Post subject: Re: Have you backed up recently? Posted: Thu Apr 23, 2009 10:32 am
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Not that I am concerned, but nowadays, hardly back up anything.
All my stuff is on my Portable 40GB HDD, Work, Piccies, etc.
Every three months I do burn it onto DVDs for archival purposes, but nothing on the huge scale of others, including our admins. I should probably do something at the very least back it up when I plug it into my dell.
Post subject: Re: Have you backed up recently? Posted: Thu Apr 23, 2009 11:27 am
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Joined Tue Feb 12, 2008 5:28 pm
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Yeah, well it's quite easy with small amounts of data... if all you got is pics, docs etc on a 40GB drive then it's very cheap to make a backup... and if people lose data over 40GB then it's just pure laziness (unless they consider that data non-important). But try to backup data that exceeds any size of modern storage medium today. The largest drive you can get today as a consumer is 2TB. After a quick count I counted to approximately 48TB here. How do you backup that easily? And I do want to keep all of it, about 90% of it is critical. Storage media sure is behind in terms of technology AND reliability.
Tape backups can store much more. The technology is even older than harddrive technology, but the prices are off the chart and not even proportional to the amount of data it stores. Unfortunately these solutions follow the standard consumer<>corporate formula, if the product aims towards a business then charge 10 times more for it. Preferrably even more. So as consumers we are stuck with unreliable harddrive backups.
But I'll be making my manual backups and hope nothing happens. Along the road I might change the file system on the drives to a more robust system (such as ZFS or perhaps Ext4 if it pans out to be good, perhaps even HFS+ on a Mac), and hopefully we'll get larger harddrives soon. Too bad my data amounts grow faster than the storage media available.
Post subject: Re: Have you backed up recently? Posted: Thu Apr 23, 2009 5:11 pm
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This is the problem these days, there's too much data to lose easily. I'm just lucky all my data is either valuable and backed up and small, or not as valuable and disposable.
Post subject: Re: Have you backed up recently? Posted: Sun May 03, 2009 7:17 pm
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Linux reads my [censored] up drives better than windows, try puppy linux live cd and plug it in and see if you can copy the data. (I have done that a couple of times)
Post subject: Re: Have you backed up recently? Posted: Sun May 03, 2009 7:52 pm
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zamadatix wrote:
Linux reads my [censored] up drives better than windows, try puppy linux live cd and plug it in and see if you can copy the data. (I have done that a couple of times)
OK the NTFS filesystem is damaged (how I have no damn idea)
Now I got to find some way to either restore the filesystem, etc.
I got a backup of most things on my dell anyway. Documents haven't changed hardly since last month. Pictures, got backups, can always re-import them. Websites, well they are either uploaded, or I can forget about them.
File Scavenger (what mrpijey used) finds all the files, in the folders etc etc, only snag is I can't afford the licence, I got no money at this moment in time.
Post subject: Re: Have you backed up recently? Posted: Sun Jun 14, 2009 4:13 pm
In general I do try to backup my most sensitive data and things I wish to keep (such as freelance projects and the hundreds of gigabytes of assorted OS ISOs I download) though I have on numerous occasions lost everything after corrupting encrypted harddrives!
I have an SMB share called "File Pot" that I regularly manually backup to... I tried setting up Windows Seven Build 7100 to backup to this automatically but --every-- time without fail it would cause a stop error! Since then I've been getting regular BSODs (2+ a day) with Build 7100 and it's driving me to distraction!
Backups are certainly something prominent on my mind..
PS: This post is a re-write! First time round I got another stop error!!!!
Post subject: Re: Have you backed up recently? Posted: Tue Jun 16, 2009 12:16 pm
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I've only sort of backed up. I used the Windows Easy Transfer thing to save my Windows 7 User Account and data, but that only sort of counts as a backup I suppose.
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Post subject: Re: Have you backed up recently? Posted: Sun Jul 05, 2009 5:10 am
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Joined Sun May 13, 2007 12:42 am
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BrianE wrote:
In general I do try to backup my most sensitive data and things I wish to keep (such as freelance projects and the hundreds of gigabytes of assorted OS ISOs I download) though I have on numerous occasions lost everything after corrupting encrypted harddrives!
