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Tape drives not on list? (Score:5, Insightful)
I must be getting old.
Re:Tape drives not on list? (Score:3)
Right. I took this to mean my personal computer. I used to use a tape drive at home but nowadays it's cheaper and faster to use an external USB attached hard drive.
However I'm also responsible for the backups at work and we absolutely still use tape (LTO4). All of our backups are cloned and one copy is sent offsite daily to be returned 5 weeks later. Also we have monthly archival backups with a copy sent offsite for 10 years. Tape still makes sense for those kind of backups. We're looking at getting a disk based deduplicating backup appliance but even with that we'd still be making a copy on tape to be sent offsite.
Re:Tape drives not on list? (Score:2)
At work, our primary fileserver has an offsite (80 miles) mirror, with snapshots up to a month back. I'm working on getting something similar working at home with freenas (I work at an ISP, so the offsite isn't a problem for the home setup). Currently I'm doing a nightly rsync of my server to a readynas. My desktop is raid-1, but any data I care about, I try to make sure is on the server and don't further backup the desktop.
Re:Tape drives not on list? (Score:2)
Ok, LTO-4 [wikipedia.org] tape. Sorry I left out the dash.
You obviously are not a system administrator of any sort. Dedicated backup appliances can be got from any number of vendors including EMC, Exagrid, IBM, Symantec, Quantum and others. They consist of a number of RAID [wikipedia.org] drives with built in data deduplication. Often they are set up as a virtual tape library.
Re:Tape drives not on list? (Score:2)
Tape is too old, too slow. Took days to backup a server, so by the time the thing started, the thing ended, data had already changed enough that the backup wasn't any good. Spanning Delta's across multiple tape partitions isn't for the faint of heart either. TAPE is archival, and that is about it. AND if you're doing that, you might as well go 100 Year DVDs and duplicate those (reduncancy of archives)
If you're using tape, it is bacause your time isn't worth anything or you don't have that much data. You're still better off burning to Archval quality DVDs.
Better option for things is proper disaster planning and continuity of business planning. Going to the CLOUD and/or DR site replication is much better choice, even for smaller businesses that want to stay in business. Putting your data in a VMware like environment makes it much easier to do this, and even create "Archival snapshots" (different from disaster planning), for protecting against damaged data. (Take a snapshot, backup snapshot, delete snapshot, no interuption of service).
Re:Tape drives not on list? (Score:2)
Even with incremental backups to tape?? I mean, it isn't like the whole server changes on a daily basis..at least most of ours don't.
Re:Tape drives not on list? (Score:2)
Have you had to restore from Tape?
I ask that, because most people who are running tape for backups, have NEVER even tried to restore a whole server off tape. I have, and it was disasterous because we didn't have a exact copy of the hardware, and couldn't find it. Best we could do is recover data, and not all of it. At that point, you might as well have the data saved to disk, as it is faster searching and copying random data than tape could ever hope for, especially "incremental" backups where the main changes ARE the data. (and data that doesnt' change should be archived).
Try restoring a whole system from tape sometime. Even more fun, try to restore to a different architecture machine (like one five years in the future)
Re:Tape drives not on list? (Score:2, Informative)
Rule number one. If the data is important to you, back it up. If it's important enough to backup, it's important enough to run periodic restore tests - which will expose issues like this. Any well designed backup software package will have features that make sure data is kept in a form that is reasonably quick and easy to restore.
Slow restore times from tape indicate a system that hasn't been tested and tweaked. Speaking with my professional hat on (I do backup and recovery for a living), well over 90% of the restores I've been asked to do have been for single files that were accidentally deleted. In this context, full restore time doesn't matter. Over 80% of the remainder have been for sets of files - a subset of the full dataset on the server. The balance were all disaster recovery tests.
That said, there are circumstances where you simply can't restore quickly. Any system that has millions (if not billions) of tiny files represents a pathological case that no backup system will handle well. Best option in this case if full system recovery time is important is to backup the filesystem as an image, which brings its own issues - like not being able to restore individual files if necessary. And note that this applies no matter how the data is stored on the backend, whether it be tape, disk, optical media, punched cards, stone tablets ...
