Backups

[jimtherev]

Browsing the W7 thread, I wondered what people are doing about preserving valuable data.

Someone t'other day said (s)he now has 7 partitions, for example: the horror if the whole disk crashed! Keef is putting his lappy drive in a caddy & installing a fresh W7... just to give two examples I've noticed.

So how about the data? Do you
- have a wonderful old clunker you use as a server and NEVER mess with?
- backup onto DVD(s) every week? (Grandfather, Father etc - how that takes me back...)
- trust in the god of hard drives, knowing that nothing can go wrong?

or what?

[BOAC]

Well, Jim - I have a 3 hard drives and back-up important stuff on one to another fairly frequently. Around monthly I also back up everything on desktop and 2 laptops to an external USB 500GB hard drive (around £50-£60 to buy). Hopefully my risk is minimized! There are on-line back-up services you can use as well. Back-up to CD is pretty much out of the question now with hard drives the size they are, and likewise DVDs (.....and then I go and buy a bigger hard drive)

[HandyAndy]

I go the image backup route. On two separate external hard drives which stay at home, plus one for good measure that travels with me. I do the backups weekly.

[green granite]

I tend to use my partitions as areas for storing things such as pictures to keep them away from the OS part of the drive, the 7 are across 2 hard drives, also as I have multiple OSes on my M/C I need a separate partition for each

[worrab]

It depends...

We have a mirrored 1Tb RAID-1 D-Link NAS drive that I put on line every week or so and copy new stuff onto that. (Yes, that's two 1Tb mirrored discs)! The nice thing is that it's small enough to fit into the firesafe - about the size of 2 or 3 paperbacks.

My main problem is photos which at 3-4Mb apiece and videos (1-2Gb each) soon eat up space. Fortunately they don't need version control so they're manageable. I even back up the music library (I once lost the lot with a HDD failure and it took days to recreate).

[Sprogget]

I tend to use my partitions as areas for storing things such as pictures to keep them away from the OS part of the drive

I do that too. I Also take a data backup to an external hdd weekly and have Acronis scheduled each week. I have to remember to delete the old Acronis files, they're in the order of 40-50gb, soon eats up the drive.

[Saab Dastard]

One point to consider is that when you are taking a backup, the source and destination are both vulnerable to corruption - power failure for example.

If you are regularly backing up the contents of a disk or directory from A to B and have no C backup, both the source and backup can be damaged or destroyed if you are unlucky.

So it is prudent to either alternate backups, or backup the backup or figure out a way of avoiding having the scenario above come to pass.

SD

[worrab]

Are those partitions on the same physical disc?

[bnt]

I wrote about my system here. Basically, the more valuable the data, the further "offsite" you want to go, so my most critical data goes to Dropbox, encrypted if necessary. If I'm online, it's updated the second I save it, and I can recover old versions if I make a mistake or delete something I shouldn't. I can also get to my data via any web browser.

Less critical data is synced between two PCs, and least-critical data between two physical disks (of different types) in the same machine.

[itwasme]

For those of you using MS Synctoy to back up to a NAS device, be wary of using V2.0 as there are issues with JPG/WMA/MP3 files becoming corrupted when copied to some NAS devices.

See here:

SyncToy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I've reverted to V1.4 til they come up with a fix.

[Keef]

Yonks ago when the earth was young, I wrote a batchfile (remember those?) that copied all my important stuff once a week to a separate drive on another computer. The "old clunker" approach. It created a new folder with the date as part of its name. It did this automatically at 4am, a time when I'm usually fast asleep.

Once in a while (ie when the backup 500GB drive starts to get full), I go and delete a load of backups. I usually end up keeping something like: last 4 weeks, last 4 month-ends, last 4 quarter-ends, last 4 year-ends.

It "just works".

More recently, I added a second routine that repeats the backup to a USB drive on the main machine.

If the laptop is on, and connected to the home network at 6am, it does much the same.

If anyone's looking to do the same without the palaver of a separate backup suite, this is the first couple of lines of the code, run by Windows Task Scheduler:

@ECHO Keef's Backer-Upper for Laptop to Server
xcopy C:\Word\*.* S:\T43BU%date:~6,4%%date:~3,2%%date:~0,2%\C\Word\*.* /C /D /S /Y

It continues in that vein for a dozen or so lines.
S: is the 500GB drive on the "server".

[bnt]

An alternative bidirectional sync program that I've started using on Windows is called Unison, as I mentioned in that other post. It's not as friendly as SyncToy, but I got used to it on Linux and am beginning to prefer it for batch jobs.

