K
Ken Blake, MVP
Will said:
Thanks again, Will. Have you tried this? Does it work as it would appear to?
Yes, amost certainly. Even 12% is far more than almost anybody needs. I
think it's a very poor default figure.
Thanks again, Will. Have you tried this? Does it work as it would appear to?
Yes, amost certainly. Even 12% is far more than almost anybody needs. I
think it's a very poor default figure.
K
Ken Blake, MVP
Will said:Bert, I use TrueImage - a great program and has saved my bacon on
numerous times)
Another vote for Acronis TrueImage from a happy user of it here.
A
All Things Mopar
Today, with great enthusiasm and quite emphatically, Ken Blake,
MVP laid this on an unsuspecting readership ...
is when I know I will be creating lots of manual RPs during periods
of rapid system changes and I want to ensure all the earlier ones I
think are still valid stay around for a week. I strive for about 3-
4 weeks worth of RPs normally; in my view, after about a month,
rolling back causes more problems than it fixes, hence I do a
monthly image backup in case catastrophe should befall me (but,
hasn't yet, knock on wood!)
MVP laid this on an unsuspecting readership ...
Agreed. About the only time I go beyond 5-6% of my 48 gig primary
is when I know I will be creating lots of manual RPs during periods
of rapid system changes and I want to ensure all the earlier ones I
think are still valid stay around for a week. I strive for about 3-
4 weeks worth of RPs normally; in my view, after about a month,
rolling back causes more problems than it fixes, hence I do a
monthly image backup in case catastrophe should befall me (but,
hasn't yet, knock on wood!)
A
All Things Mopar
Today, with great enthusiasm and quite emphatically, Ken Blake,
MVP laid this on an unsuspecting readership ...
to do a restore, and fervently hope that what I bought is insurance
I'll never need!
MVP laid this on an unsuspecting readership ...
count me as a happy user also, but in 6 months I've not had a need
to do a restore, and fervently hope that what I bought is insurance
I'll never need!
K
Ken Blake, MVP
All said:
I've never needed to do a restore either, but I have done a restore of a
couple of files as a test, to make sure it worked. You might want to do the
same.
A
All Things Mopar
Today, with great enthusiasm and quite emphatically, Ken Blake,
MVP laid this on an unsuspecting readership ...
backups. I did create a bootable 8 floppy set and a bootable CD
to use for the restore in the event that Windoze was too badly
hosed to even boot. I tested both and verify the writes of my
monthly images, so I hope (?) I am OK. But, the strange thing
about this is oft said of both fire fighters and manufacturing
plant millwrights and tooling mechanics - they earn their pay for
NOT needing to open their toolbox for the entire shift, as if
they need to go someplace for repairs, that means that the plant
is down and losing money.
But, with multiple redundancy in my monthly backups, including
imaging, saving of all My Documents stuff stored there against my
wishes by apps that don't have options, and the use of the Files
and Settings Wizard to capture my settings, I think I may be OK.
And, I keep that stuff on an external HD on my desk in the event
of a HD crash in my PC or my wife's PC, but I also have two
externals that I rotate to my bank safety deposit box to stave
off a Murphy attack in the event of a fire or natural disaster.
The one in my house is on a shelf off the floor in the basement
to try to protect that.
And, earlier this year, I bought APC UPS boxes for both PCs. I
got religion on all this stuff about a year ago when my C:\ was
trashed so badly it was a major PITA to even get Windoze to FDISK
and format the drive after I'd lost everything during a sudden
30-minute power outtage during a critical disk write. I'm not
anxious to repeat that "pleasure" anytime soon!
MVP laid this on an unsuspecting readership ...
Thanks for the tip, Ken, but so far, I have only done full image
backups. I did create a bootable 8 floppy set and a bootable CD
to use for the restore in the event that Windoze was too badly
hosed to even boot. I tested both and verify the writes of my
monthly images, so I hope (?) I am OK. But, the strange thing
about this is oft said of both fire fighters and manufacturing
plant millwrights and tooling mechanics - they earn their pay for
NOT needing to open their toolbox for the entire shift, as if
they need to go someplace for repairs, that means that the plant
is down and losing money.
