| Archive for Downsizer For an ethical approach to consumption |
| Fee |
Backup Backup BackupsJust doing the backups of my backup backup
*yawn* If only I weren't so paranoid! How many levels do you go down in backing up? |
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| sally_in_wales |
well, I thought I'd been very clever by buying a monster huge external hardrive to put everything on, but its stopped working  Just waiting for the company to send a new adaptor which they think might be the problem, really hoping it is just that as a lot of things are on there that it would be a minor pain to have to rework. I think I may end up having to get a second one as backup once its all sorted, my files take up so much space on the machine that cd backups are impractical now.
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| Barefoot Andrew |
I don't backup my backups, but I do periodically dump an additional backup to a hard drive stored elsewhere.
A. |
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| Fee |
Yeah, you just never know when something might go wrong!
My critical stuff goes onto DVD too, which is what I'm doing atm. |
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| Fee |
Me too, and I've left it too long this time  ho hum
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| Barefoot Andrew |
I have no experience of them myself, but iDrive offer online storage, including a free basic package with 2Gbs space.
A. |
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| oldish chris |
Do a risk analysis, how often have you had to retrieve a file from backup? Never? I haven't had a hard drive die on me for years. However, you need to be sure that your copy isn't corrupt in any way. | ||
| vegplot |
Lucky you. I bought a Buffalo TeraStation not so long ago and one drive has failed already bringing the whole raid array down (on a RAID 5?). |
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| Barefoot Andrew |
I have retrieved materials from my immediate backup device on a number of occasions (e.g. accidental deletion).
Having a flawed backup regime is foolhardy for a business: data loss can be the death knell. A. |
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| jema |
business wise I have daily backups to a machine in another datacenter and they in turn get sent to a shared hosting account.
The home regime needs working on
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| Fee |
Absolutely, I had a scare in the thankfully now distant past, but it taught me a valuable lesson in better backing up! I retrieve folders worth of stuff out of backup on a fairly regular basis, when I'm working on updates for clients. |
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| wellington womble |
I back up once a week to an external hardrive. Having said that, the only time I needed to use the back up, was because I was backing up in a very strange way, and er, got it wrong. This meant re-setting the machine, so I'd probably have been better off not watching. I really should do a second one somewhere - online sounds like a good idea. | ||
| Treacodactyl |
I've had a USB stick fail and I've had to rescue data from several people's hard disks because they've failed so it's not unheard of. |
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| oldish chris |
Part of a risk analysis is probability (have I been unusually lucky with my hard-drives?), the next thing to consider is the value of the data and finally the cost the possible counter measures.
If I had a dynamic system in the office, part of the shutting down process should be to create a copy of the files, say on a USB stick, put the stick in your pocket. The probability of both failing at the same time is probably negligible, however the paranoid can have more than one USB stick. Static data is simpler, do it once, but permanently (burn to CD?). When I was in a Civil Service computer site, I was taught that, as important as taking copies, you should make sure your copy is OK and it should be stored at a different location. |
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| jema |
There are any number of horror stories about backups turning out to be useless 
They really are very tricky things
I don't know that there are any really good answers. I was just thinking for a minute that Linux is better than windows for backups, as the partitioning is cleaner in that user data should be on /home and /var, but you can't so easily seperate things out that way, there are loads of settings in /etc and elsewhere that make a system what it is. Neither Linux or Windows were really designed for home backup
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| Treacodactyl |
It's not just disk failures that you need to worry about, or indeed accidental deletes. What would happen if you PC or laptop was stolen? Not uncommon.
Of course any backup should be stored away from your PC, no point in backing up to an external hard disk and leaving that next to your PC to be pinched! |
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| vegplot |
Backups get my back up when they don't. | ||
| Stewy |
I'm after a USB stick flash drive thingy for storage, I want around a 32gb or 64gb but not sure what I should be looking for and how much to pay. I've seen a nice looking Kingston 32gb one on eBay for £45 but also 64gb ones (not Kingston) for around 15 quid, any pointers?? | ||
| Stewy |
Ignore all that, I'm gonna get a 250gb external usb hdd for the same price. | ||
| calisnenath |
I use Carbonite to do my backups. Yes I pay but they do it all and I don't have to think - which is great! And yes I've restored from them more than once and it's been fine. I notice that the professional version of Windows 7 will backup automatically one machine to another. I was going to do that until for various reasons we ended up getting the home version! but the idea was to back up one machine to the other and then back up the other on Carbonite. and yes I've had hard drives fail - at home and at work - I've see USB sticks fail or be infected with a virus, and I've seen a powersupply fail and blow the motherboard meaning a complete reinstall is needed (new mother board is so different the HAL isn't compatible any more yada yada yada) so yes backups are ESSENTIAL! | ||
| jema |
they use a lot more energy than sticks. I switched a couple of years ago to a memory stick that back up some essentials, the way I work the alternative was leaving an external drive powered on
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