QOTD: How Often Do You Backup Your Data?

[g0rilla]

Most of my files are music and games, so that part of it doesn't change. I'll backup my pictures whenever I remember to.

My work computer's files are all on a remote server.

 

[kentlowt]

Daily to 2 different media

 

[Guest]

I backup data to a D-Link DNS323 in raid 1 configuration using MEMEO. The backup is 'live'. As long as I change the files, MEMEO will notice the change and immediately backup the modified files.

 

[izzygodenov]

Have 14 HD's in an external Rhino Jr hot swap case to a USB port. We backup in entirety our servers every night. Only that nights backup is onsight. The others are off site at a secure location.

The rotation is two weeks, M-Su week 1, then week 2 then over write. Additional layer is Mozy backing up critical company data only.

RAID is not a backup. RAID is redundancy to ensure uptime of the business. If your RAID gets some nasty virus, or the RAID controller itself creates a problem you are screwed.

 

[zelannii]

Difficult to say... I have a daily backup rotation to an external drive, and maintan 30 days of backups on it, swaping it out for one of 2 other drives kept offsite about monthly. That's the easy answer. This is a traditional backup that is both searchable for file level data as well as recoverable to not just the current state, but up to 90 days ago, and includes Baremetal backups as well as files.

I also have utilities on several machines that replicate some critical data in near real-time (from on-write-commit to hourly), between systems. The important data all eventually ends up on the core machine that backuks up to the external drive (which internally btw is a RAID 5 for added reliability, not to be confused itself as a backup).

I also have cloud based servcies protecting some critical directories I want offsite sooner than I swap drives, which vary from real time to daily depending on the folder and the service behind it. I have about 15GB of data protercted this way, some of it to more than 1 service.

On top of that, i have full backups (aka perpetual incremental) running to an online service protecting the several hundred GBs of media we share through the house. That service provides unlimited version history beyond what i can obtain with a few HDDs, and can ship my entire dataset to me on a hard disk if i need it, and provides an online portal for file recovery. I have about 900GB up there, and it's a whopping $5 a month (it took about 3 months to seed the initial data set, but now it only runs about 1 hour a day to keep up to date, unless i dump a lot of video on the drive...)

Ive not only been through a bad data loss disaster (not a complete loss, but a setback of about 3 months of my free time to reconcile, which is bad enough) and I've seen a number of businesses close their doors forever (a few multi-million dollar businesses at that) after finding out their data backups were not properly configured, properly maintained, or properly though through (like lack of keeping records of critical things like install configurations, ADSR passwords, etc) when they had a crash; events that $10,000 investment would have prevented.

Here it is in a nutshell for all you beancounters: When you calculate the cost of a solution (hardware, software, support, and labor), you need to add 20-25% (could be as high as 50% for small businesses) to cover the costs of a proper DR plan for that investment.

For home users, $300-400 covers backups for multiple machines, including baremetal recovery (ghost or equivalent) and takes a few hours a month to ensure is working. If you have a massive media library, personal data you don't want to loose, electronic tax records or home business records you could pay penalties for loosing, or simply family pictures or video, you need a backup solution. Every PC should simply COME WITH one, but short of Apple, none do.... (OK, Vista Business and Ultimate include full system backup, but since retail machines including these editions are extremely rare, they don;t count in my opinion, and this is a feature microsoft should have included free in all editions, backup is not a value add....)

 

[thegh0st]

hardly ever.

and when I do it's manual backups. most things can be downloaded off the internet these days anyways and it seems there is always newer versions. lose data = great time to update software. other than that I usually have data on a CD or more than one harddrive so even if I can't find something on the internet I can usually scrounge it up off something I have.

the only real thing I try to keep current which isn't very is game data and screen shots which can't be reproduced. though in some games now I use xfire for screenshots which puts them online for me. and not many online games need actual data backup anymore either. it's more about convenience at avoiding long updates when installing from scratch.

of course I'm talking about personal backups. work is a different story and handled most through automation.

 

[killerb255]

I back up about once every six months. I would do it more frequently, but it's just not cost-effective to back up 2-3 TB of stuff every day, most of it not changing all that frequently...

 

[dmurdock]

Both pc's nighlty backup to an internal drive on one of the pc's. Then (nightly), this drive is backed up to an external usb drive (of which i have 2). Monthly i swap the external drives (on in a firesafe in the slab of my house, the other in use). So if the house burns to the ground i am at worst 1 month behind. I use pt replicator from karen's powertools which is free, schedulable, and easy to use.

 

[dmurdock]

and, at work we use daily backups which are stored offsite and are overwritten after 30 days or so.

 

[gnesterenko]

Honestly, not that often. That is to say, I've several separate drives. One is for movies/shows/software images. Second is music only but has a separate isolated from Windows partition created by Acronis True Image whereupon I make full image backups of my primary boot drive (both OS and boot partition). However, since I, like most people, do not make too many changes on a weekly or even monthy basis, the only time I make a new backup is before a major system update. Everything else is too minor for me to care about having to reinstall an app or two.

That said, once Win 7 is actually released, I'm going to make a completely separate image backup just after a clean install and keep it saved. Registry rot unfortunatly is a reality and a clean "reformat" every year or so will be made much easier with said clean install. I just don't trust a machine after software has been installed/updated/uninstalled several times - never know what trash is left lurking in the shadows...

"The views expressed here are mine and do not reflect the official opinion of my employer or the organization through which the Internet was accessed."

 

[thearm]

One Raid 5 array and three Raid 1 arrays.

