Backups

[[Admin] PHugger]

I manage large amounts of data for a living. To me, backups are like breathing. Backups are what allow me to sleep at night. My company realizes how valuable this data is and they are willing to spend whatever is needed to keep it safe and accessible. I’m constantly amazed at people who tell me that they never backup their personal computers – ‘I don’t have anything valuable on it.’ Maybe that’s true or maybe they aren’t thinking hard enough. How about you folks who use PCs for your jobs at church? You have no excuse! You need to stop and think about the data on your machine. What if it disappeared right now? What are you willing to lose?

Pictures
Videos
Emails
Contacts
Links
Configuration settings
Graphics
Documents
Databases
Personal Information
Passwords & Program Keys
General Data
(I’m NOT including program files as they are often faster to simply reinstall than to recover)

Some of these can be replaced at the cost of time – some are irreplaceable. It makes me sick every time I hear about a disk failure, theft, or accident……. It’s always counterproductive to ask if they had backups or not (they just get mad). This needs to stop – your time and work is too valuable to simply trust it to a single disk drive. There are tons of free backup applications out there. You can even start with the one that Microsoft includes with Windows – Excellent Tutorial HERE. You need to develop a strategy – there are millions that can work:

Backup files to -

Another machine on your network
CD/DVD/Flash/Floppy
Dedicated Disk
Remote server on the Web

Backup applications can help you to develop a good strategy. You will likely forget something important that the software will remember. You can schedule your backups to run automatically (mine are completely unattended – purge after 4 weeks). You may never need it, but it’s foolish to be a poor steward of your data when it’s so easy to do it right!

Here are some lists of (mostly) free backup applications –

http://www.hsinlin.com/software/backup.html
http://www.thefreecountry.com/utilit...andimage.shtml
http://free-backup.info/backup-software.htm
http://www.sofotex.com/download/PC_Utilities/Back_Up/
http://www.nonags.com/nonags/diskbk.html
http://www.freedownloadscenter.com/S..._software.html

Here are some commercial programs you may already own that can do the job –

Nero Burning ROM
EZ Media Creator
WinZip

Some recommended by other CMNers

Retrospect Express (OEM - free w/ disk purchase)
(check when you buy a new disk they often give you a backup application free)
Karen's Replicator (free)
Cobian (free)

Drive imaging software (from CMNers) -
Acronis True Image
Norton Ghost
DriveImageXL

This is what I use –

Genie Backup Mananger
(with the File Access Manager for open files)

Here are some reviews –

http://www.backup-software-reviews.com/
http://www.pcmag.com/category2/0,1874,4798,00.asp
http://data-backup-software-review.toptenreviews.com/
(you can see why I chose Genie)

My personal preference is to backup to a separate disk. It’s faster and very reliable. Build an external Firewire/USB2 drive and you can even use it with your laptop.

Check out these external drive enclosures –

http://www.newegg.com/ProductSort/Su...SubCategory=92
(buy a disk on sale anywhere)

The next step for me was NAS – Network Attached Storage
It’s basically a tiny Linux box running Samba that you can place on your network. It’s accessible to anyone and perfect for backups. It might sound beyond your means, but a simple external NAS enclosure can be had for little more than a 1394/USB2 enclosure. You can spend more on features like RAID, Striping, and Print Serving, but the basic 'disk on the network' model is around $70 (without the disk of course). I have one that I use to backup 3 of the four machines in my house. It works great for my XP, Win2k and Ubuntu machines. My personal machine has it’s own external firewire drive. I do a full backup every week and an incremental every day. I can keep 4 weeks of backups on the disk and it automatically purges the older sets. A full week of backups is around 65gB or so. I generally backup large video files separately. An occasional DVD copy is also a great idea (once or twice a year).

Here is that DIY $70 external NAS enclosure –

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817146067
(buy a disk on sale anywhere)

Some 'store bought' NAS solutions (disks included & features galore) -

HP Media Vault
Western Digital Net Center
Maxtor Shared Storage
Seagate Mirra Personal Server
Lacie Ethernet Disk
Hawking Net Store
Netgear Storage Central
Iomega Network Storage
Linksys
Triton Simple NAS
SimpleTech Simple Share
QNAP Turbo Station
Yellow Machine
Buffalo Terastation
Infrant Ready NAS

Hope this helps,
PCH

[blwells45]

Hear, hear!! Very good information, Phugger.

[[Director] Joseph B]

Not that I've ever done something stupid and had to redo a lot of work (well maybe only once or twice). Or that I've ever had a drive crash that wasn't backed up (but I know a guy...) but I have 100 gigs of photo's backed up to at least two seperate locations (usually three).
As Pete says you can't put a value on a backup (until you need it). I know a guy who spent over $800 to recover about 80% of the 5 years of family photographs he had on a drive he had been planning on backing up.

[bobcat1804]

I couldn't agree more. I back up my personal laptop to a 300GB FireWire hard drive. I use Dantz (now EMC Insignia) Retrospect Backup Express that came with a Maxtor OneTouch FireWire hard drive. I have a second FireWire drive, so I can alternate each week. Retrospect automatically backus up everything every night and also keeps track of which hard drive I'm supposed to have plugged in for that week. The Express version is only good for one computer, but they have other versions for small offices and even large server-bases systems. Whatever system you use, pick one and use it consistently.

