How often do you backup your important data?
- Thread starter Ian
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I backup my documents once per week. And if I install Windows and all applications on a somebody's computer, I sometimes make the image of system partition and write it to another patition which is intended for data. I use Norton Ghost32 to create an image. I think of becoming familiar with Acronis.
An interesting poll I wonder if the results reflect general attitudes or whether they are computer specific. For example, I have always been a documents hoarder and until recently always had a filing cabinet even in my home. As a result backing up computer data was second nature. My children (now in their thirties) don't keep any papers for more than a few minutes (a few weeks at the most) and don't backup computer data; probably a reaction to my hoarding. If they lose data they spend a few minutes cursing the manufacturer for supplying an unreliable machine and then forget about it.
If you can afford to waste your time recreating what you have aleady done, or if you regard what you have done as disposable then don't bother to backup. If you are going to backup then at least put the backup onto a different disk, preferably not in the same computer, and/or backup to removable media. If at all possible store the backup in another building or at least another room. {EDIT: sorry I see this advice has already been given but I guess repeating it cannot harm}
If you can afford to waste your time recreating what you have aleady done, or if you regard what you have done as disposable then don't bother to backup. If you are going to backup then at least put the backup onto a different disk, preferably not in the same computer, and/or backup to removable media. If at all possible store the backup in another building or at least another room. {EDIT: sorry I see this advice has already been given but I guess repeating it cannot harm}
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I have at least two back up locations. More for important stuff, like work that I don't want to have to recreate from scratch. I'm thinking of using one of my old disk drives to put everything on and stick it in my safe depost box as an offsite backup too. At work I sneak on whatever file servers that they will give me access to and put a copy of everything on it also.
One place I worked I was asked to rewrite a bunch of focus reports they lost because they only accessed them once a year and the disk packs are archived to tape after say, 200 days, then the tapes are wiped on like day 400. They had done their reports on like the first two weeks in January usually every year and were delayed a couple weeks or so that year for the first time in a while. Other than that they never touched the programs. This time when they did they were gone. They had no specs, no print outs, no docs other than what were stored with the programs. No rewrite was possible in any real way. They didn't even remember what was on the reports they just ran them every year. So they were hosed. Plus I don't know focus.
One place I worked I was asked to rewrite a bunch of focus reports they lost because they only accessed them once a year and the disk packs are archived to tape after say, 200 days, then the tapes are wiped on like day 400. They had done their reports on like the first two weeks in January usually every year and were delayed a couple weeks or so that year for the first time in a while. Other than that they never touched the programs. This time when they did they were gone. They had no specs, no print outs, no docs other than what were stored with the programs. No rewrite was possible in any real way. They didn't even remember what was on the reports they just ran them every year. So they were hosed. Plus I don't know focus.
The post by bhavdahl raises another interesting question - how often should you check the integrity of your backup? It's all very well having a good backup strategy and then finding that at that all important moment you cannot access the data.
As an example, just under a year ago I replaced my CD writer with a DVD writer to take advantage of the extra space on a DVD. I backed up a collection of files last September and yesterday tried to access one of the DVDs. Windows informed me that there was no DVD in the drive! I've had this before and I so own a copy of CDRoller which tried for a while to access the disk and then gave me an an error message. Bad so far; so I ran up my copy of ISOBuster (the for home use only version). That got a step further and was able to access the folder structure at root level but failed to get to any files and gave me messages implying that about 80% of the DVD was corrupted and unreadable. At this point I binned the DVD because I had another copy and didn't want to spend any more time on it.
On this occassion no damage was done but the thought of this happening when I really need the data motivates me to always make two copies whenever I archive data to CD or DVD and always always verify the data after it has written.
As an example, just under a year ago I replaced my CD writer with a DVD writer to take advantage of the extra space on a DVD. I backed up a collection of files last September and yesterday tried to access one of the DVDs. Windows informed me that there was no DVD in the drive! I've had this before and I so own a copy of CDRoller which tried for a while to access the disk and then gave me an an error message. Bad so far; so I ran up my copy of ISOBuster (the for home use only version). That got a step further and was able to access the folder structure at root level but failed to get to any files and gave me messages implying that about 80% of the DVD was corrupted and unreadable. At this point I binned the DVD because I had another copy and didn't want to spend any more time on it.
On this occassion no damage was done but the thought of this happening when I really need the data motivates me to always make two copies whenever I archive data to CD or DVD and always always verify the data after it has written.
I'm digging into my memory, which is not very good now, but I have a recollection that with Windows Backup you have to use the same version number for both backup and restore (I could be wrong but it is worth checking) which might create problems when Windows changes. If you are going to compress I would have thought standard formats like zip and rar should be fairly safe to use.
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Everyday, then Norton 360 does it once a week....Rather safe than sorry....
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How often do I back up... Hmm, not as often as I should. A while ago I only remembered to backup because I HDD failed and I lost all Documents etc 