Finally, regarding "it was disasterous because we didn't have a exact copy of the hardware, and couldn't find it". Full system restores, especially in the Windows space, are notorious for this issue; it isn't specific to tape backup. Furthermore, I don't know of any backup/recovery system that allows for cross-architecture restores (where, by "cross architecture", I mean Windows to Unix, Unix to Windows, and such like. Plenty of systems will allow recovery of, say, HP-UX data to an AIX box. Of course, whether that data is useful depends on whether the application that handles the data is available for the new platform ...)
Oh, and the bonus comment. Regarding:
That shows a clear ignorance of the role of tape in the data centre. Is that role getting smaller? Yes. Definitely. I've seen customers using tape that would have been better off shovelling the data onto hard disks. But it's not non-existent, and it isn't going to go away completely. There are things that tape can do that disk simply can't do (like sitting around on a shelf, ready for access inside a couple of minutes, yet not needing any power while they're doing so.) And hey, "archval (sic) quality DVDs"? They only hold 9 GB of data. If you say BD, that brings it up to a whopping 50 GB. Call it 200 GB if you want. I have worked for companies where their main database was multiple terabytes in size; managing a half dozen tapes was far easier than shuffling around dozens of optical discs would have been. A lot cheaper, too - a 1.5 TB LTO5 cartridge (no compression) costs around $50, whereas a single BD-R (25 GB) costs $2.50. Per GB, the LTO5 cartridge is a third the price - and that's before considering the volume you have to cart around (60 discs versus a single cart? I know which I'd prefer.)
Tape drives are expensive? Guess what - so are BD recordable drives.
I definitely agree with you on disaster recovery and business continuity planning, though. That's something too many businesses don't think about. This, however, is somewhat orthogonal to the question of backups; although good backups can form a part of disaster recovery planning, they don't necessarily have to, and there are questions that need to be answered that aren't a part of backup system design. (like, for example, whether or not to have spare hardware sitting offside ready to run; power questions; and other such matters.)
Re:Tape drives not on list? (Score:2)
Speaking with my professional hat on (I do backup and recovery for a living), well over 90% of the restores I've been asked to do have been for single files that were accidentally deleted
For this use-case, periodic snapshots of the volume in question work well. A simple cron job will let you rotate ZFS snapshots and clean up old ones so you can have hourly ones for a day, daily ones for a week, weekly ones for 3 months, and monthly ones for a year (or whatever) and can restore accidentally deleted files without having to go to any external media. Backups on external media are for when something very bad happens to your system.
Tape drives are expensive? Guess what - so are BD recordable drives.
Not really. The BD writer in my NAS cost me £63, over a year ago. 25GB disks cost about £1, 50GB ones are still close to £5. So, somewhere between £5 and £10 for 100GB, depending on how willing I am to use the lower-capacity disks. And these prices are likely to follow the same sort of curve that CD-RW and DVD-RWs did. LTO-1 tapes are about £13 for 100GB, so more expensive per GB than even 50GB BD-REs. The cheapest LTO drive I can find with a quick search is £1000. That's LTO-4 (LTO-1 drives are probably available second hand, but comparing only new with new), so to compare tapes I suppose we should use LTO-4 ones. They cost around £20 for 800GB, so per GB they're a lot cheaper than BD-RE. To back up 2TB, I'd need a drive and three tapes, so that's about £1060. With a BD-RE, I'd need a drive and 40 disks. That's £460. For a home user, the optical disks are a lot cheaper, and you also get random access, which makes restoring easier.
Once you get up to datacentre scales, things are different. The price per GB for tape is a lot lower and so it makes more sense. If you're backing up even 1TB/week, the cost of media for the optical drives quickly overshadows the lower up-front cost. The faster write speed for tape is also useful.
On the other hand, if you're just dumping data and never reusing the external media (so you can go back to backups from a long time ago), the media costs start to swing the other way. BD-Rs are very cheap. 50p/each for 25GB disks (CD-R and DVD-R went down to 10p/each so BD will probably keep falling), so you're looking at a similar cost per TB to LTO.
Comment removed (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:2)
Re:Tape drives not on list? (Score:2)
My option isn't on the list either. I have a SSH account with 1TB at two of my friend's homes and I back up everything through rsync every night. Likewise, they both have an SSH account at my home with 1TB dedicated each.
Works like a charm.
Re:Tape drives not on list? (Score:2)
Re:Tape drives not on list? (Score:2)
If you go there, data on dropbox is also stored on an "internal hard drive" on a computer somewhere.