I've even managed to get it running in "active-active" mode between a Linux netbook client and a Windows XP "server", which was fun. In this mode the client actually launches it on the server and lets it check the target files locally. This saves time (local disk is faster than network) and traffic (by detecting and copying only the parts of large files that have changed). This needs a bit of hands-on, though e.g. you need to install a SSH server on Windows, such as the Cygwin one.

[jimtherev]

Thanks everyone. I've been using an external hard drive. I know I should pop it in the safe, but confess idleness precludes this - (the safe's half a mile away)

Keef's batch file system has appeal. However, I would despair of trying to automate backups on Mrs JTR's machine: she has the habit of dropping files into random places (cf the 'flat surfaces' thread in JB) and then telling me I've hidden them.

As if.

[BOAC]

Whilst on the subject of external back-up drives, I've just been emailed about a 1TB drive on sale at under £75.

[Sh3113y]

Backups are just a nightmare to manage.

I need to keep more than one version and also use a batch file but with the amount of data it can take ages. I don't trust online backups as you just don't know what security they have. I also use an external for backup but have everything connected to UPS. It's just the little things that catch you out when you come to restore, some little file kept elsewhere. Example being the autocomplete for email addresses in Outlook 2007 as it's a separate file from the pst. I always feel I'm chasing my tail with backups as it's a continual process.

I was taught that the best way is to keep it simple then you almost always get it back hopefully as quickly and easily as possible!

[Background Noise]

I've recently bought a WD 1Tb drive which, so far, is fine. (Amazon - similar price to BOAC's comment). It sits there incrementally backing up a mac using Time Machine but, apart from random hard disc failure of the host machine, is just as vulnerable to theft/fire etc as the mac. I have other hard discs with, less frequent, backups of smaller selections of my data like photos etc which are cleverly hidden away in the sock drawer. They (photos) are the real treasures, along with a few documents, as almost everything else would be recoverable albeit time consuming.

I would like to investigate wireless hard disc options - like apple's time capsule - so that any backup disc could be hidden away and be less likely to be nicked - although maybe not immune to fire.

Otherwise I guess some type of online or over-a-network backup could be useful.

I'm off to copy my pictures to DVD. Where's that paranoia smiley!

[Feline]

Maybe this will help someone ...

My guess is that there are a lot of people who kind of feel that they really should back up everything, preferably Real Soon Now. And because it's a king sized pain in the rear, it always seems to hover somewhere around halfway up (or halfway down) the ToDo list - with the result that it just doesn't get done.

I truly salute those of you that have a real well thought out and bullet proof methodology for back-up and stick to it no-matter what. But for those of who like myself who are permanently in a state of seeking one of those elusive Round Tuits, could I share my personal methodology (which seems to work for me).

Firstly, re-arrange your working habits so that everything you do day-to-day is filed in a folder in your "My Documents" folder. As an example, my personal "My Documents" folder contains folders such as: e-mail, PDF files, Word Documents, Spreadsheets, My Pictures, My Music etc etc.

In my case, my "My Documents" folder is between 2Gb and 3Gb.

I have two 8Gb memory sticks - one for odd days of the month and one for even days of the month. At the end of each day, I copy the contents of the "My Documents" folder to the appropriate day's memory stick using a shareware programme called FileSync (which only copies the files that have changed). Depending on how much work I have done and how many files have been added to the folder, that usually takes about two minutes. After which my system gets shut down and the memory stick gets locked away in a filing cabinet.

FileSync isn't freeware - it's shareware, so if you like it, you send them about $5 and they send you a registration code that removes the (mildly irritating) "You haven't paid!" message. It copies all new and modified files from the Source (on your hard disk) to the target (on the USB stick). It also lets you get rid of all the orphans on your memory stick. There are other programmes - but FileSync works for me. You can get it here: FileWare - Software and Consulting services

Roughly every two weeks (and certainly at least once a month) I write a complete image of my hard disk to a removable disk (specifically a Seagate 500Mb FreeImage USB disk) using Acronis True Image (which is not free, but not expensive, and worth every penny I paid for it). Before I do this, I transfer anything sitting in the "My Documents" folder, such as pictures, music and the like, to more appropriate folders elsewhere on my hard disk. This keeps the "My Documents" folder relatively slim.

So what does this mean? It means that I have all my working documents for the previous two days on memory sticks (this is also very useful when transitioning from desktop to laptop and back again). Which saves me irritation and embarrassment when (for example) I save an empty document onto valuable document that has taken me days to prepare.