I have an SMB share called "File Pot" that I regularly manually backup to... I tried setting up Windows Seven Build 7100 to backup to this automatically but --every-- time without fail it would cause a stop error! Since then I've been getting regular BSODs (2+ a day) with Build 7100 and it's driving me to distraction!
Backups are certainly something prominent on my mind..
PS: This post is a re-write! First time round I got another stop error!!!!
Do some kernel debugging, it helps when you have Stop Errors/BugChecks.
Post subject: Re: Have you backed up recently? Posted: Mon Jul 06, 2009 10:43 pm
Noobus Maximus Site Moderator
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Due to my off-site backup server I had to turn my old gaming comp into a makeshift server To backup the backup drive, and its backs up weekly and only ever switch on at weekends. Works a treat.
Post subject: Re: Have you backed up recently? Posted: Mon Jul 27, 2009 11:52 am
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I regulary back-up all my stuff even my 3TB of stuff because in the past i have had a 500GB External Hard Drive fail. Now i backup once a week and back-up my local C drive weekly aswell.
Post subject: Re: Have you backed up recently? Posted: Tue Jul 28, 2009 12:53 pm
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I keep my important files on atleast 2 computers in two different buildings, PLUS on my external Hard-Drive. I backup my Desktop before and after LAN Parties. And I am probably going to backup my desktop using Acronis so I can swap Motherboards and CPU, but I'll check if it will work first using Google.
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Post subject: Re: Have you backed up recently? Posted: Tue Jul 28, 2009 2:14 pm
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bob_george33 wrote:
And I am probably going to backup my desktop using Acronis so I can swap Motherboards and CPU, but I'll check if it will work first using Google.
This might not work, since the HAL (hardware abstraction layer) might be different on the replacement motherboard, and this will cause Windows to BSOD as soon as you try to load it. The only way around it is a reinstall. It's pot luck whether it works or not. Also, after you change it and it does end up working, you'll have lots of drivers trying to load that it has no hardware for so you might see a huge performance hit.
Post subject: Re: Have you backed up recently? Posted: Wed Jul 29, 2009 1:30 am
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Andy wrote:
bob_george33 wrote:
And I am probably going to backup my desktop using Acronis so I can swap Motherboards and CPU, but I'll check if it will work first using Google.
This might not work, since the HAL (hardware abstraction layer) might be different on the replacement motherboard, and this will cause Windows to BSOD as soon as you try to load it. The only way around it is a reinstall. It's pot luck whether it works or not. Also, after you change it and it does end up working, you'll have lots of drivers trying to load that it has no hardware for so you might see a huge performance hit.
I'm changing from AMD to Intel. The backup is so I can Revert changes if it doesn't go to plan. Acronis doesn't let you swap from IDE to SATA drives either unless you uninstall the Hard-drive controllers. Luckily I'm not doing that.
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Post subject: Re: Have you backed up recently? Posted: Thu Jul 30, 2009 12:15 am
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Joined Mon Jul 27, 2009 2:54 am
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I have a partition for my documents on the PC's hard drive. I almost lost it all (many years of architecture and design work) with a hard disk failure, so I did the following thing:
Bought a 500MB WD external disk, and placed in that disk an XP's "briefcase" folder with the contents of the documents partition, which I update whenever necessary.
I find this method perfect as the "briefcase" folder acts as a regular folder on other computers and other OSs (it's not in cryptic hard to get formats as in other backup applications), and I do the update/backup when I find it should be done (when I finish an important document, for instance).
The problem with automatic backups is that when something bad happens to the source or if something is deleted, we risk seeing it reproduced on the backup, losing information and rendering the backup useless.
Post subject: Re: Have you backed up recently? Posted: Thu Jul 30, 2009 12:28 am
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tiagodovale wrote:
The problem with automatic backups is that when something bad happens to the source or if something is deleted, we risk seeing it reproduced on the backup, losing information and rendering the backup useless.
The problem with ANYTHING automatic is that you loose your control over what happens. It's like one of the updates for the EEE PC running xandros. Instead of adding files all it did was delete them.
I was going to do a backup yesterday, But I'm waiting to get my 2 sata drives back so I can back them up at the same time.
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