What is a "backup" of your data?

[PeeluckyDuckee]

I have all my important family videos and pictures on 3 separate physical medias, though I realize if my condo gets burned down I lose everything. Now I have some of those in the cloud, and will soon get another hdd and store it at my sister's place or in my car.

I could not ever imagine losing a good 10yrs worth of memory.

 

[Magic Carpet]

Optical media such as DVD-Rs, Blu-Rays are good for storage / archiving, considering you can make multiple copies of the same file and spread around different locations at such a low cost.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Optical media such as DVD-Rs, Blu-Rays are good for storage / archiving, considering you can make multiple copies of the same file and spread around different locations at such a low cost.

Depends on how much data you have. At $170 for a 3TB drive, that's like $0.06/GB. Blank DVD-Rs are about the same, but not reusable. Dual Layer or Rewritable discs are even more.

There's also a speed and convenience issue with HDDs vs. Burning optical media.

For small data sets, you're dead on. For anything over 15GBs or so, I'd start buying thumb drives or HDDs instead.

 

[dma0991]

Optical media such as DVD-Rs, Blu-Rays are good for storage / archiving, considering you can make multiple copies of the same file and spread around different locations at such a low cost.

Been there, done that. Not worth the effort as you would have to separate the files according to how much the media is capable of holding. I'd rather spend the money on more HDDs and make backups of backups. Finding the data you want to read is also a PITA, there is no search function and you'll have to flip folders of DVDs just to find what you need. I'm just waiting for prices to fall a little bit more and I'll port my DVD contents back to HDD. 😉

 

[AnitaPeterson]

I wish to add the following re: archival on DVD and CD :

My oldest CD-Rs are now 14 years-old (from 1998). Granted I used primarily good media, not crap from the dollar store, but I've already encountered a couple of instances of inaccessible data.

In one case, a CD (Maxell brand, circa 2002) no longer recognized the data from a portion near the edge, where there was a fingerprint. And I'm talking about an accidental fingerprint from a relatively clean hand (no greasy food consumed before), which occurred during a routine disc handling.

I've learned my lesson - only duplicate HDDs from now on. The physical space savings alone are worth it.

 

[zCypher]

It's not that complicated of a concept. The more separate copies you have, the less likely you are to lose your data. Anything relatively important to me, I have a copy on my data disk in my main computer which is encrypted and the most frequently used. Every once in a while I will copy that updated bunch of data to a USB drive, and make a second USB drive copy of that one. I keep some things available to me through cloud storage as well.

I'll be getting a couple of external drives to keep in different locations, just in case.

Even for family's computers, there's always a boot drive + data disk + external drive + multiple USB drives. Kinda hard to go wrong even with such a basic setup. Not likely for all SSD, all HDD, all cloud storage and all USB to suddenly and simultaneously die.

 

[Magic Carpet]

I wish to add the following re: archival on DVD and CD :

My oldest CD-Rs are now 14 years-old (from 1998). Granted I used primarily good media, not crap from the dollar store, but I've already encountered a couple of instances of inaccessible data.

In one case, a CD (Maxell brand, circa 2002) no longer recognized the data from a portion near the edge, where there was a fingerprint. And I'm talking about an accidental fingerprint from a relatively clean hand (no greasy food consumed before), which occurred during a routine disc handling.

I've learned my lesson - only duplicate HDDs from now on. The physical space savings alone are worth it.

Pity for your loss. There are different grades of consumer optical media, like this. Not cheap, but it is worth it. Furthermore, the way you burn the data on to a disc is equally as important. Complex, yes. Nobody said that's easy.

A conventional HDD is without a doubt, bigger and more convenient, but more reliable ??? hell no. Biggest problem with hdds is the shock resistance, I mean... the "non-existant". Even "pen drives" are better in this area.

However, if one doesn't want to get his/her head stuck with too much information. Backing up / storing data in the cloud is a good alternative.

 

[WT]

<--- WHS owner. It took me 18 years in the computer field, but I have solid backups that occur nightly. I add folder duplication to the extra important stuff, and everything else stays on each client PC.
I also do a yearly backup of the WHS 'shares' to an external drive which can come n handy under worst case scenarios.

 

[Cerb]

Depends on how much data you have. At $170 for a 3TB drive, that's like $0.06/GB. Blank DVD-Rs are about the same, but not reusable. Dual Layer or Rewritable discs are even more.

There's also a speed and convenience issue with HDDs vs. Burning optical media.

For small data sets, you're dead on. For anything over 15GBs or so, I'd start buying thumb drives or HDDs instead.