The disk image is there should I totally lose my hard disk or complete system - Acronis will simply restore my entire hard disk should that become necessary. And it doesn't matter if it's a couple of weeks out of date, because all my working documents are on the memory sticks - so at worst I'll lose one days work.

Works for me ... one less thing to worry about!

Two observations - I too used to partition my hard disks - kind of helps to pass the time. But would inevitably find that this partition was too small and I wasn't using that partition - so - well, it helps to pass the time!
Also - don't bother with incremental Acronis backups - better to take a full image each time and delete the older ones. Incremental Acronis backups save a bit of time - but you are well screwed if one of the files ever becomes corrupt ...

Sorry this is a bit late - internet access issues - but hope it might help someone ...

[Saab Dastard]

Feline,

Thanks for describing your backup system, a useful read. I like the use of memory sticks for alternate days. Whatever works for you is good, and you clearly have a system that works, is simple and not (too) time-consuming.

Regarding the partitions - yes I know what you mean about space, and the one thing that would help is to note that the "My Documents" and other personal stuff can all be re-directed to a different disk or partition, thereby preventing the default C drive location getting to full.

My personal preference has always been for physically separate disks for System and Data - a C (system) drive of at least 40 GB (for XP) and a Data disk as big as the PC / my wallet can accommodate!

SD

ps - regarding incrementals, I often thought that the other kind of (non-complete) backup should be called excremental, but apparently its actually called differential. I wonder why!

[Feline]

SD,

Thanks for your comments - love your reference to excremental! But won't follow that line of thought here ...

I follow your reasoning on putting XP into a separate partition - my reservation being that some programmes, by default, place their data files into a folder they create in the "Program Files" folder - which should (I guess) live in the same partition as the operating system. My concern is that if the operating system lives in its own partition, users may not bother to back it up (on the basis that they can easily re-install the operating system) and they may lose data and/or setting if they need to do a clean install.

Actually, for that matter, strictly speaking one should save the entire "Documents and Settings" folder (which contains the "My Documents" folder) onto the memory sticks because important data is saved outside the "My Documents" folder. But that's twice the size, so I don't bother.

One point I did forget to make is beware the false sense of security and well-being from deploying mirrored RAID drives: this only saves your bacon in the case of a catastrophic failure of one drive (a rare occurence). Since data is simultaneously written to both drives, it does not protect you from malware or corrupt files.

The ready availability of inexpensive large drives, and users' ability and willingness to install them (sometimes to the dismay of the power supply) does give cause for concern when said ability does not extend to working out how to back them up. Case in point: son and heir (who has about 2 terabytes of storage installed on his system) recently lost a 750Mb drive which contained just about the entire Feline inventory of movies ... Needless to say - they were not backed up ...

[bnt]

Originally Posted by Feline

I follow your reasoning on putting XP into a separate partition - my reservation being that some programmes, by default, place their data files into a folder they create in the "Program Files" folder - which should (I guess) live in the same partition as the operating system. My concern is that if the operating system lives in its own partition, users may not bother to back it up (on the basis that they can easily re-install the operating system) and they may lose data and/or setting if they need to do a clean install.

The short answer to that is: don't let that happen. Put your data in the right place, under your "Profile", and back that up. I'm strongly against backing up the OS, because you may be backing up, then restoring, the problem that brings the system down. I always separate OS from data. I have two computers (desktop and netbook), and replicate my data between them, so a need to reinstall the OS on one is not a disaster.

(When I say "Profile", I mean the location where all your individual data is stored, the contents of the %userprofile%" environment variable. "My Documents" is under there. If you use Mac or Linux, this is your "home directory".)

Originally Posted by Feline

Actually, for that matter, strictly speaking one should save the entire "Documents and Settings" folder (which contains the "My Documents" folder) onto the memory sticks because important data is saved outside the "My Documents" folder. But that's twice the size, so I don't bother.

The problem there is that some applications are ill-behaved, or not "up to speed" on the way it should be done. Older games stored their "save files" under the program directory, but newer ones (e.g. MS FSX, Civ4) put these under "My Documents" as they should. One that keeps coming up in discussions is Microsoft Outlook: if you just let it do its thing, it stores all your mail in a file in a hidden directory, something like %userprofile%\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook. Again, in the past, I moved that file to "My Documents", so I knew where it was and that it was getting backed up.

In general, my message is "know where your data is, and back it up. If it's in the wrong place, move it, or make copies in the right place."