But, with multiple redundancy in my monthly backups, including
imaging, saving of all My Documents stuff stored there against my
wishes by apps that don't have options, and the use of the Files
and Settings Wizard to capture my settings, I think I may be OK.
And, I keep that stuff on an external HD on my desk in the event
of a HD crash in my PC or my wife's PC, but I also have two
externals that I rotate to my bank safety deposit box to stave
off a Murphy attack in the event of a fire or natural disaster.
The one in my house is on a shelf off the floor in the basement
to try to protect that.
And, earlier this year, I bought APC UPS boxes for both PCs. I
got religion on all this stuff about a year ago when my C:\ was
trashed so badly it was a major PITA to even get Windoze to FDISK
and format the drive after I'd lost everything during a sudden
30-minute power outtage during a critical disk write. I'm not
anxious to repeat that "pleasure" anytime soon!
K
Ken Blake, MVP
All said:
That's great. You're obviously very careful and go even further than I do.
UPSs have become so inexpensive that I think everyone should have. I also
have two.
A
All Things Mopar
Today, with great enthusiasm and quite emphatically, Ken Blake,
MVP laid this on an unsuspecting readership ...
Well, Ken, it took me nearly a lifetime to get this through my
thick skull! I do remember, though, when I was a fledgling
programmer, I asked one of the veterans how often I should save
my work and how often I should make a complete backup. His answer
was simplicity itself: "how much of your time are you willing to
waste?". In those days of mainframe computers, we used line
editors and the phrase "editing disaster" was painfully common.
It meant when you thought you were making a very small change,
like to one word in one or two lines, and you discover to your
horror that most of the entire document changed somehow! So,
anytime I made even a small global search and change, I'd make a
temp backup, do the edit, and delete the temp file if everything
was still OK. Saved lots of frazzled nerves, I can tell you!
And, I imagine you'll agree, the biggest single cause of a
computer crash even today is an errant printer driver. I can't
tell you how many times I got a frantic call from some senior
executive asking if I could rescue some long word processor
document his secretary had labored on all day, but failed to save
even once, and the whole thing went to the bit bucket when she
clicked on "print".
The city I live in has very frequent minor hits, maybe one or two
seconds, seldom over 10. In the last week, my APC has logged 3
"blackouts" totalling just 13 seconds and 7 hits in the last
month but only 31 seconds. I don't keep anything except my PC,
external, and monitor on it, though, to save enough battery power
to attempt an orderly shutdown if it looks like there's a real
blackout, e.g., from a storm.
--
ATM, aka Jerry
"Gentleman, you can't fight in here, this the War Room!" - From
the movie 'Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and
Love the Bomb'
MVP laid this on an unsuspecting readership ...
Well, Ken, it took me nearly a lifetime to get this through my
thick skull! I do remember, though, when I was a fledgling
programmer, I asked one of the veterans how often I should save
my work and how often I should make a complete backup. His answer
was simplicity itself: "how much of your time are you willing to
waste?". In those days of mainframe computers, we used line
editors and the phrase "editing disaster" was painfully common.
It meant when you thought you were making a very small change,
like to one word in one or two lines, and you discover to your
horror that most of the entire document changed somehow! So,
anytime I made even a small global search and change, I'd make a
temp backup, do the edit, and delete the temp file if everything
was still OK. Saved lots of frazzled nerves, I can tell you!
And, I imagine you'll agree, the biggest single cause of a
computer crash even today is an errant printer driver. I can't
tell you how many times I got a frantic call from some senior
executive asking if I could rescue some long word processor
document his secretary had labored on all day, but failed to save
even once, and the whole thing went to the bit bucket when she
clicked on "print".
The city I live in has very frequent minor hits, maybe one or two
seconds, seldom over 10. In the last week, my APC has logged 3
"blackouts" totalling just 13 seconds and 7 hits in the last
month but only 31 seconds. I don't keep anything except my PC,
external, and monitor on it, though, to save enough battery power
to attempt an orderly shutdown if it looks like there's a real
blackout, e.g., from a storm.