Re:Tape drives not on list? (Score:2)
My option isn't on the list either. I have a SSH account with 1TB at two of my friend's homes and I back up everything through rsync every night. Likewise, they both have an SSH account at my home with 1TB dedicated each.
Works like a charm.
This is the way to go. I personally use Crashplan, and back up the critical irreplacable information among my 3 computers (which only totals about 200GB). Then I also have a couple Crashplan "friends", backup to those is free and automatic. Finally when Crashplan offered a year worth of unlimited cloud backups for about $5 on Black Friday, I took the deal and do that too. I don't know if I will renew though. Their cloud backups service is very slow- less than 100kB/sec usually, when I routinely get my max modem speed to other offsite backup locations.
The crashplan software is kind of a pig resource-wise, but it is so easy to use I can overlook it for now. It also deduplicates and has automatic versioning, which looks somewhat trickier to set up with Rsync
Re:Tape drives not on list? (Score:2)
My option isn't on the list either. I have a SSH account with 1TB at two of my friend's homes and I back up everything through rsync every night. Likewise, they both have an SSH account at my home with 1TB dedicated each.
Works like a charm.
I do this, except one of the friend's is my mum (and it's my computer in her garage) and the other is my laptop (no fire or theft resilience, but still good for disc corruption).
The --link-dest option is excellent, as it means I have a series of complete backups instantly available. I keep the union of: the last 10 backups, backups from the last 14 days, backups taken on a date ending in 5 and delete the rest.
The relevant lines from my Zsh-script are:
date=$(date +%Y%m%d-%H%M)
older=( $backups/*(N/om) )
rsync --archive --recursive --link-dest=${^older[1,20]} [source] $backups/$date/
I recently found a bad block on a hard drive, and the part of the file held on it was corrupted. The non-corrupt file was over two years old, but still held by the computer at my mum's place.
I'm partway through adding PAR2 parity archives to everything important, as I'd previously deleted backups over three years old to free up some space.
Re:Tape drives not on list? (Score:2)
So... external hard drive. Thanks for the implementation details.
Re:Tape drives not on list? (Score:3)
By your standard, EC2 and Dropbox, Gmail, etc are all external hard drives. Little broad?
Re:Tape drives not on list? (Score:2)
Depends on the data. encFS does the dirty job for me on the most sensible. Pics and music go unencrypted.
So? (Score:2)
I trust friends..... but not their systems (Score:2)
A "friend", as they're called, is best described to the likes of you as someone with a very high mutual trust rating
Dude,
You are confusing trusting your friends honesty, with trusting their technical competence.
I absolutely trust friends not to route though personal data. (Hell, user privacy is the golden rule of old-school sysadmins). However, I don't trust them not to have a HD stolen or unpatched box on the net.
For this reason, my offsite backups with friends are always encrypted tarballs.
This is for my friends peace of mind, as well as my own.
Re:Tape drives not on list? (Score:2)
I haven't moderated in years now, but I think I'd like to spend any and all accumulated mod points on parent. Spread evenly on Insightfull, Interesting and Funny, please.
Re:Tape drives not on list? (Score:2)
if your friends dont hold you in high enough regard to not betray you, maybe you should look in a mirror and evaluate yourself and try to figure why that is. What about you causes them to not value you as a friend? Why are you pickng such poor friends, as such people certainly arent true friends (not a scotsman fallacy) if they would do such things.
I have several friends, many of them fellow/former Marines, whom I would not just trust with my stuff, but with my life and even my daughter's life, I can trust them that much. (Not saying I trust every Marine that much, just my friends)
Maybe, and I suspect this is the case, you just suck at choosing friends.
Re:Tape drives not on list? (Score:2)
A maniac? For having and describing friends to someone who doesnt understand the concept?
I'm not sure what else you could do to reinforce the basement trogg nerd sterotype.
Re:Tape drives not on list? (Score:2)
I used to use tapes at home, now I just have multiple computers for really important data mixed with USB hard drives and optical media.
Re:Tape drives not on list? (Score:2)
Still using tape here at home. About 10 years ago I got a deal on a used SUN-branded HP tape changer (12GB native x 6 tapes). Still using it. More than sufficient for the amount of data (e-mails, documents, spreadsheets, a little code) that we create each day. I just have to be careful with any big ISO downloads, DVD copies, etc. so they don't get backed up (I can always download or copy them again).
