QOTD: How Often Do You Backup Your Data?

[Marcus Yam]

In this case, being backed up is a good thing.

QOTD: How Often Do You Backup Your Data? : Read more

 

[engrpiman]

I have my data spread across several drives. I backup (move files) every month

 

[aspireonelover]

[citation][nom]engrpiman[/nom]I have my data spread across several drives. I backup (move files) every month[/citation]
bad decision, you should move the files ASAP, more like once everyday.

TBH, I don't backup, and it's a bad decision. My current hard drive is about to die. I'm buying a new hard drive in 2 weeks.

 

[08nwsula]

I backup my files once when I get them and once again after I reformat one of my hdds or get a new one. I would probably go nuts and re-enact the Texas Chainsaw Massacre if I lost some of my files.

 

[maxxamillion]

At home I just run a simple mirror setup on RAID.

At work I have five 3TB RAID PACKS for external daily backups. Storage Area Network (SAN) device that gets backed up daily along with 8 servers (Active Directory, Exchange, Ect.) that are backing up daily as well. These all go to the RAID PACKS at various times after hours. RAID PACKS get rotated weekly and are stored off site at a secure facility.

 

[cruiseoveride]

Every microsecond!

RAID5 FTW!

 

[IronRyan21]

Windows Home Server Backs Up all my Home PCs. Works Good, Already had to use it..... Runs on Mini ITX Atom Home Build with TB Hard Drive.

 

[Guest]

External hard drive and I just drag and drop my important files every month or when I receive something that is precious.

 

[doomtomb]

The correct answer should be daily but unfortunately, I don't have a complicated system setup to backup my data every 24 hours or every second. I have two 640GB drives in RAID-0 which has all my data, a 1TB internal drive which I make an image of my RAID-0 setup every week or so via Windows Backup. I also have a 1TB external drive which I keep copies of most of my media files on for portability.

 

[onsiteone]

i use carbonite.com so all my files are backed up continuously. but i also have an external USB drive that back up all my data daily - just in case the internet A-SPlODES one day and i can't phone home to carbonite. i don't really need RAID, since if my system dies, it only takes me about 30min to reinstall everything. all my data is on a networked server and most of my daily work is done on the cloud.

 

[bonjan]

We've two laptops at home and both of them backup hourly to the Time Capsule. To avoid big disasters leaving us without all the data, we also backup the Time Machine contents monthly to an external USB drive that I keep at my workplace.

 

[Mr_Man]

I back up my flash drive's data every week, but I haven't gotten into the habit of backing up my less-important computer data.

 

[ervinshiznit]

I backup everyday, using the freeware version of Syncback.

 

[joex444]

I do weekly backups of my OS partition to an external HD.

My data is stored on a RAID5. To the above poster: This is not a backup method, it is a redundancy. They are not the same. (A virus can still wipe out your RAID5, which you would not recover if you must format).

And my important data is kept on the OS partition, in the backup files on the external and on a USB flash drive.

 

[SAL-e]

[citation][nom]maxxamillion[/nom]At home I just run a simple mirror setup on RAID.[/citation]
[citation][nom]cruiseoveride[/nom]Every microsecond!RAID5 FTW![/citation]
Bad advice.
RAID is great, but it is not backup solution. I am not going to argue about it. Just for the users that don't know or don't want to know the difference. The external USB HDD with backup software is better then RAID.

 

[renee9001]

I don't see raid as a backup at all since there there is no effort to keep the data seperate. What I used to tell tell customers is that we'll reliably duplicate errors.
Renee Culver
Head of VMS Phase II Shadowing team

 

[cadder]

I backup once a week or so. Most of my important data is older and I have it stored in multiple locations already, what I'm usually backing up weekly are my email messages and a few miscellaneous things. Also my digital photos but they stay on the memory card too. I won't delete them from the memory card until they are backed up on DVD and 3 different hard drives.

My home backup consists of a NAS with 2 mirrored hard drives in it, a USB drive that I store elsewhere, and burned DVD's. A copy of the really important stuff also exists on my work computers.

 

[hemelskonijn]

For non work related stuff i don't use any backup other than my raid 5 though i know this is not winning solution i just don't care enough since all my pictures are on a remote server all my audio and video i can download again (keep in mind downloading is legal in this part of the world since we pay tax for it so its only a mather of reloading an endless list of torrents i grabbed over the past few years) and most of my scripting is old-school backed-up to zip disks.

Zip disks even though they are slow and can only hold 250megs never failed me and as long as i don't get a click of death i guess i will keep using them if only because they cost me like 40usd each back when i bought stacks of them.

 

[p05esto]

Yea, that's funny some people say their back-up is RAID - good luck with that. What happens when you delete a folder on accident or get a virus?

My NAS computer has 2 1TB drives, the first backs up to the second once a week (might go daily soon though). Then once every couple months I replicate to a third 1TB drive and store off-site.

 

[michaelahess]

Dual raid 5 arrays on two systems, a mirrored nas for backup of extra critical stuff, and my music. Mozy for the important stuff. Also an external HD that I do regular encrypted backups of the important stuff, that stays in my car as an "off site" backup of sorts.

At work, I've got multiple raid 5 and 1 array's with an off site backup server at one of our other locations using NovaNet software. They do BITS backups every half hour as well as ntbackup and vmware snapshot backups daily and weekly. All but two servers are virtualized and I keep local copies on two servers and one on the off site backup server.

I think I'm fairly safe.

 

[michaelahess]

Dual raid 5 arrays on two systems, a mirrored nas for backup of extra critical stuff, and my music. Mozy for the important stuff. Also an external HD that I do regular encrypted backups of the important stuff, that stays in my car as an "off site" backup of sorts.

At work, I've got multiple raid 5 and 1 array's with an off site backup server at one of our other locations using NovaNet software. They do BITS backups every half hour as well as ntbackup and vmware snapshot backups daily and weekly. All but two servers are virtualized and I keep local copies on two servers and one on the off site backup server.

I think I'm fairly safe.

 

[matt87_50]

to save power, and to make organizing my files easier, i try to run as few, big drives as possible in my main computer, as I upgrade regularly to have the biggest drives, this leaves lots of spare drives that i put in and old computer that i use as a backup computer, kinda like a big external harddrive, I also "RAID" (that is to say i manually make duplicates of the files on more than 1 drive) this backup computer, cause all the drives are so old they are likely to fail, I use my own program that i made to make the backing up as painless as possible

 

[the_mystery_gamer]

My Mac is backup via Time Machine to a Firewire drive. My Windows box isn't so lucky though. I really can't blame MS for their backup tools either, since I haven't even made an effort to back stuff up manually. Most of my important stuff (music library, schoolwork, documents) is on the Mac, so I guess I just never wanted to take the time.

 

[Luscious]

Daily incremental backup in conjunction with a full-system backup every other week. Follow it religiously.

Big thanks to Windows 95 for demonstrating the need to purchase a tape streamer back in the day.

 

[blaze589]

Hardly ever to be honest. I have my OS allocated to a 70GB partition. My documents, pictures, software and music are on a very small 80GB HDD (no other purpose aside from that) which I link to. So in case my Vista partition gets nuked it isn't a big deal. I just have to reinstall the OS and link to the folders on the drive. I also keep my Firefox profile in a briefcase in the 80GB HDD and update it every week or so. On my other partitions I have additional media which I've seriously neglected to backup; I really need to address that ASAP!