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Best way to backup files

C

Churnd

Member
I have an older desktop machine that has a 20 gig 7200 RPM Maxtor HD that runs the OS and programs, then a 160 gig 7200 RPM Maxtor HD that stores all my music, videos, etc. The first thing I'm wondering is, how likely is it for that second 160 gig drive to die on me? Is there something I can do to decrease the likelyhood of that happening? I have a laptop with a removeable modular drive bay that houses a second drive in it's own. I disabled drive cacheing to make the drive hot swappable. Could that be a step in increasing a drive's reliability?

Ok, back to the real question... backing the monster up. I know the most common practice is to get an external USB of Firewire backup drive. How reliable are these things really? Because they're actually hard drives, which always have a chance for failure. I thought a good way to go would be to get some DVD-RW's and backup everything onto those. Then store them in a safe place which would pretty much guarantee I'd have my data for life. And if I ever get to a point to where I've added much more to the drive, I could just add another DVD-RW to the current collection. It just seems to me that's the safest way to go.

But I'd rather get some other opinions. I like the idea of having a portable hard drive for backing up other things besides just that one hard drive (I have 3 other computers). On the other hand, I want to guarantee my backup will always be there. If I did decide to go the external HD route, I'd probably get a drive, then an enclosure for it to save $$$.

Ok I'm done rambling. If you've got any opinions, let's have 'em.
 
I recommend external hard drives for backup. A 5" enclosure with a mobile rack for the drive is very good as you can rotate several drives for backup. That may sound extreme - but today HDs are cheap relative to just about any tape drive system. Plus being much faster. Rotating several allows one drive to fail without the sky falling. Firewire seems to be faster than USB for this purpose, but either is perfectly acceptable.
. I also recommend using file-by-file software (e.g. Dantz Retrospect) for backing up, as drive image files are too fragile to be relied on for your sole backup method. Whichever backup software you use must be able to restore from a catastrophic failure (meaning your primary drive or whole system goes Toes Up from lightning or the like). Which means it must be able to restore to a bare drive from a floppy or optical boot - MBR, partition tables, file access tables, the works!
. If your backup drives are large enough, you could keep both a compressed f-b-f backup and a compressed drive image (Acronis True Image and Norton's Ghost seem to be popular) on the same drive. Drive images are nice to have for the fastest restore.
. I think that once the M$ Scandisk software would actually refresh the sectors (read your data into memory > test the sectors with both reads and writes > rewrite your data to the sectors) during the most thorough level of the testing - I'm not sure whether the current disk check does the same. SpinRite from grc.com does the refresh during the higher levels of its testing protocols. One of those could serve to keep your backups fresh on the hard drive over long term storage.
. I've had bad experiences with RW media in the past. People have sworn to me that RW tech has improved to the point that it is reliable enough for backup now, but I'm still iffy on it. But they may serve for small intermediate backups of just the changed files since the last full backup. Once again if your backup drives are large enough, you could also keep the intermediate backups on them as well. Or you could have some small ones set aside just for the intermediate backups.
. I find that just about the most important feature of a backup regimen after accuracy and reliability is speed. As a backup scheme is no good unless it is executed. If the plan is too slow or has too many encumbrances - then you may as well go back to the wing-and-a-prayer method... 😉

.bh.
 
I bought a spindle of 25 DVD+RW's that I'll use for now. I'll probably invest in a backup drive when if I ever get to the point to where I'm updating my collection more often.
 
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