Dane's good reason to backup

[dcv]

I'm having a rather bad night, so I thought I'd share a good reason to keep several backups - Since yesterday:

1. My Windows install caught a virus, and I'm going to have to reinstall.
2. My Linux install became corrupted, and I'm going to have to reinstall.
3. My main backup drive became corrupted, and I've lost hours of videos that I couldn't fit on my secondary backup drive (mostly IPTV stuff - nonessential, but a shame to lose).

If it weren't for my secondary backup drive, I'd have lost years worth of papers, presentations, and programs.

Once I get everything in a somewhat working order, I'm going to burn said documents to CDs as well, in case next time my secondary backup decides to go too.

(If my apartment ever went up in flames, I also have copies stored on a computer at my mom's house in another city)

//typed from my iBook, the only functioning computer in my apartment
//and I'm scared it'll go any minute now, too

So the moral of the story is this:

a. Computer failure SUCKS
b. Back up your important data

[picch]

My HD in my laptop failed and I lost my 15 page term paper a week before it was due last semester. woo!

[dparm]

Last week I accidentally formatted my backup drive...thank god for file recovery software! I thought I had lost 50GB of work.

[rjthomas]

(If my apartment ever went up in flames, I also have copies stored on a computer at my mom's house in another city)

Ha..? Dont be afraid to take this hypothetical seriously.

Sorry Dane about your bleh-night:(

[lnp]

Yeah, sorry dude. That blows.

I would say however, that reminding people to backup often falls on deaf ears because they're thinking of viruses and such. People don't remember that HDs have motors and all sorts of other parts that can break. And other things can and do happen to the indsides of machines and apartments. So, best to have offsite backup. One security guy had a podcast where he boasted that there's a CD with his important information/docs at his lawyer and his mom's house. I found the mom's house location endearing.

"Mom...can you send me my life back on the CD I gave you...or better yet, just make a copy and send it to me?"

[jmcgon]

Last week I accidentally formatted my backup drive...thank god for file recovery software! I thought I had lost 50GB of work.

How does one go about accidentally formatting a drive...?

[picch]

I've accidentally typed format D: into a cmd prompt :P

[sfontes]

Also, when you back up, don't lose wherever you backed the data up to.
*SO can't find my pc's backup data dvds* doh! >.<

[picch]

Also, when you back up, don't lose wherever you backed the data up to.
*SO can't find my pc's backup data dvds* doh! >.<

NAS Storage

[dcv]

Another GREAT reason to back up (and another reason this week kinda sucks):

Somebody broke into my car last night and stole all of my CDs.

About 200 of them.

If I hadn't ripped them all to mp3, I'd be out 200 CDs worth of music.

[sfontes]

NAS Storage

huh. Had never heard of that. i'd only gone to DVDs because my external was the spawn of the devil. *nods* apparently, the dvds have become its minions are are hiding out of the external's spite.

[stoecker]

Dane did you break a mirror or anything in the last couple days? You are having some bad luck

[dparm]

I accidentally formatted a drive because of HP's really lousy bootable USB drive utility.....it lists incorrect drive letters.

[dcv]

huh. Had never heard of that. i'd only gone to DVDs because my external was the spawn of the devil. *nods* apparently, the dvds have become its minions are are hiding out of the external's spite.

NAS is short for network-attached storage - it's either a small retail box or (if you DIY) an extra computer stuffed with hard drives, and it's attached to your network so all computers on the network can write/backup to it (also read from it).

If I can ever scrounge up the cash for it, I'm going to build a NAS box with four drives in RAID5 to make sure I never lose anything important.

//operating phrase - if I can ever scrounge up the cash for it

[fischerm]

I've been thinking about some sort of NAS thing for my home too. I'd love to do a nice raid 5, but a 500gb raid 5 starts to get a bit pricey. So far I'm leaning towards two identical fat drives and just mirroring them. Probably external with separate power supplies etc.

[jmcgon]

A $15 IDE to USB adapter and an old 60GB drive works as my backup at the moment. Although, lately I have been eyeing the SATA to USB adapters. I think they are around $25.

I'll toss some backup ideas out there to some of you techies...

I've toyed around with a bootable Bart CD that has Ghost 8 and some AutoIt scripting loaded for an automated backup process. Only problem is a seperate computer needs to be on for the Ghostcast server (That could be your Raid5 computer on a gigabit network :p)

I haven't tried booting the Bart CD and Ghosting it with the IDE to USB adapter yet -- Maybe a test I will do in the future when I feel like wasting the time writing the AutoIt script :rolleyes:

[rjthomas]

Another GREAT reason to back up (and another reason this week kinda sucks):

Somebody broke into my car last night and stole all of my CDs.

About 200 of them.

If I hadn't ripped them all to mp3, I'd be out 200 CDs worth of music.

(Omg) Sorry Dane..You're having one of those snowball weeks/months..Where everything just gets slow.ly.wor SEeeeeeee

Good news, though! With time things will look up. Trust in that.

[rjthomas]

Yeah, sorry dude. That blows.

I would say however, that reminding people to backup often falls on deaf ears because they're thinking of viruses and such. People don't remember that HDs have motors and all sorts of other parts that can break. And other things can and do happen to the indsides of machines and apartments. So, best to have offsite backup. One security guy had a podcast where he boasted that there's a CD with his important information/docs at his lawyer and his mom's house. I found the mom's house location endearing.

"Mom...can you send me my life back on the CD I gave you...or better yet, just make a copy and send it to me?"

That's okay. You live and learn, and it could have been a lot worse. Besides, we have Lars' avatar to keep spirits up! Nothing like geek chic & red wavy hand headbands!

[picch]

I wrote an autoit script that backs up my stuff on my tower and laptop to my nas drive. Including depending on the day of the week it will backup my dvds or my game disks (backing up those on their own is around 30gb and easily doubles the time needed to back everything up so it's not done nightly)

PS transfering 30-60gb worth of stuff over wireless sucks

[jmcgon]

PS transfering 30-60gb worth of stuff over wireless sucks

*Cringe* :puke: :puke: :puke:

[dparm]

I wrote an autoit script that backs up my stuff on my tower and laptop to my nas drive. Including depending on the day of the week it will backup my dvds or my game disks (backing up those on their own is around 30gb and easily doubles the time needed to back everything up so it's not done nightly)


PS transfering 30-60gb worth of stuff over wireless sucks


Ever consider using the Windows backup utility? It's pretty straightforward and doesn't require using any scripts/batch files.

[dcv]

[LEFT]


Ever consider using the Windows backup utility? It's pretty straightforward and doesn't require using any scripts/batch files.

It's been a while since I've used it, but does the Windows utility do incremental backups? I for some reason don't think it did.

I mainly don't use it because my backup drive is fat32 formatted (the only format Windows, Linux, and OS X can all read/write natively), and the Windows backup utility just creates one massive file containing everything (fat32 has a 4GB file-size limit).

[dparm]

Yes, it does incremental and differential backups IIRC. It may be able to split it into multiple files, or, you could simply have two backup jobs run for different folders.

[nlopez]

I believe you're find rsync is your friend, unless that 30-60G of new data.

[picch]

no it's the same data. It's mainly backing up my music, movies, game disks, email, etc...

[nlopez]

Then rsync is most definatly your friend as it'll only send what's changed. It'd work even better if you have ssh or the rsync daemon running on your NAS so that it doesn't need to read the old data over a potentially slow link to make comparisons.