Poll: How do you back up your important data?

drwho07 · Joined: Nov 29, 2007 Posts: 1546 Location: Central FL, USA

Just a suggestion,

Because of the very limited size of one floppy disk and the fact that they are prone to data errors, I'd think that a Flash Drive of suitable size would work much better.

You could even use a little batch file to keep all those files backed up to the flash drive. XCOPY works wonders for that purpose.
It you're not up on your DOS batch files, I'd be glad to write one for you.

I back up all my data files every day with one batch file. It takes only seconds.

That's getting into a topic that I didn't want to get into yet.
More on that later,

Doc Cool

jbq7448 · Joined: Jan 23, 2007 Posts: 5

We are a husband and wife graphic design firm and have a server that runs 2 mirrored raid 1 partitions. I save directly to the server while my wife saves to a second hard drive in her machine and once a day Karen Kenworthy's "Replicator" copies all the new stuff over to one of the raid partitions. Every 2 days I copy the raid partitions over onto a usb external hard-drive once again using Replicator.

Did have a Murphy's Law situation not long ago when the external drive died. It was still under warranty and got sent back to the manufacturer. Of course, before the replacement drive could arrive had an update blue screen the server. We recovered, but was a little nerve racking for a bit.

Baby_Tux · Joined: Mar 06, 2007 Posts: 924

I am familiar with Karen & her stuff. If I recall right she was with some site or something & had new stuff available each week. Then it all went away. Glad that her stuff didn't as she made some really useful programs.

Now for the reason I am responding, will that "replicator" write the same data to two drives at (virtually) the same time? Would be nice to have two external HD's with the same data going. I'd like to do that here, would save me the time of duping.

Bearly1227 · Joined: Feb 21, 2003 Posts: 48 Location: Central MA, USA

To paraphrase and old cliche, on what is a grandmothers favorite 9 letter word? EatEatEat. Then what is a computer consultants favorite 18 letter word? BackupBackupBackup . .

I now use a combination of backups: Monthly Image backups to an external USB HDD which is recoverable using a linux boot CD.

Daily backup of data to internal HDD.

Periodic Backups to DVD's.

Although I do not use it, one clever "off site" backup storage is ones own motor vehicle. I had heard of a guy who kept his backups in a firesafe in his car. His thinking being not likely he'd lose the car and the house in the same fire.

Before I bought my wife her new laptop (64 bit Vista ... big mistake !), I had begun cross saving image files and daily files between the two computers, assuming, except for major calamity, we'd not lose both computers/disks at the same time. (Yes, we each have our own UPS all the time.)

For Florida bound persons, in Palm Beach County, FPL (Florida Power & Light) sells a line conditioning service that goes onto the meter, and they "insure" all electrical devices connected against harm. Seems likea good deal!

Other off site storage can be in other people homes (relatives), bank vaults(Rental boxes), Storage Units (UHaul etc.).

Recently my External HDD failed twice in a year, and the only salve for my bacon were my DVD backups. (Before I began cross saving systems).

Bob

drwho07 · Joined: Nov 29, 2007 Posts: 1546 Location: Central FL, USA

I have a nice almost-new 500 gig hard drive that was in an external enclosure that totally failed. Its owner just gave it to me to get rid of it......they were so sick of it.
The drive is just fine and was formatted FAT-32, which lends itself nicely to my use. Extra HD's are so cheap any more that people just give them away. Wink

I know there are about as many backup schemes as there are people doing them, and that's why I started this thread.
Likewise, there is NO one scheme that would be right for everyone.
I have mine.....you have yours.....he/she has theirs, etc.

This thread is not for the techie or geek, but for the user that will read this thread in the future, with NO idea how to do backups and maybe they will get inspired to start a backup scheme of their own.
That's what I'm hoping anyway..................
And, if anyone wants help, I'll be glad to help them.