Cheers,
Dave
Re:Tape drives not on list? (Score:2)
Something is obsolete only when it can no longer perform it's function; not just because something "bigger, better, faster" has come out.
We traded in our previous vehicle when the "cash for clunkers" program was on in 2009. It was a 1987 Nissan Pathfinder (first year they made the model) with about 200K miles on it. It still got us where we needed to go so it wasn't obsolete.
Cheers,
Dave
Re:Tape drives not on list? (Score:2)
Re:Tape drives not on list? (Score:2)
I can backup all my hard to replace stuff on a single $100 2 TB drive, and I don't have to get involved with swapping physical media. A tape drive which could handle the same amount would cost over $2000, plus a SAS interface, and be slower. I guess if I had to backup over about 60 TB, the $36/3 TB media might make it cheaper, although I'd have to do a lot of tape swapping (or make it 100 TB, and buy an autochanger?).
Re:Tape drives not on list? (Score:2)
tape is still around, pretty damn competitive for the media, but the drives are re-damn-tarded in price
your looking at several hundred dollars for a crappy one
To a fileserver (Score:3)
The fileserver itself isn't backed up, though.
Re:To a fileserver (Score:2)
Is the data on your fileserver also on your local HDD?
Re:To a fileserver (Score:2)
Yes, and other computers' HDDs. Aside from DVD rips, which won't be a huge loss if they're lost.
Re:To a fileserver (Score:2)
I do the same thing, the server sits out in the unattached garage in case of fire/theft/etc so I always have 2 copies in 2 buildings.
Re:To a fileserver (Score:2)
Cross-backups.
I dump everything on machine A except /var/backup to /var/backup on machine B. /var/backup to /var/backup on machine A.
I dump everything on machine B except
Neither of the /var/backup directories share disks with the rest of the OS.
Unless I lose both machines, I can always restore either of them.
To save space/bandwidth/speed, I use a Tower of Hanoi approach with incremental dumps. With five levels, this gives me 16-31 days of backup always online, and no more than one day's of data lost if a server dies during backup.
Multiple Methods (Score:3)
For the data that I really care about, I use a USB drive and an online cloud storage service (Dropbox, Skydrive, Google Drive, etc.). I don't really trust either, but both would have to fail on me at the same time for my data to be lost.
Re:Multiple Methods (Score:2)
For the data that I really care about, I use a USB drive
Those are words you don't see very often.
Re:Multiple Methods (Score:2)
For my home machines, I use Time Machine (external hard drive, basically) for all the bulky stuff, and Dropbox for the really mission-critical stuff. My Dropbox syncs to several different machines that I use, including a remotely-located server, just for good measure.
For my main server (which hosts a bunch of web apps for clients, primarily), I use dual hard drives and a combination of tarsnap and plain-ol' S3 for external backup.
Of course, just as important as backing it up - verifying the backups occasionally. I had a recent laptop HD crash, followed by a Time Machine backup which looked initially like it was corrupted. There was a couple of hours of panic until I got it working again. :)
Re:Multiple Methods (Score:2)
So did you select both "Online service" radio buttons?
Re:Multiple Methods (Score:2)
I have a time machine backup to an external hard-drive, I store important data additionally on a NAS with RAID-5 (the next time I buy a NAS it'll be RAID-6 with high reliability disks [URE rate of at least 10^15]), and I also upload to an online service.
I'm still toying with backing up the NAS to AWS, but I just don't have enough upstream bandwidth to make it comfortable.
-- Pete.
Internal Hard Drive First, Then External (Score:2)
I have two physical internal hard drives. First, I backup each to the other. I then encrypt the results and move the encrypted files to an external hard drive that I store remotely.
I don't erase the backup files from the internal hard drives. They often prove useful if I mangle a file and want to restore it.
The external hard drive would serve in case an internal hard drive fails or my PC is damaged.
Paper printout (Score:2)
Re:Paper printout (Score:3)
I am afraid of the effects of electromagnetic fields on backup devices. A big scanner takes care of data restore.
That's not totally crazy. My MS thesis (among other things) is backed up to 5.25" disks, and those are backed up to 3.5" disks, you know, so it's "future-proofed". Except the future just kept on coming, and I can't lay my hands on a working floppy drive right now. Or a computer with a floppy drive connector on the MB. I assume that at least one word processor I have access to can import WordPerfect 5.1 documents, but I've never tried it. These probably aren't insurmountable obstacles, but the only immediately available copy is the paper one.