 

[thearm]

[citation][nom]Miharu[/nom]I made a manual backup every 2 months with rar file.I'm not interresting in RAID5, buy 3 HD x 1TB in RAID5 for an 8-14GB backup its not really a good idea.I see Norton Backup running at the job, the app kill the machine...This a good solution but the software take too much.So if you have any recommandation for backup or system backup ?I still looking for a system backup solution since I preorder Win7 Premium (the blue one) and I want backup it right after a fresh install.[/citation]

Get a RAID card what will do at lest RAID 1 and get Acronis to make an image of your hard drive after you install Windows 7. Acronis is a great program. If you REALLY don't want a RAID array, get a second physical hard drive to put your Acronis image of Windows 7 onto.

 

[Guest]

I use macrium reflect to do complete system images to my E-Sata drive and have all my precious photos, music and apps on a lacie firewire drive as well, that makes three copies of my data, backup once a week, unless its important info, then immediately, problem is storage space is growing evey three months by 250gb or so, but heck, better than losing it!

 

[matchboxmatt]

I used to have two drives, but since I've gotten a new one, I split my drive into two partitions, store all my files on one, and install the OS and programs on another.

That way, I can reformat without having to copy anything, and if my system ever tanks I won't have to worry.

If my HDD fails, though, that'd be somewhat problematic. Not sure what to do there, yet.

 

[snikdalac]

I use Rebit for automatic all the time backup to a second hardrive. I use Carbonite.com for online backup in case of supreme disaster. All automatic, easy, up to date, I do nothing but sit back and smile and use my PC

 

[roguent]

all day everyday....

1.) Drobo/DroboShare for NAS/Raid solution
2.) Dropbox - can't beat it for those resumes, sensitive documents, etc.
3.) Mozy.com - can't beat it for ease of backup / restore
4.) DVDs - good old static media for photos, etc. in a bank safe deposit box (1-2 times a year I drop off new discs of photos, videos, etc.)

I've had to use all 4 for restores. You can never have too much backup.

 

[Guest]

I automatically backup important files to iBackup every morning, as well as to a Buffalo NAS server with RAID10 using NTBackup. My local drives are also in a RAID1 configuration. I'm not going to get the Home edition of Windows anyway, so it's a moot point.

 

[greenmachineiijh]

My main OS drive has a 3 disk raid 0 which is a high risk for loss however I have never had a crash in 3 years. I also upgraded the drives once in that time period. I also have a 1TB enterprise class drive for my stuff, music, movies, etc. The main drive is backed up once a week and the stuff drive is always upgraded at least once a year so that is my backup for that. Pictures and other valuable information is backed up separately to an external USB hard drive which is added only for backup and then removed and powered down.

 

[benfea]

Once a week my data gets backed up to a different drive in the same machine. I backup to an external drive... when I remember to do it, which is usually just before a full wipe & reinstall.

 

[Shadow703793]

Me:

Every other day of incremental back ups of documents. Important docks backed up to the net and DVD. (See: GMailFS).

Every month, full OS back up. (I have OS/data on separate partitions/drives)

Every year, re-installation of OS.

 

[izzygodenov]

Judging by some of the responses here: An idiot and their data are soon parted. You don't know what you don't know.

At least get a backup service like Carbonite or Mozy. Mozy Home Edition if free up to 2GB and something like $5/month unlimited there after.

RAID is not a backup: Virus, RAID controller error, More than the amount of allowed drives fail = you are f'd

Running a 2nd drive in the computer is not a great backup. What happens if the house burns down or computer is struck by lightening? = you are f'd.

You need redundancy, you need something that if off site. Bottom line.

I have used nothing other than NT Backup included with Windows 2k/XP/2003 to automate your backup to removable and portable storage. It costs nothing.

 

[Guest]

I use SecondCopy (low cost) to pull important files from several PCs on the home LAN, including the SageTV computer, and copy them to an external USB drive. I can grab that drive and run in an emergency evacuation. Due to brush fires, I've had to do just that.

I use Acronis True Image (for years) to do drive imaging once a week or so. Has saved my fanny several times.

Since disks have gotten so cheap, I now prefer to just use Acronis to CLONE the working drive to a hot backup drive. Is fast. Then when (not if) the working drive gets corrupted with malware, or if it fails, the clone plus the SecondCopy backups make for a fast recovery. Like 15 minutes rather than an entire weekend.

 

[lesterf1020]

I have my OS and Data on separate partitions. I backup using Acronis True Image 2009 and I backup my data partition daily (it is set to run automatically when I shutdown the PC) and my OS partition when I have uninstalled or installed a few programs (I keep track), roughly once every 2 weeks. The backups are done to an internal 640GB harddrive dedicated to that purpose and I overwrite backups as needed. Once every couple of months I copy my most recent backup to an external Hardrive.

I do partition backups not data backups and I normally restore from a second copy of WindowsXP on an external hardrive via esata.

I think that about covers it.

 

[goonting]

I use capivara to sync files to my 1TB My Book Studio on weekends

 

[nowwhatnapster]

I have 3 PC's here, one is a 1TB Server/NAS with Raid 5+1. I store all my data on my NAS. Everything but program installs, firefox bookmarks, and stuff that is not easily relocated to my NAS. I use SyncBackSE to backup the remaining data on my PC to my NAS. I also use SyncBackSE to backup 2 remote computers to my NAS. So I'm getting my moneys worth out of my adaptec Raid Card. Online backup of 100's of GB is too expensive, so I built my own NAS.

My data is backed up constantly or within 24hours for files that are backed up via SyncbackSE. It has instant backup capabilities, but I find that its not necessary.

I am also debating using norton Ghost to create backup images of my PC installs so I dont have to reinstall everything when a HDD crashes... but haven't gotten around to it. Alternatively I am debating using Raid 1 on my PC, but not sure if I'm willing to shell out the extra $$$ for the hardware.