Backups! You never know ...
 

Just a friendly reminder to back up your data if you aren't already. It could be your livelihood, so develop a backup / disaster recovery strategy because you never know when that hardware can crap out on you ...

I like Acronis to an external drive for personal data on my Win7 box. What do you use?

TGIF! :drinkup

Amen, Friday reminder to backup up your data!

most underrated thing one can do in any biz :thumbsup

This is the sort of thing that needs shouting about EVERY friday :thumbsup

And don't forget to test your backup. Making a backup from a backup, you never know.

Acronis all the way. Critical stuff backs-up every 4 hours. Other stuff every 8. Back-up is swapped with a second on-site unit in a fire safe at the end of every day.

All of this, rotated with an off-site backup in another fire safe every 3-4 days.

Solid!:thumbsup

I use Acronis on the windows machines, and TimeMachine on the Macs.

and leave a copy at a freinds house too :)

Time capsule at work and a time capsule at home. :)

:thumbsup

just run raid1, real time backup

raid is not a backup solution.

and how is it not a backup solution exactly? 3 drives in raid1 will be better backup then anything else

-computer burns up in a fire.
-stupid admin deletes the wrong files

How does RAID help you in those situations?

Raid is HIGH AVAILABILITY.
Raid IS NOT backup or disaster recovery.

Thx for the reminder.

Also as someone mentioned even if you are backing to a ext hd(s) if your surge prot isnt working ALL could go up at once.

2 hard disk copys with one put out of the house and even then unless you bup every day to hard disk your still in theory not always 100% safe all the time.

Dual auto recurring bups to redundant ext hds with a good surge protector and shutting down in storms.. you should be ok. But I still do a full hard disk (C drive) twice a year.

Another option is to bup critical dirs only, to hard disk say every week.

Also don't think cause your puter is less than 6 months old your safe from hd failure. Actually when you first get a new computer is when the danger is greatest. I had a C drive go at 4 months with a brand new hp.

It is important to save and update data. Some data is worth some money.

Imagine the computer system at the bank did not update and your numbers were erased - what a disaster that would be. With a small online payment program run by someone else, the risk of losing data is higher. It could even be a small business with custom software that sucks - be careful.

Nice. But a lot of work to take and swap offsite every three days. But that is about what must be done if you want to be fully safe.

The one problem.. which you take care of through the 3-4 days rotation altho you have only about a one week buffer (as I see it, I could be wrong) if THIS happens:

You delete a file or dir by mistake.

It goes thru the chain and in one week file no more anywhere. :)

So you need the history of hard disk bups to really be safe. Not saying you dont do hard disk too. Just a good example for discussion. So too close of bups and you could delete something. Too far and you lose a few more days if things go down.

I go about a 2 week buffer between 2 ext hds which gives me 2 weeks to discover I deleted something.

After all the chance of one of two ext hds going down is nill (redundancy) while the chance of deleting a file is quite high.

But good system all in all :thumbsup

- All docs are on a NAS which uses RAID for redundancy/availability.
- Contents of NAS are regularly backed up to a removable disk set, one is kept offsite and rotated regularly.
- I also keep along term archive with special file system flags that will not let a file be modified or deleted. (The error messages when it tries to do something with them let me know there's a corruption issue somewhere...)

So any given document will be sitting on 4 separate drives/arrays after a couple of weeks...

And +1 for RAID IS NOT A BACKUP

With a backup you can recover from a fuckup, like accidentally deleting the wrong file... with RAID you can't, the file is gone.

I have been thinking about going with an online storage back up service but most have a limit on space. Anyone using http://mozy.com/?

I back up to an external HD and put in fireproof cabinet, but what if there were an ultra catastrophe? (Example: there were tornado warnings here last week.) Is there a way to back-up to a remote location?

Yes . . . .

I don't keep much of importance on my computer except my content. So I keep the content copied in two separate locations on my computer (I accidentally delete parts of movies and photos all the time so this is mainly because I do this lol). Then every time I load on new photos or video I backup, or whenever I edit 5 or more sets. I keep the hard drive in the closet and away from the computer. I also have a second external HD which I update like once a month that I keep in a fireproof safe. I also keep the old video and photos stored on the cameras until the next shoot comes up, this saved me once when I first started out, before I did backups.... lucky me!

carbonite.com

I hear that. And back up your back ups.

Now you tellling me,i just lost data yesterday.And i know it how that could happen,yet i was still slacking.

i love time machine on macs.. its amazing!!

thank you!