitive documents before uploading them to the cloud, so that no one else can see what’s within.
The other big potential problem with cloud backups is that it depends on your bandwidth. If you lose internet access, you can’t get to your files. This is not a big deal if they are synced to your local machine, but it’s a problem if you’ve lost that local machine and need to get your files back. Even with internet access, you’ll need enough bandwidth to shift the hundreds of gigs a full disk backup entails.
This is maybe not an issue on a home fiber connection, but is a problem on a metered or mobile connection in many cases. This is why it’s still worth having a local backup to an external drive or other backup medium as well.
Google One Storage Pricing & Options
Every Google Drive user gets 15GB of data for free with their account, but that’s almost certainly not enough to back up an entire hard drive. So you’ll have to pay for a larger allocation of storage space. Google offers more space through its Google One service.
Here’s how the pricing stacks up:
- $1.99/mo for 100 GB
- $2.99/mo for 200 GB
- $9.99/mo for 2 TB
- $99.99/mo for 10 TB
- $199.99/mo for 20 TB
- $299.99/mo for 30 TB
For whole-drive backup, the 2TB option is the best bang for buck, only because Google leaves a massive gap between it and the 200GB option. Just keep in mind that you can backup multiple computers, your mobile devices and all of your mail in this single pool of storage. You can also share that storage with people in your family group. So 2TB might not be as overkill as you think!
Google Backup And Sync Vs Offline Documents vs Google Drive
It’s important to clarify the three different ways you can keep local copies of cloud data on your computer using Google Drive.
Google Backup and Sync is an application that you download to your computer. You designate which folders on that computer should be backed up or synced with your cloud account. Any files you copy into the designated folder, or which are saved there by an application, will then be uploaded in the background
Google Offline Documents is a Chrome browser plugin that keeps your Google Drive documents on your local machine, so that you can keep working when the internet is not available. An essential add-on for sure, but not much use for backing up your whole drive.
Finally we have the Google Drive web interface. You might not know this, but you can upload anything you want using the web interface, without installing anything on the computer in question. You can drag multiple files and entire folders into the Google Drive page and it will queue and upload them.
Backing Up Specific Files On Google Backup & Sync
If you don’t want to back up your entire hard drive then you can still automatically back up everything that matters to you using Google Backup and Sync.
- First, download and install Google Backup and Sync.
- Once installed, make sure you’re logged into the correct account.
- Next, choose which common folders (such as photos or documents) you’d like to back up. You can also choose a location for your Google Drive folder and create custom folders to sync as you desire.
- Once this is set up, simply move or save specific files you want to back up to those designated folders. Once uploaded, you can retrieve them at any time.
Backing Up Everything
Right, now we come to the big one – backing up a whole drive. By this, we mean creating a disk image backup that you can use to recover your computer in case of a hard drive failure or theft.
First, you need to get an application to make an image of your drive. In this case we chose the excellent free version of Macrium Reflect. Refer to its manual on how to create a whole disk image, since that’s not in the scope of this article. You can use any disk imaging system you want.
The trick here is that we’re targeting our disk imaging backup to one of the folders designated for syncing in Google Backup and Sync. Macrium Reflect supports incremental backups, so it will update that file at set intervals. When Google detects the file has changed, it will upload the new version to the cloud.
If you don’t want to constantly eat up your bandwidth, you can also manually copy your disk image file to your designated folder or set your backup software to only perform backups when you tell it to. The choice is yours.
If the worst should happen, you can download that disk image again and be right back to where you were after replacing or formatting your drive. There you go! You’re safe as houses now.