--
ATM, aka Jerry
"Gentleman, you can't fight in here, this the War Room!" - From
the movie 'Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and
Love the Bomb'
K
Ken Blake, MVP
All said:
My answer is perhaps similar, butr a little different. It's as follows (I've
posted this in the NGs many times):
It takes time and effort to backup, but it also takes time and effort to
recreate lost data. If you back up daily, you should never have to recreate
more than one day's worth of last data. If weekly, there's potentially a lot
more to recreate. You should assess how much pain and trouble you would have
if you lost x days of data, and then choose a backup frequency that doesn't
involve more pain and trouble than that you would have if you had to
recreate what was lost.
Not my experience, but I don't have a "biggest single cause" I would cite.
I'm with you completely there.
K
Kerry Brown
Some data is irreplaceable. It is not a matter of time to recreate it. Many
home users now store all their photos on their computer. Irreplaceable data
needs multiple backups with at least one backup made whenever there is new
data. E.G. download your photos to two computers or to one computer then
immediately to a USB drive.
K
Ken Blake, MVP
Kerry said:
Yes, that's a good point.
A
All Things Mopar
Today, with great enthusiasm Ken Blake, MVP spake the following:
Backing up indeed does take time, but if one does it in an
organized, disciplined manner, then the time saved in the event
of even a minor scale disaster is a couple of orders of
magnitude, making the cost-benefit ratio quite favorable.
I cited that one because so many secretaries would succumb to it.
Errant video drivers and buggy updates (from anybody) are also
high up on the list, but what was so sad about these secretaries
is that for a 5 second click on the "save" icon, all would have
been fine.
--
ATM, aka Jerry
"Gentleman, you can't fight in here, this the War Room!" - From
the movie 'Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and
Love the Bomb'
Backing up indeed does take time, but if one does it in an
organized, disciplined manner, then the time saved in the event
of even a minor scale disaster is a couple of orders of
magnitude, making the cost-benefit ratio quite favorable.
I cited that one because so many secretaries would succumb to it.
Errant video drivers and buggy updates (from anybody) are also
high up on the list, but what was so sad about these secretaries
is that for a 5 second click on the "save" icon, all would have
been fine.
--
ATM, aka Jerry
"Gentleman, you can't fight in here, this the War Room!" - From
the movie 'Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and
Love the Bomb'
A
All Things Mopar
Today, with great enthusiasm Kerry Brown spake the following:
loss as all us "veterans have, whether it was from accidental
means or something we did, they are trusting that their
irreplaceable data will always be there, until one day it isn't.
It is like people that blithely walk SLOWLY across the driving
lanes in store parking lots confident that drivers will see them.
In my day we learned "look one way then the other way, then look
both ways again before walking out". Moral: WE are responsible
for the protection of ourselves and our data, nobody else can do
it for us.
I agree with your redundant backup scheme, it is exactly what I
do with e different external HDs hung on USB, for both my PC and
my wife's.
--
ATM, aka Jerry
"Gentleman, you can't fight in here, this the War Room!" - From
the movie 'Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and
Love the Bomb'
Kerry, for the "average" PC user having never suffered a major
loss as all us "veterans have, whether it was from accidental
means or something we did, they are trusting that their
irreplaceable data will always be there, until one day it isn't.
It is like people that blithely walk SLOWLY across the driving
lanes in store parking lots confident that drivers will see them.
In my day we learned "look one way then the other way, then look
both ways again before walking out". Moral: WE are responsible
for the protection of ourselves and our data, nobody else can do
it for us.
I agree with your redundant backup scheme, it is exactly what I
do with e different external HDs hung on USB, for both my PC and
my wife's.
--
ATM, aka Jerry
"Gentleman, you can't fight in here, this the War Room!" - From
the movie 'Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and
Love the Bomb'
K
Ken Blake, MVP
All said:
Of course. I am certainly not arguing against backing up. The paragraph
above is simply meant to help someone determine how frequently to back up.
The backup interval that's right for you, or for me, isn't necessarily right
for everyone.
Incidentally, one of my favorite lines from one of my favorite films.
C
cquirke (MVP Windows shell/user)
I apply the rock-climbing "3-limb" rule here... in rock-climbing that
means at all times you have 3 limbs holding or standing on something
you hope will be solid (while the 4th limb is being re-positioned),
and with data that means having 2 x copies of content if one copy is
on HD, or 3 x copies on different disks or devices if none of these is
a permanent known-good hard drive.
