Computer Backups
Nov 20, 2002 at 12:41 AM Thread Starter Post #1 of 14

CaptBubba

Not dumb enough fora custom title...so he thought.
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Well, I've just reformatted and made a norton ghost image of my computer on cd, and I was wondering how everyone else deals with the possiblity of HD failure (or os crashes).

Pick one of the above
 
Nov 20, 2002 at 12:59 AM Post #2 of 14
Since so much of my livelihood is dependent on the data I'm working with...

I have an external FireWire hard drive that backs up my email every five hours (my email is vital to my work) and my documents once or twice a day. I also have a magneto-optical drive that I use to backup files that are important enough that they require a second, indestructable backup; I store the MO discs at a relative's house. Whenever I leave town I bring the external FireWire drive with me
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Nov 20, 2002 at 1:02 AM Post #3 of 14
I drop my vital documents onto a couple of cdrs every now and then. Nothing major, though I do keep some backups offsite(ie: My locker at school.
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Nov 20, 2002 at 1:13 AM Post #4 of 14
My hard disk died a few weeks ago, but I was lucky that none of the files that I wanted were corrupted, so they were moved to another computer at the IT center. Then they were transferred onto my new hard disk. I guess I should back it up, but it's so much trouble!
 
Nov 20, 2002 at 1:46 AM Post #5 of 14
My dad's PC has a tape drive that does autobackups weekly... upstairs we also have a tape drive that I haven't gotten around to configuring to to the same since we reformatted.

I've also got a spare (quite old; ~500meg) SCSI external (can be modded to internal) tape drive that I'm planning to stick either in my desktop or in my webserver, when I get around to it...
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Nov 20, 2002 at 9:53 AM Post #6 of 14
oh, it's the first of the month?

time to backup my email, favourites, game saves, documents, utilities, updates, ****, mp3's...
 
Nov 20, 2002 at 1:30 PM Post #7 of 14
For the stuff I have at home I back it up to CDR since I dont keep much of value on the home PC.

At work I transfer all of my data once a week to a server in the data center. This server is backed up nightly.
 
Nov 20, 2002 at 1:44 PM Post #8 of 14
I have learned the hard way to do backups regularly. Total hard drive failure is no joke and has happened to me twice.
Then there is the occasional total hard drive reformatting that I do when my computer bogs down from all the garbage I install in a year.All those driver conflicts and little left over parts of programs play hell with windows.
I use both zip discs and CD-R depending on type of file or file size.
Also I have learned to back up my design work with hard copies.

sometimes all the above for critical files just to satisfy my paranoia
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Nov 20, 2002 at 7:02 PM Post #10 of 14
Although I voted "I backup my most important documents", either that or "I backup all of my documents" is what should ideally be done, with "I make full HD backups using Ghost or something similar" should be done once in a while (for example, after a complete re-install of an OS and all hardware drivers).
 
Nov 20, 2002 at 9:45 PM Post #11 of 14
right now i have five hard drives in my machine. backing up is stupid for me, i just keep copies of crap on other drives if i really want it. i really think that 90% of what people say is "important" is useless crap, cept for maybe macdef's work reasons. that's why most commercial network servers are scsi raid-5 (redundant striping) and most consumer desktop computers are oem ide.

my new scsi drives are warranteed for another five years.. let's hope they make it.
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mp3s are rippable again (since i buy the albums
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). any software i like is findable again, and will most likely be an updated/better version than the one i had. i have a /grinch directory on my machine that is filled with personal stuff.. but i'm pretty sure now if it suddenly got destroyed, i wouldn't miss it that much.
 
Nov 20, 2002 at 10:07 PM Post #12 of 14
My servers backed up nightly and have raid 5 or mirrored drives. My desktop and laptop (both Win2k) have the main data directories mapped to the other and have file syncronization set up. I bring my PC from home (laptop) and burn a CD of the data contents about once a month.

I don't ghost or anything like that, and view a crash as good excuse to clean up.
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I've had one total hard drive failure in the last year (my laptop about a year ago) and about 5 total that I can recall of my equipment (ie mine or equipment I am responsible for.) Between mine, friends, and other PCs I am around, I figure I see 1 die a month.
 
Nov 21, 2002 at 9:37 AM Post #13 of 14
After losing everything on my father-in-laws computer, I bought a Firewire HD that I use to back up all my documents and stuff I create so that I don't lose stuff that took me years to compile and build!!!
 
Nov 21, 2002 at 3:58 PM Post #14 of 14
I back up all my data on cdrs, maybe twice a year. Living on the edge, baby!
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