How many of you back up?
If you don't is it because you have a server/box, maybe with raid?

If you do - how often and what speicific data do you back up?

Cheers

i have backed up my mp3s on a separate drive which then resides elsewhere out of my pc

I back up my stuff maybe every year onto my parents computer and/or my sister's laptop.

3 years ago i got a free box. an old p3. got 1 new 60gb disk. that had my home directory on it. Couldn't back up my mp3s or videos. About 6months ago I build a box with 650gbs of redundant space. Now I backup everything.

I back up my video's, mp3's and trivial stuff about every 6 months onto dvd (as well as copying those files onto 2 other computers). I back up my work files, tax etc every 2 months the same way.

I only back up work stuff.

As soon as my drives fill up they get "backed up" on DVD.
I used to hate losing huge wads of data due to a drive dying so I tend to get stuck into it pretty regularily.

I have a system that is overclocked to the max with 2 raptor drives in raid 0 so I have set up an auto backup program that backs up my important stuff to a third drive automatically at shutdown.
My system has not crashed once in the 6 months I have had it but I know if I got rid of the backup software my system would probably die just to piss me off.

I back up my msn conversations, email, address book & other crap like that whenever I format, restore from backup then delete the backups. It's mainly stuff that I'd like to keep but I'm not going to go /wrist if I accidentally lose it in a HD crash.

Other crap I "back up" is random s*** I download from the internet, funny pictures/videos, game patches etc & usually just chuck them on a cd when I have enough to fill a cd/dvd to make room for more stuff.


I think a good question here should be: What do you do with your old backups? Do you overwrite them, burn them (as in with fire), throw them in the bin, get creative?

I don't backup because I like living on the edge.

If I went through my cupboard I'm likely to find all my old back up disks that I've never used, but its like they say, if you don't do it, you are liable to need it.

ive never ever had a disk die on me or anything like it.
i dont back up anything, i have a fair few drives and everything is on 24/7 so its a wonder stuff doesnt die.
in the past i havnt even had good psu's or even surge protection. i do now tho

Hmmm...yeah...I back up stuff *sometimes*...usually only if it's really important though (and I want to ensure security of the info)...

I often find that I just email copies of most documents to myself though instead of backing it up.

back up back up what you gonna do now...

man deja vu...

oh wait

http://tung.ausgamers.com/limpoff.htm

^ that joke sure does get a lot of milage.

When I get 700meg worth of mp3s I back them up and also when I get a DVD worth of shows. Also have a cd full of all the stuff I need in case I have to format.

WooT!

If you don't is it because you have a server/box, maybe with raid?

RAID != back up.

On topic, yes I do back up. Normally fully backup once a forth night of my business stuff. Mp3s etc don't get backup that often because a) I own most most the original CDs for them anyway - though would be a bitch to re-rip them all b) it's on a separate disk to the system disk

RAID != back up.
No but having a seperate box with a raid set up provides the data in a place seperate to the computer you are 'backing up'

All my personal stuff, like photos and such, get backed up on to DVD every 6 months. I will eventually get around to backing up my mp3s as well but that might be a bit painful.

i only backup files that i create myself.. ie: work files, digital photographs, photoshop/gfx files, etc... i duplicate them on 2hdds in 2 different machines & burn them to cdr once a month. the work files also get backed-up at work with a magnetic tape system.
i personally dont see the point of backing up mp3s & downloaded movies... coz i downloaded them once... & should the hdd that they are on die, i'll download them again if i want them. i really don't like backing stuff up that isn't gonna be relevant for retrieval.
one day i rekn i will change to a fully hdd backup system... because when you compare the reliability of your adv. hdd vs your adv. cdr/dvdr media... hdd's are more reliable. it's just a matter of accumulating enough hdds :D

RAID != back up.
No but having a seperate box with a raid set up provides the data in a place seperate to the computer you are 'backing up'

/nerd fight
Technicall no it's not a back up. What you're taking about is Redundancy not Backup. If you delete/corrupt the file on your RAID (whatever level) drive chances are you've lost the file. To recover the file you'll have to pull it off tape or other _backup_ medium. P.S. The R in RAID actually stands for "redundant".
/end nerd fight

:)

Opec: haha okay fair enough. I know how raid works, I guess I am just one of those annoying people who thinks it is similar enough to be the same.

I do a full backup every friday ( 500Gb ) and a differential every other day of the week ( 300-500Mb each ) on an LTO robotic tape library.

thats alot of fukin porn man ay
but seriously tho, was thinking about a lan at your house..

i only backup when I am going to format and that's just ftp user/passes, email, msn, favs and my docs

all the 'downloaded' stuff stays where it is... then I simply cry when a hard drive goes bang.

