backups

I accidentally hosed all the data on my laptop a couple hours ago, and just successfully recovered using the backup I did on Friday. Thank god. Considering how nervous I was during the recovery process, I'm thinking I should start doing double-backups.

Everyone, backup your computer RIGHT NOW!!!

Having lost 4 had disks i back up onto a DVD every 2 weeks. Less occupied space also allows for quicker defrags, and that means a faster PC in general! :)

i've had a few HD crashes....and I still dont learn....and this time i have some valueable data that wont be easy to retrieve....

but i'm so lazy.....

I can't waht for those new ultra big DVDs as all my data fits on 3 DVDs which is a pain to burn.

I cannot afford to backup to DVD. It just isn't economical.

I backup to a hard disk instead. I have a 20gb drive with that flakey windows compression thing dedicated to the purpose (well if the flakey compression fails then i've still got the master right...)

The other household PC's backup to my main hard disk, usually I do this via the wire rather than radio which then only takes 10 mins or so.

Those backups of course then get into my main PC backups, so my least important data is duplicated twice...

...such a well thought out system eh ;) hehe... um

To backup, I clone a complete image of my drive to an external harddrive. This way I don't just backup my data files, I backup everything (ie. applications too.) It would take forever to reinstall all my applications from disks, not to mention a lot of it was downloaded shareware so I don't have an install disk anyway.

Currently I keep my backup at my office. I'm thinking I should purchase a second firewire harddrive to keep at home; I carry my laptop back and forth, so this could work really well for a backup system, with at least one disk image in a separate location at all times.

what about RAID (using the back-up mode, not the 2x speed mode)? No 2 HD's crash at the same time I'd say..

I back up to CDRs on a regular basis. Unfortunately, a while back my five-year-old spilled her hot chocolate on a couple of backup cds and they got messed up. First time I have lost data since the mid 80's :c/

I'd love a raid array, they're just a little bit out of my pocket for a basic SATA or IDE based setup atm though. Of course i'd much rather have a RAID server stack ... wouldn't we all ...

I just tried doing my backup tonight, and i've had to start excluding a few things because i've not got enough space on the backup drive.

It might also help if I cleared this computer out of junk too...

Not really... Under Windows 2000 and XP you can do software RAID, for no additional cost (other than the 2nd harddrive)

you can also get a low-end hardware RAID controller -- I think I paid $15 for mine a few months back... Only does RAID-0 (striping, no redundancy) or RAID-1 (mirroring) though.

The downside of either the software RAID or the low-end hardware RAID is that you don't have a hot-swap backplane and such, but for a home system you really don't need those, typically you can afford to power your system down to replace a bad drive if it comes to that.

(The only reason I bought the RAID adapter is so I could add a DVD burner to my computer... I had run out of IDE ports, and the RAID adapter was cheaper than a plain IDE controller... I don't actually run it in RAId mode though)

Anyway, as far as backups are concerned: Please note that RAID is NOT a replacement of backups altogether. While it will protect you from a drive burning up, it will NOT protect you against 'accidentally' deleting/overwriting a file, or a virus wiping your partition table for example. It will also not protect you when your computer gets hit by a powersurge and your drives and/or controller short out at the same time.

Back...whats????

Why don't you just back up the crucial stuff like work that you've been working on, not just the entire harddisk. That stuff can easily fit on a pen drive or CD.

Otherwise you're just backing up a hard disk full of rubbish :)

I just recently lost my Entire my documents and eventually my HDD from a powercut. I've lost almost 3 years of work caus I thought it would never happen :(

I've had many powercuts. Actually I have them about once a month. It has something to do with my multiPSU setup I think :D. Never lost a HDD in my life though. Sometimes I've had corrupted Windows.

It would be wise to invest in a 'UPS' as well as backing up frequently, especially if you're prone to power cuts.

Yeah, as always I just find out the hard way.

The biggest mistake people make is figuring out their backup method - but not their restore method.

I dont want to be 3 weeks getting everything back the way I want it. I box up most of my software and send it loftwards so it's out of the way, I dont always find them again on the first attempt...

I dont have a backup procedure, I have a restore procedure that my backup process fits into.

Only recently have we started to see low end backup software support backing up of open files, there's still millions of companies out there who think they are backing up but will run into trouble the moment they try to restore it all.

I recently realised how much of an idiot I was, having never really bothered with backups. I'm so lazy that backing up onto a string of DVDs was just not going to happen.

So I bought myself a 120Gb external disk and a copy of Syncback SE. I just backup all my "Projects" folders, so my programming stuff, lightwave stuff, and any folders I'm likely to dump work-in-progress stuff, such as my desktop, my documents, etc. And I try to do it as often as possible.

It means I'll have to reinstall windows and all my software, but that's not a problem. My system needs a reinstall anyway, it takes about ten minutes to boot, and no amount of cleaning and optimising seems able to fix it. The actual startup is quick, but after I log on, I'm waiting forever.

Ho hum.