When I get my time machine working, I'll probably go and copy those things to CD and later DVD.
Of course, when I get my time machine working, I don't really need a backup at all, do I?
Re:Paper printout (Score:2)
I assume that at least one word processor I have access to can import WordPerfect 5.1 documents, but I've never tried it.
Reading old WordPerfect files isn't all that hard. Meanwhile, I've been trying to figure out how to read my old Leading Edge Word Processor files.
Re:Paper printout (Score:2)
I assume that at least one word processor I have access to can import WordPerfect 5.1 documents, but I've never tried it.
Reading old WordPerfect files isn't all that hard. Meanwhile, I've been trying to figure out how to read my old Leading Edge Word Processor files.
If you figure that out, let me know, I've got a bunch too. On 5.25" 360K disks. Somewhere.
Re:Paper printout (Score:2)
I am afraid of the effects of electromagnetic fields on backup devices. A big scanner takes care of data restore.
That's not totally crazy. My MS thesis (among other things) is backed up to 5.25" disks, and those are backed up to 3.5" disks, you know, so it's "future-proofed". Except the future just kept on coming, and I can't lay my hands on a working floppy drive right now.
Been there - I had a PC with a working 5.25" drive in it until just a few years ago - admittedly I never plugged it in. My wife finally nagged me sufficiently and I tossed it out (after letting out some of my frustration on the hard drive with a hammer, just in case...). I still have some floppies - I'm waiting for my grandchilden's 'show and tell' in the 2030s. I'll take along my slide rule too.
Re:Paper printout (Score:2)
I keep a working 486 with both 5.25" drive and older 3.1 floppy drives as well as an old 2x CD burner and Dos 6.22. I boot it up once a year to make sure everything still works. It hasn't happened too often, but in the past two years I've had two clients were it's saved their ass.
One was a small company that was still running their entire database off an old 386 box. Eventually it got to the point where their tape drive failed and it was time to move to a new system before they could sell their company and retire. Fortunately the company that created their original software was still around and more than happy to convert the data...IF you could get it to them on an optical disk or external hard drive.
The other time were articles of incorporation and bylaws for another company saved to a 5.25" floppy and again managed to recover and save the data.
I even have a working XT as well, or assume it still works I haven't booted it in probably 5 years.
Re:Time machine ??? (Score:2)
External drives (Score:2)
Small company, 10 employees. Offsite to a Drobo (rsnapshot and Carbon Copy clones of various Linux and Mac servers). Back that up to another external drive.
Separately back up key info from the servers, including complete email incoming and outgoing, to a portable drive, moved out of my office every night.
Also site-to-site backup of key Linux servers.
So I've got backups in London and two locations in Kent, for servers in London and Frankfurt.
And still I wake in a cold sweat every once in a while...
BD-RE discs (Score:2)
50 gigabytes for a rewritable BD-RE, and the media is actually durable. Drop your external HDD from the desk, and it's probably toast. Optical discs you can basically throw around and they are still readable. Only problem is that long exposure to UV radiation might do harm, but I'm not going to leave them lying into the sun anyway.
I have all my data on about 5 BD-REs (most of them photos, some videos, and full e-mail archive. Operating system configs and the like are just a drop in a bucket).
Re:BD-RE discs (Score:2)
50 gigabytes for a rewritable BD-RE, and the media is actually durable. . . . Optical discs you can basically throw around and they are still readable.
Maybe you're not throwing them hard enough.
But seriously, as to longevity, have you seen any good studies? I'm serious. I did a brief Google search, and the only scientific results I found were in a French study from 2011 that concluded that BDs were better than DVDs under accelerated aging conditions. Except they didn't know just how accelerated the conditions were, just that they used 80C at 80% R/H and started seeing meaningful increases in error rate after hundreds of hours.
So do you re-read and burn anew your BDs a few times a year, or annually, or some other method? What's your strategy and experience?
I've come to realize that "extreme" conditions like that aren't all that uncommon. My Mom moved last Summer, but the new place wasn't ready for occupancy for several months, and she kept a lot of her stuff in a P.O.D. outdoors in the sun where temperatures within hit 130F/55C for several hours each day. I don't think she had any digital data in there, but I don't know for sure, and I doubt she knew either. Stuff is stuff to her. At least it probably killed any clothes moth larvae that might have been around.