Cheers mates,
the Doctor Cool

ceebee · Joined: Dec 30, 2006 Posts: 4 Location: UK

Hi - I just voted for 'other method' - I meant remote, on-line. Should I have chosen the first option for this method? - I didn't as 'media' suggests to me something you physicallly have with you (as you say, DVD, USB HDD etc.). I notice quite a percentage of replies are for 'other'. Should online be a separate specific option do you think?

drwho07 · Joined: Nov 29, 2007 Posts: 1546 Location: Central FL, USA

If your method of backup is not specifically specified in the poll, then it's "some other method".

It's not rocket science, but just to get a general idea of who's backing up their computer and who's not and if they are, how are they doing it.
The important part is that backups are being made, not so much how or to what media.

We've talked about doing backups here in this forum for years in many threads and many posts. I just saw a TV commercial last night, that offered FREE space to do your backups on-line. That definitely wouldn't be my first choice. Confused

They give you a small space for FREE, but to get enough space to be practical, you have to pay for it.

I have some (free) space on "Box.net" where I store some program files for easy download. But it's not enough space to backup my computer.

More on my own backup scheme later,
The Doctor Cool

PhotoCarp · Joined: Sep 06, 2007 Posts: 109

I've been insanely busy lately and haven't had the opportunity to chime in here until today.

I'm using Acronis at home and my office.

At home, I backup all documents twice a week to one external drive. In addition, I back up both internal drives to a second external drive every two weeks. If I'm working on something that would totally frustrate me if a HDD should die then I back up that file to a thumb drive that I carry at all times. Certain other files are backed up to a remote site. Between two and four times a year I back up everything to DVDs and toss them in my safe deposit box.

At my office I back up all documents daily and everything weekly to a portable HDD that goes with me at the end of every day.

A portable drive and good back up software have saved my son's skin at college a couple of times when his hard drive decided to go on strike..

drwho07 · Joined: Nov 29, 2007 Posts: 1546 Location: Central FL, USA

Dude! I'm glad you finally found the time to add your two cents worth.

It sounds like you've pretty well got this whole backup thing figured out.

Good Going!

Doc Cool

drwho07 · Joined: Nov 29, 2007 Posts: 1546 Location: Central FL, USA

Well, I see the activity here has hit a lul, so I'll give my own idea of the perfect backup scheme. I'm also gratified to see that no-one has said that they don't do backups at all.

To be a really good backup, it should not be just inside the computer, in case a lightning strike or PSU failure should burn out all the internal drives.

A DVD backup is most useful if it will boot to your backup program, so no other boot disk is required. It should also be stored in a safe place, NOT in a box next to the computer. In case of a fire, the DVD's will be the first thing to go up in flames.

I alternate backups, so I'm not putting all my eggs in one basket, so to speak.

I always boot by PC with my Ghost 2003 boot floppy, to do all my backups. That takes Windows completely out of the equation.
With my hard drive in FAT-32 mode, I can run cleanup batch files from the boot floppy, to delete all the junk files from the HD before actually running Ghost to do the backup.
Contrary, to some SO CALLED PC experts, Windows XP runs like a champ on a FAT-32 formatted HD. Not so, with Vista or Win-7. Crying or Very sad

Now, if I make a backup to a second HD partition or to a second internal HD, the backup takes only a few minutes with FAST compression.
But when I make a compressed backup to DVD, Ghost knows I'm backing up to DVD and asks me if I want to copy my boot disk to the DVD, thus making it boot up just like the Ghost boot floppy. That works only if I boot from a floppy, not a flash drive or CD.
Of course, I say "Yes". It would be pretty dumb, to say "NO".

OK, so when the backup to DVD completes, I label the DVD and take it to my friends office, 20 miles away for storage in his fireproof office safe. I try to do this at least once every two weeks, while I do my backups to one of my internal HD's at least weekly or bi-weekly.

Daily, all my changed or added files are backed up to the second internal HD, by a simple batch file which I run in conjunction with my Quick Shutdown routine.
If the original HD fails, I have my backup on drive #2 and if that drive fails, with all my backups on it, I still have the original.

Currently, I have three HD's in my system for a total of about 1.2 terabytes of storage.

In twelve years, I've not lost one single file to drive failure. Wink

Ghost rules!

The Doctor Cool