[KathyBramlette]

I only wish this thread was posted a week ago

[nevmoor]

Hmmm... that reminds me..........

[[Admin] PHugger]

Originally Posted by bobcat1804

II use Dantz (now EMC Insignia) Retrospect Backup Express that came with a Maxtor OneTouch FireWire hard drive.

EMC is a great company. Their storage solutions are fantastic. At work I use their Time Finder software to backup our large arrays. We use a 3rd disk mirror (on top of RAID 1+0), called a BCV to backup our multi-terabyte databases. I get a full mirror copy each day in around 15-20 minutes for a 10tB database. It's quite amazing. I can also create this 3rd mirror across the WAN to a remote host with similar performance (network is slower of course). Retrospect Remote was very popular for Macs back in the 90s for unattended network backups.

Kathy - I'm so sorry for what happened to you. It makes me sad and angry because I feel so helpless. Your song database was perhaps not priceless, but now you can figure out what it's worth. Every time I have had a disk crash I've learned about something else that I should have backed up. Am I pressing the limits of overkill? Perhaps, but that's a geeks prerogative. Pick a solution that protects your investment. I would say that a weekly backup of a work machine wasn't out of the question. The economics are pretty simple -

Time and money spent on backups vs the value of my data if I lost it

This will help you determine the frequency you need.




PCH

[CrossMedia]

Good reminder for us all! Talking from experience of having more than one drive fail, it is well worth the extra effort and given the lost cost of Hard drive storage these days, one that is hard to justify not doing.
I maintain nightly back-ups for both the MACs and PC, with the RAID only having files uploaded to it that are first backed up externally (SATA RAID is set to RAID 0 for performance), or can be recreated from the project files located on the Projects drive.

Another step I have adopted for my edit suite is to format a System Drive with all applications, and then store the drive on the shelf as a backup. It the system drive fails, I can easily install and be back online in a matter of minutes. I try to keep the drive 30-60 days current on all application updates, which I usually only do between major projects, so compatability is not a real issue.

Blessings,
Troy

[kbob]

are many and vary according to importance:

For work, all my data gets backed up three ways-once normally, once email, and once off-site.

My actual reports (still data by your definition) get backed up 6 ways-regular, backup, archive, different drive backup, email, and off-site backup.

Note that by email, I am undercounting by a bit backup-'cause my pst files get archived and backups as well.

Ain't paranoia grand?

Then I try to do dvd's once per month as well.

Rinse and repeat for my photos, graphics, et al.

We've had to restore our drives at work twice-both times we discovered problems with our backups. So test them regularly, examine the log files, and simplify. What we discovered was that any program that created "custom" files instead of a simpler backup in the same formats as the respective programs, just added another possible point of failure to the mix.

Back up early, back up often, and then do it again.

Even for home use, do it for your own addresses and photos. Not just your e-mail/contacts, but also your websites. A great freeware backup program (usual restrictions apply, personal use only, etc...) not real gui, but very fast, is from Karen Kentworthy at

http://www.karenware.com/powertools/ptreplicator.asp

good stuff--- K-Bob Recommended!

[[Admin] PHugger]

Thanks Bob - I couldn't remember her name and didn't have time to hunt it down. Karen's replicator is highly regarded. Whatever program you choose - stick with it. If it doesn't do exactly what you want (this may change over time) look for something else. Start simple and then geek out! Build a system that's automated. Sleep at night.

HERE is my NAS box - it's brand new from HP and SWMBO gave it to me for our 30th anniversary.



PCH

[kbob]

Originally Posted by PHugger

Thanks Bob - I couldn't remember her name and didn't have time to hunt it down. Karen's replicator is highly regarded. Whatever program you choose - stick with it. If it doesn't do exactly what you want (this may change over time) look for something else. Start simple and then geek out! Build a system that's automated. Sleep at night.

HERE is my NAS box - it's brand new from HP and SWMBO gave it to me for our 30th anniversary.



PCH

& Happy 30th!!!

[voyager529]

...what he said...happy 30th.

which reminds me of a time my ex asked me to format her hard drive. On her computer, Windows was doing a 'half-boot-loop', so I asked her if she had anything important on there. she's like "no, I don't care, I have nothing on it" yadda yadda yadda, and I keep asking, and she keeps promising me there's nothing on there, so i make the mistake of actually believing her . I format her hard drive, put everything back, and two weeks later she's like "so yeah I realized that you wiped my iTunes library last week when I connected my iPod to my laptop" :-/. I can't win. In the next breath she tells me that they were all her friends' CD's anyway, which yielded an explanation of the term 'copyright'. Then she tells me that she bought Limewire Pro so she could get the songs legally...which of course yielded ANOTHER discussion as to how she paid for the software, not the content...and ended with the phrase "do you have an Excedrin?" but I digress...

A few other ideas:

-First, xdrive is now free, and that gives you 5 gigs of storage space (more w/paid subscription). They have a piece of software that you can download from their site and
automatically backs up the stuff that you specify. handy little tool, lemme tell ya.

-the other thing I've found that works pretty well is a backup program you can build yourself! For one of my clients I wrote a simple DOS batch file to copy the contents of a few select folders to his external hard drive, then placed that batch file in his startup folder. His documents now back up every time he starts up, and he can access them at any time. It may take a bit more time to set up, but it works really well.


Joey