Re:BD-RE discs (Score:2)
So do you re-read and burn anew your BDs a few times a year, or annually, or some other method? What's your strategy and experience?
I have two sets of discs, one offsite (stashed in a cabinet at my workplace), one local. I do incremental increases on the local, and occasionally (twice a year or so) swap the sets, and when this happens I do a full backup on the new local set. Upon writing, I do and instant verification on whether it's readable. I don't care if discs fail years from now, as long as the data lasts six months.
I've had two occasions of failed optical disc, ever (both DVD-RW's actually): One was where I received a disc that was marked with a permanent marker, so give a few years and it had basically dissolved those portions of the disc. I could still read most of the sectors though.. The other had been left outside it's jewel case on the desk for too long (so it got exposed to UV steadily). My first ever CD-R from 1992 is still reading out just fine.
Lots of ways (Score:2)
My PCs are fully backed up to my WHS every night. The WHS itself backs up nightly to a USB drive. The WHS backup, most of the WHS data, and PC backups are synced to another USB drive that lives in my office and comes home about once every two weeks.
The WHS data is backed up online to CrashPlan, except my movies, which are backed up to another external drive that lives at a friend's house.
I also have a bunch of stuff, mostly documents and notes, in Dropbox which is backed up online, to 4 different PCs, and is included in my nightly PC-to-WHS backups.
So every piece of data I have is backed up to three places, except the movies which are backed up to only two.
Online Service... or Online Service? (Score:2)
What would I choose between Online Service 1 and Online Service 2? Hmm... I wonder...
Apart from that obvious poll flaw, multiple methods. 2nd Internal HDD mirrored to two External HDDs for all my data that matters, and Online Service for some documents I absolutely don't want to lose and would like to access from different locations.
Re:Online Service... or Online Service? (Score:2)
What would I choose between Online Service 1 and Online Service 2? Hmm... I wonder...
The second Online Service is the backup for the first.
Re:Online Service... or Online Service? (Score:2)
Damn it. I would never have thought of that!
Re:Online Service... or Online Service? (Score:2)
Oops, I didn't see this, but I backed up your joke as well a bit further down the thread.
FreeNAS (Score:2)
Missing Option (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Missing Option (Score:2)
All my data is backed up by the NSA. System restore is just a FOIA away.
Except after they're done removing all the "sensitive" information, you'll find that your backup is [redacted].
Re:Missing Option (Score:2)
# rsync -a /MyData /MyBackup /MyBackup
Out of space on
That's OK, I'll just delete a directory I don't need on MyBackup: press up-arrow, add the directory name, press [home], replace rsync -a with rm -rf, press [Enter]. Churn, churn, churn, whoah, I had lots of data in that directory. 5 minutes later I look at my still running command and jump 10 feet in the air:
# rm -rf /MyData /MyBackup/UselessDir
And that, kids, is how you erase your data like a pro.
Online Service (Score:2)
I'm going to have to go with "Online Service" simply because I don't really have any critical data that I store on my personal computer.
I've got webmail. I use Google Docs because I don't have to worry about paying the Microsoft tax, and because it's really easy to collaborate with it. I've got a dropbox, because I work on other files in many different places.
Just about the only real data that I store on my home computer is the media files that I torrent. And truthfully, if I need to replace those again, it's just a matter of re-downloading them.
Re:Online Service (Score:2)
I selected Online Service too since it was already backed up as a poll option.
GMail (Score:2)
Re:GMail (Score:2)
Try GmailFS [wikipedia.org].
Curiously, if you follow the link it says that GmailFS doesn't work anymore.
Re:GMail (Score:2)
Multiple machines creating redundancy (Score:2)
I have both a souped-up desktop at home, and a laptop I take with me most places. Anything important is stored on both hard drives. Anything really really important is already on someone else's system. Yes, it's conceivable that I'll lose something if my entire town is destroyed by a tornado or something, but under those conditions my lost data is the least of my concerns.
Re:Multiple machines creating redundancy (Score:3)
Yes, it's conceivable that I'll lose something if my entire town is destroyed by a tornado or something, but under those conditions my lost data is the least of my concerns.
Maybe in the short term, but you might be a bit annoyed a year or a decade later.