BD's are getting fairly priced, these days, and things like personal photos not only don't change, but are ideally organized by date. DL DVD media still seems to suck somewhat, as far as errors go. Since read errors often increase over time even with good storage, I'd avoid them just in case.

Either way, any such backups should be periodically checked, and extra copies never hurt. I've got ancient TY and MCC CD-Rs that still read great. I've had some others flake. Ritek G04 and G05, anyone? When a fall power outage took out my old Athlon box (I don't even want to think of how many AXP CPUs and mobos I went through...OK, 3 CPUs, 7 mobos, 3 PSUs, ugh!), I found out about them the hard way. Luckily, I only lost some porn, saved games, and Quake 2 mods, while my important data was backed up on MCC CDs (whew!).

Since then, I've come to generally add parity files to my optical backups, and use separate brands when making multiple copies.

 

[BFG10K]

I have three copies of my data on three 1TB drives: VelociRaptor, Hitachi and Caviar Black. The Hitachi sits in my system while the Caviar Black is an offsite backup.

 

[mikeymikec]

Screw it, I'll respond to the OP - RAID1 is a form of backup. Now, before an unholy shitstorm is whipped up in response to the heresy I've uttered, consider this:

The form that a backup takes should depend on the concerns of the person who owns the data.

Disclaimer: I wouldn't ever recommend to a business customer that all they need to protect their data adequately is RAID1. The simple fact is that while RAID1 provides a pretty good assurance that if one disk fails, their data is still on the other disk. From that point of view, it is a backup. "Backup" is not a word that was invented with regard to data, so please don't talk as if you can define the term.

However, there are more data loss possibilities that ought to be considered.

Not an comprehensive list, just off the top of my head:

* Fire (or some natural element, say a flood) destroys the computer
* Someone with malicious intent deletes the data
* Someone steals the computer
* Malware messes with the data in some way
* Data corruption not necessarily caused by hardware
* Someone is actually out to destroy every last trace of that data, targetting backups as well

Many/most of these may not be (or not ought to be) concerns of the person owning the data. The owner, once they have a reasonable grasp of the threats to their data should decide based on what's available, the advantages and disadvantages of that form of backup, and their budget.

Someone might write down the important bits of data or print them, which if that was all they needed would be a decent form of backup, unless water damage was a possibility they considered and left the written/printed backup on top of the computer that hosts the original copy of the data.

It's a good point what someone said about simply storing the data (only) on an external HDD is not a backup. I point out to customers that the technology in that device is almost identical to the technology in their computer, and it's even more vulnerable to damage because it's a more portable item. I'm a bit surprised that the point needs to be made on a semi-technical forum though.

I just think that some people get this 'holier than thou' impression and think that they speak the truth. I remember in another thread (whether it was on this forum or not, I can't remember) someone got carried away with this idea and said "RAID0 isn't even RAID!" (presumably because that person had the idea that RAID = protecting data), to which someone responded "err, yes it is".

 

[dave_the_nerd]

(presumably because that person had the idea that RAID = protecting data), to which someone responded "err, yes it is".

Maybe I'm thinking of a different post, but IIRC they said something along the lines of "RAID 0 isn't rAID" (note the capitalization) because, well, the 'R' in "RAID" stands for "Redundant," and there's nothing redundant (fault tolerant) about RAID 0.

I got a chuckle out of it, anyway.

 

[mikeymikec]

Maybe I'm thinking of a different post, but IIRC they said something along the lines of "RAID 0 isn't rAID" (note the capitalization) because, well, the 'R' in "RAID" stands for "Redundant," and there's nothing redundant (fault tolerant) about RAID 0.

I got a chuckle out of it, anyway.

No, I saw that in this thread, it was some other thread I was referring to.

Perhaps they named it RAID0 because there is zero redundancy 😛

 

[biostud]

So I have my important files synchronized on-line via Live Mesh and to my laptop. I also have an external hard drive where I do a backup ~one time a month.

Do I have backup?

 

[Brovane]

For my personal data I use Carbonite to backup the critical data. I also keep a external disk of video's etc in my safe at home. The thing I discovered about external hard disks is that after a while I would get lazy and not regularly backup the data. With Carbonite the data is kind of backed up instantly for me online. If I need to do a large recovery or Carbonite is corrupted then I have my external disk, I just might loose the last month of data etc.

At work we use ExaGrid with replication between two units sitting in different data centers separated by about 70 miles. At one of the Data Centers we also have a TBU that we do a weekly backup to and these tapes go off site with Iron Mountain. However we are looking at eventually going completely tapeless and possibly doing replication to a 3rd unit located at another data center out of state.