That's what I *should* do, but in practice I often shade this by one
copy, i.e. 1 x copy on HD or if not on HD, no less than 2 copies in
different risk-buckets. Obviously that practice fails the "always
have a backup" test, when I fall off the rungs of best-practice!
Backup theory is a fascinating subset (or application/perspecive) of
info theory, and contains an inherent contradiction (how do you
magicallt retain all wanted changes while excluding all the unwanted
changes you are backing up to protect against?).
But leaving that aside and trusting the universal X-axis (time) to
scope between what is wanted and unwanted, here's what I do...
- de-bulk "My Docs" of music, pics, videos
- clean "My Docs" by excluding all code and incoming material
- set a nightly Task to archive this to another volume on the HD
- keep the last 5 of these on a FIFO basis (using a .BAT)
- manually dump these backups to off-HD storage
....and if on a LAN...
- read-share backup locations on all PCs
- set a Task to pull these backups to one or more PCs
- on those PCs, dump all collected backups to off-HD storage
The local backup logic keeps the most recent 5 backups, but the LAN
logic pulls only the latest of these.
For bulky data (e.g. music, pics and videos) and for
potentially-malware'd material (incoming stuff such as downloads,
emaul attackments etc. and infectable code files) I make separate
manual backup arrangements, i.e. episodic "end-of-project" dumps to
off-HD storage such as CDRs or DVDRs.
To preserve the XP installation, I'd have to image off C:, as XP's too
fragile to survive a file-level backup and restore.
All of the above influence my choice of applications (e.g. I prefer
Eudora because I can include safe email messages while excluding
attachments from the backed-up data set) and hard drive setup, i.e. I
keep C: small to ease imaging thereof, keep data off C: to protect it
against C: writes and unlink a C: image restore from a data restore,
and create another volume in which the automatic backups are stored.
As I inferred earlier, I'm a lazy user - I know I'll be slack about
the manual step of dumping the backups to off-HD storage. That's why
I get as much protection as I can from the auto-backup, e.g. by
holding these in a separate volume so that file system corruption that
stays within the same volume doesn't trash the backups.
Tech Support: The guys who follow the
'Parade of New Products' with a shovel.
K
Kerry Brown
cquirke said:
I tell anyone who'll listen to not even think about backups to start with
but to think about disaster planning. Think about what you use the computer
for, what you can't lose, what you would need recovered ASAP, and what you
could wait a while for. Write this down. Take a few days thinking about it.
Once you're sure this list is complete make another list. This second list
is things that could go wrong. Think very carefully about this list. It may
include things like employees, family members, or even yourself leaving
suddenly, dying, becoming incapacitated and you don't know their passwords
or where their data is as well as obvious things like hardware failure, user
error, file corruption, fire, theft, etc. Once you have these two lists
compare them and come up with plan to cover all the scenarios. The plan will
include backups but it will also include things like written instructions as
to where things are stored, what is backed up, and when it was backed up.
The plan will also include some method of periodically testing the backups
as well as revisiting the plan itself. The more automated you can make this
the better. No one like to take the time to make backups. In a business you
can make it someone's job. In a home or one person business it takes self
discipline. Computers are becoming an integral part of our life and our
business. We have to plan for things changing suddenly. Every person's or
business' plan will probably be slightly different. The important thing is
to have a plan and use it.
A
All Things Mopar
Today, with great enthusiasm cquirke (MVP Windows shell/user)
spake the following:
In IT terms, this is called "grandfathering" where you have the
son, the father, and the grandfather as monthly backup sets so
the very most you should ever lose is two "generations" of data,
but it seldom ever gets that bad in practice.
spake the following:
In IT terms, this is called "grandfathering" where you have the
son, the father, and the grandfather as monthly backup sets so
the very most you should ever lose is two "generations" of data,
but it seldom ever gets that bad in practice.
A
All Things Mopar
Today, with great enthusiasm Kerry Brown spake the following:
backup planning and execution is a necessary step toward disaster
planning and protection. It is not the only step, hence it is, as
mathematicians say, necessary but not sufficient.
Yes, but understanding and implementing the fundamentals of
backup planning and execution is a necessary step toward disaster
planning and protection. It is not the only step, hence it is, as
mathematicians say, necessary but not sufficient.