I've never really had a proper backup system. Fortunately I haven't ever had any problems, but seeing as my HD is about 5 or 6 years old now (I've been moving it from PC to PC with all the data) I think maybe it's about time. . . I'll probably just get a couple of extra HDs and use one to do a full backup every month or so and then use the other to do more regular backups and start using SourceSafe or something on the other disk for my current projects.

Is it just me, or am I the only person who has like 20 variations of a directory containing a blitz project? whenever I start making changes, I'm paranoid I'll mess it up so I copy the whole thing into a new directory first (not always the most recent copy) . . . a lot of my projects hence become a nightmare to manage - it's like open source with one developer :O)

It's time I started using SourceSafe for my Blitz projects methinks.

I currently just backup my development source to a USB pen drive and, well, that's it really. Thought I do work on 2 different PCs almost every day so there's almost always 3 copies of the latest source kicking about.

Unfortunately the USB drive is now getting pretty full so I'm thinking about one of those little external HDs. Dunno if they're resilient enough to be carted around in my bag every day or not though.

I have 2 pc's networked so I keep a duplicate of important stuff on both systems - I also keep the most vital stuff like source code on a USB pen drive. I never back up my OS as when it goes wrong I'd rather install from scratch. Can be a bit of pain to reinstall downloaded shareware though but I usually keep details of licence keys in a paper file.
Having said that I haven't got a clue what/where my Blitz BUID is !

Basically I have 2 massive SATAs and I have made a batch file to backup all my critical stuff from one drive to the other. So I click this batch file and make a cup of tea and it's on the other drive so if either drive goes pop, I have very recent copy. Then monthly or so I backup to DVD. Critical stuff easily fits on one but I have a lot of archive stuff that I only backup once a year or so. The point of the DVD is if my computer got nicked I still have the data as it's v. unlikely that both my drives would die at the same time unless some totally massic electrical catastrophe occured.

I nearly lost my data a year ago when I corel draw 7 on a new PC and it crashed XP. I stuck in the XP disk hoping to get the recovery console BUT it was an OEM factory restore disk and the first thing it said was Formatting! I hit the reset button but the drive didn't boot. So I got GetBackNTFS and got it all back. Why didn't I use the 2nd drive, well I had just blanked it after installing it in the new, at the time, working PC. Dumb, but survived!

Also my main drive started making funny noises recently, I didn't wait, I just replaced it because I can't be arsed for it to go wrong and then to panic.

I almost purchased a new piece of backup software - it was rather expensive. Has some great features like FTP backups, Network Backup, off site storage etc... First problem I had was that it was not compatible with my Tape Library - hey no problem, thier tech support sorted that. So I trial the stuff for a couple of weeks (in parallel to my existing stuff) and then I try to do a Restore. All hell breaks loose!, none of the base backups or incrementals will restore, they are not compatible or corrupt!!!. Guess they lost a customer 'cause I could have lost a lot of data.

Actually, you can now buy DVD burners for under 40 bucks, and DVD-RW rewritable discs for about a dollar each, which you can keep reusing... So they would actually be cheaper than getting a second harddisk for your backup copies.

Not the most practical method perhaps, but prices have gone down tremendously over time for DVD burners & media.

I lost two months of development on my (so far) only Blitz project because of a crash. I do back ups regularly and I had thought I had backed up my .bb files, but when I looked on the disc - nothing, I was really miffed. Because I'm working, decorating, child minding and a part time student (and lazy) I still haven't got back to where I was. I now have a new computer and have installed Ghost 9 on it along with a second hard drive, Ghost 9 can run scheduled full/incremental back ups and I'm hoping this system will mean I only lose the minimum of information when my next crash occurs. I also bought a DVD Writer and I'm still intending to back up regularly using it as well.

I have a back hard disk made from diamond which is buried in the gobi desert and encased in concrete, 2 miles from the center of the earth.

Ruz: wtf, you left it on earth? Mine orbits the sun once every 10 years.

well i grew up in a poor town, so i dont go for the fancy options

I back up my data to passing comets.

I use the theory that states that information is indestructable. . . if I lost it, then it must just mean that it now exists somewhere else, in some other form, somewhere in the universe - I just have to figure out how to find and extract it :O)

Hey Snidesmin,

I might use that one on my wife. I lost about 2 years worth of photos including hundreds of photos of my new born son. I was in the $#!T for weeks.

Well... considering that it's based on an metallic platter spinning at 5,400 - 15,000 revolutions per minute, with read/write heads coasting on a minute cushion of air just above it, reading/writing with magnetic signals that will change tens of millions of times per second... a single dust-particle in the way of a drive head can ruin your data and/or drive.

It's really not a question of whether your drive will fail, but when. If you're lucky its physical life expectancy is longer than its economical one (e.g. you upgrade to a new drive before it wears out), but you're not always that lucky.

my passing comet crashed

into planet X

I long for a 15GB usb memory plugin to back up to, since my drives rarely go above that amount of usage.

yeah, taht would be nice esp. if it was £10.