One of my dad's relatives had some kind of old video camera, from the 1950s, and it's a shame their house burned down and I can't see the films. It's not that big a deal, but it's the only thing in that house I would care to have now.
My backup of everything is in the room adjacent to the host system, simply because my internet connection couldn't handle the load otherwise, but my backup of what's important (~60GB) is 200km away, and on somewhat higher ground than here.
ioSafe (Score:2)
My Synology NAS backs itself up to an ioSafe fire and waterproof external drive.
Comment removed (Score:2)
Re:Synology DiskStation (Score:2)
My backups are also to a NAS setup (in my case, an Airport Base Station with a fireproof external HD).
Re:Synology DiskStation (Score:2)
Same here - Synology NAS.
Surprised NAS isn't an option on the list actually - surely this is quite common among Slashdotters. Or do drives in a NAS still count as 'internal hard drive'?
Anyway yeah, my computers do a regular rsync to over the home network to the NAS. The NAS has drives in RAID 1 (yes, RAID isn't backup, I know that, but in this case the RAID array as a whole is backing up the computers).
Additionally, every now and again, I pull a drive on the NAS and take it to my parents' place on the other side of town. When I do that, I bring back the drive that already happens to be there from last time I did that, wipe it, and throw it back in the NAS and let it resync. So I have some degree of off-site backup too, though it's only as recent as the last time I could be bothered to take a drive over (which reminds me, I really should do that...)
Private backup exchange (Score:2)
My server backs up on to the desktop. Currently the desktop backs up an internal drive. Once I upgrade the server (stalled, in part due to HD prices), I will backup the desktop on the server: a mutual backup exchange. When that day comes, I may also do a backup exchange with a friend's server located in another state.
Multiple (Score:2)
3.5" Magneto-optical (Score:2)
I *love* these things! Mundane unimportant crap gets backed up on second hard drives, but the huge many-year projects go on MO disks that I periodically swap out for the ones in a safe-deposit box at the bank. $25/year is a really sweet deal to have it not matter if my house burns down.
Multiple sources! (Score:2)
Another computer's drive, USB drives (flash and HDDs), etc. For me, mostly another computer.
Bittorrent (Score:3, Funny)
Damn your thinking machines! (Score:2)
I have three machines here: (Score:2)
A server and two workstations. All "important" data is mirrored on all three. If I had any really important data I'd back it up off-site, but I don't.
Three Locations in Two Countries (Score:2)
I back up to my friend's server abroad via rsync. This server (which is also my main mail server) backs up to my brother's server (the backup mail server) with a Time Machine-like perl script so I have generations of backup available on my brother's system. (It is a deliberate choice not to have generations of data available on my friend's system.) My brother backs this server up to a NAS appliance, which makes my historical data slightly more vulnerable than my active data, being in one location only.
I have a local backup on an external harddisk, to make any immediate recovery quicker — I am going to upgrade this soon with more capacity and implement my Time Machine-like functionality on it.
My brother's own data and my friend's are similarly distributed to each other and to me.
In this, somewhat convoluted system, I have a pretty robust backup-scheme — and I cannot wait until my ISP runs fibre optics to my house, promising speeds well above 50Mbps down and 15Mbps up.
Comment removed (Score:2)
More than that (Score:2)
I voted for external hard drives; but some of the backup drives are themselves mirrored, and some data is additionally backed other ways: DVDs, or Magneto-Optical drives.
Flash drive (Score:2)
Photos of hex editor windows of my files (Score:2)
Using a film camera. Then I scan the negatives for double redundancy and write the scans to tape.
Of course, I spend so much time doing backups I never have time to use the source data.
Email (Score:2)
If it's really important, I email a copy to myself via a free email account.
mdadm + rsnapshot (Score:2)
Multiple external hard drives and online (Score:2)
Yes, yes, no and for some things.... (Score:2)
Some things are just cache to the Internet - > no back-up. Other things I could get back with effort -> double internal drives, it's not a perfect solution but hey... if the house burns down or my place is cleaned out I have other problems too, you know? The really important stuff -> offsite, but in all honesty most of that is also backed up in my memories. You could say they're irreplaceable but if someone offered a fat enough check for me to walk away from my entire life, all photos and trinkets and everything I've ever written or made or recorded, I think I could do that. But as storage is so cheap, it's a small price to pay to keep it all.