At one point I was burning s*** to dvds regularly, but its a pain in the arse when you want to watch a movie etc, so now I just buy more hard drives, it's virtually the same in terms of cost (well not really, but i'll keep telling myself that :p)

back up back up what you gonna do now...

man deja vu...

oh wait

http://tung.ausgamers.com/limpoff.htm

First post (from about 2 accounts ago...)

As for backup, I am pretty pedantic. My uni stuff is on my USB thumb drive (that is where I work from), uni HD space, home PC on 2 separate physical disks - all synchronised ASAP. Uni stuff I am paranoid about, but sif I am gonna lose hours and hours of work cos I couldn’t spend literally 2 minutes a day synchronising a few folders. My home PC’s 2nd hard drive is for all my files (mp3’s, pics, etc) and that is simply copied to my primary HDD about every week as a backup; ok for single HDD failure but bad if a virus rapes me or both HDD’s go at the same time due to power surge or similar. My primary disk (windows install and apps etc) is ghosted weekly, alternating between 2 DVD-RW’s overwriting the oldest each time, if the most recent one fails the oldest is only 2 weeks old. Ghosting the whole drive is overkill, but sif I cbf backing up individual things such as office settings, outlook folders, contacts, calendar, favourites, mail accounts etc etc. Just stick in a blank DVD and ~20 mins later my entire C drive is backed up (excluding 2nd HDD backup shizzle) apps and all and no f***ing around re-installing windows and apps and updates, not to mention the days of getting all the settings just right again!

Having said that, I have never needed to use my backups :D


last edited by Rodolphe at 23:48:20 27/Jan/06

on the topic of backups. Im looking to sell a Sony SDX 420C/R tape drive - IDE. At most holds 90gig per tape. Anyone interested?

I burn my photos to DVD and send a copy to family to store about every 12 months.

I copy my mydocuments to another drive whenever i get paranoid

i'm starting to use my gmail to store more stuff too (2.6gig storage atm, super quick searching, can categorise with labels, accessible from any net connected pc, free).

haha yea fuk off xdrive and all those other internet storage homos. Gmail!

fuknukle with the early mornin spam session

haha yea just dropped the missus off at work. cant get back to sleep :(

im at work, missus is asleep :(

Has anyone had any experiance with "Maxtor 300GB OneTouch II External USB/FireWire HDD" (Maybe not the 300 GB one, but very possibly this brand) either at work or personal use? I'm looking to get myself one and would like to now how good something like this would be and if they are easy to set up and move to another pc etc.

better off getting your own enclosure and brining a large ide drive to it.. work out 50-80bucks cheaper....

I log what data people drag off my drives at lans.


when a loss occurs from media sources i xhase up with the list of users I'm familiar with from previous lans. It's good when it works. We need another Qgl lan eh - I need my ELO collection back, along with some Roms I can't find anymore :(



as far as OS drive goes, I'm in the same habbit for myself as customers - desktops are ghosted to a DVD install with existing priority aps from time of install - same as most deskys and lappys when you buy them. Servers are a little more detailed. Ghosting a *nix install is far from simple, and often requires some help from my Dad in terms of scripts for pro_level timely recoveries. Still.. with so many people moving away from *nix now that's becoming less of a concern.



unltimately, my wish is to afford to same solution as Qld Health currently runs; with every desktop/server/tablet being able to be re-ghosted inside 30 mins via a decent local gateway. All relevant data is located on the central server back in BNE.

i run raid0 cause i hear thats more reliable

2 harddrives spreading the load so they are less likely to fail, i'm thinking of make a 4 disk array just to be sure

haha

raid 0 has no redundancy at all. Adding more disks to a R0 array means that if you lose one disk out of your 4, then you also lose the entire contents of the array.

so many storage noobs here :P

Raid 0 is anything but reliable but it's bloody fast.

nah your wrong crusher

if you can show me how you can get redundancy out of a raid 0 set, i will give you a night with tung's mum free.

raid 0 is simple striping without parity. Chunks of data are written across multiple disks... for example, in a 2 disk set, and to make it easy without worrying about stripe length and size etc, half the file is written to disk 1, the other half is written to disk 2

if disk 2 fails, then half the data is missing, the array fails and you lose your data.

to guard against disk failure, you need a higher level of raid. for example, raid 1 where data from one disk is mirrored to the other... raid 0+1 where a raid0 array is mirrored onto another raid 0 array.... raid 5 which is striping with parity, where data and parity is striped across all disks, with a 1/n reduction in disk space due to parity (ie if you have 4 disks you can only use 3 of them as storage).


even though money can buy you hard drives, it cant buy you a clue.. adn you dont have one about storage.

I buy new PC gear so regularly I don't really need to back up :P

Work stuff is backed up weekly on to tape.

i just ghost my OS drive, and leave my storage drives as is. and i cry if they die. should really upgrade my storage/backup system. had a close call, with a 160gb dieing, but i managed to get all the data except for what was written in the previous 2 weeks prior.

i'm in the process of sorting my porn into categories