Card Punch (Score:2)
Several (Score:2)
I use several techniques:
- Backup server with a nightly wake/rsync/shutdown script.
- Tape drive.
And other non-backup solutions that nevertheless mitigate the effects of hardware failures:
- "Backup" hard drive inside computer (basically option #1 but internal), rsync'd to daily.
- RAID-1 everything.
Not really sure - online service? (Score:2)
This should really be a checkbox (Score:2)
I think anybody who doesn't want to lose data should be using more than one of the choices above.
Two hard drives and a server (Score:2)
I have a home media server with all my data on it.
About monthly I back it up to a hard drive which lives in a firesafe in the house. After the backup I swap the hard drive with an identical drive which I keep in the trunk of my car. The car drive goes gets the full back up and goes into the fire safe.
The car is about as offsite as I can afford.
So:
* One online backup on my home server
* One offline backup in a fire safe
* One offline backup in my car
FWIW I have just under 1TB of data, and use rsync to synchronize changes to the disks.
Hard Drive and Tapes (Score:2)
Personal PCs at home are backed up to an extrnal drive.
At work I backup to a hard drive (backup server) which is then replicated to another server. The backups are also copied to tape for external storage provider (mainly for monthly and yearly backups)
I suspect, in the future we will dispense with the tape backups unless we're really required to keep information indefinitely!
On a side note, but still on topic, my brother's got an iMac and a Time Capsule. He had to change the hard drive a couple of months ago, and when we rebotted the Mac with the new drive it rebuilt the iMac from the Time Capsule backup. I was quite impressed at how smooth the operation was.
I don't... (Score:2)
I'm fucking broke. I just put all my important data on my external hard drive usually, and rarely access those drives (though it is always mounted for easy access). It is primarily for storage. I can't just go out and buy a 500GB or 2TB drive for every type of file I have... it costs too much, internal drives can be a PITA (and "too many" are just not possible), and external drives can be unreliable (requiring ripping it out of its enclosure and converting it to an internal drive, like I had to do with one of mine). If I did backups, I would need at least:
2 extremely large drives for my collection of system rescue discs and operating systems.
2 very large drives just for DVD rips.
2 very large drives just for downloaded video clips.
2 large drives just for ripped audio CDs.
2 large drives just for PC games, software in general, etc.
2 large drives just for desktop wallpapers, MIDI soundfonts, themes, and various other configuration, as well as documents.
And consider the fact that owning more hard drives means a higher chance of one failing, so that combined with the cost makes getting at least a dozen hard drives impractical, as well as a pain in the ass.
online service listed twice? (Score:2)
is this some sort of subliminal reminder that you shouldn't rely on a single online service for backup?
or is one of them supposed to be "online service" with the other one being "online service with complimentary government server monitoring"?
I use a mix. (Score:2)
The bulk of my data is stored on redundant, external hard drives. Actually they're normally internal drives but I have the USB to HDD adapter...so they're as good as. Also I have a Media Center/Fileserver PC that has the third copy of all the important data. One of the drives is in a safe deposit box at the bank.
But while the data is on a couple of drives, I also have some of the data I'm actively using on several other sources.
Music for example is stored on the two drives but at the same time they're on my PC, my Wife's PC, the Media Center/Fileserrver PC and the laptop as well as a pair of iPod Classics.
Works in progress are saved on flash drives as well as on Google Drive. This gives me the advantage of working on them regardless of my access. I could be on a trip, have the taxi back over my laptop case, go and buy another one, access WiFi and I'm back in business once I've DL'd OpenOffice and the Google Drive for PC.
Then too I also have my PC's imaged on to DVD so I can do quick restores (important when kids DL viruses). 15 minutes to restore the image, another hour to pull data from the server PC or from the disks themselves...and I'm back in business.
This didn't come from any level of paranoia or anything. I just had the habit of keeping my data drives from older PC's that were retired. After a while I decided to consolidate them into a pair of 2TB drives that I had a coupon for.
I dont keep anything that important (Score:2)
I dont backup because I dont keep anything so important on my computer I can't do without it.
Re:The good old-fashioned way (Score:2)
My parents say I need to get out of the basement more often.
Nonsense. The required upgrades to technology can be conveniently delivered.
Re:I'm not from the U.S. (Score:2)
Sure you do... the NSA...