System Backup

Puddleduck

Puddleduck

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Just done a full backup :)

It took a couple of hours to back up onto a 128GB USB drive and hopefully I will never need it.

Must remember to make backups every month or so although I do keep copies of important documents on removable media and also in the cloud.

I'd hate to lose all my family history research.
 
Have you tried to recover a backed up file? Backups are great but only as good as the ability to get it back :giggle:
 
Must admit don't bother with backups as in the real sense but all our data is stored on a networked NAS drive which has two discs in a raid configuration and important stuff also copied to a portable NAS drive.
 
Puddleduck said:
Just done a full backup :)

It took a couple of hours to back up onto a 128GB USB drive and hopefully I will never need it.

Must remember to make backups every month or so although I do keep copies of important documents on removable media and also in the cloud.

I'd hate to lose all my family history research.
Click to expand...
Just how big is your family?
 
Lenny HB said:
Must admit don't bother with backups as in the real sense but all our data is stored on a networked NAS drive which has two discs in a raid configuration and important stuff also copied to a portable NAS drive.
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RAID is not a back up :p

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Lenny HB said:
Must admit don't bother with backups as in the real sense but all our data is stored on a networked NAS drive which has two discs in a raid configuration and important stuff also copied to a portable NAS drive.
Click to expand...

Sorry, last post was an industry joke. There is even a web page covering it.

If your house burns down or flooded, do you still have your data. If not then you don't have a backup.
If your computer gets infected with ransomware and all connected drives get encrypted (including network shares). Do you still have your data? If not then you don't have a backup.

I could go on but you get the idea :(
 
Gromett said:
Sorry, last post was an industry joke. There is even a web page covering it.

If your house burns down or flooded, do you still have your data. If not then you don't have a backup.
If your computer gets infected with ransomware and all connected drives get encrypted (including network shares). Do you still have your data? If not then you don't have a backup.

I could go on but you get the idea :(
Click to expand...
If the house burned down or flooded the last thing on my mind would be my data.
For a backup to work properly you would take the backup off the premises every night not that practical for the average household pensioner, could put one in the car or Motorhome but can't be arse.

I did say I didn't do a backup in the real sense. But I am protected against hard disc failure which is the most likely judging by the cupboard full of old hard drives I have.
 
If you have your drives at home/work etc then Cloud backup is the one.

Gromett will give more in depth and exact info I imagine but for basic home user that wants "house fire" protection the costs per GB these days is nothing and can be restored to anywhere.

Edit..sorry I should add also...it can still be as simple as adding everything once a week or so to an external drive and just leaving it out of the house if your stuff isn't so critical..(but clouds are cheap too ;)
 
Tombola said:
If you have your drives at home/work etc then Cloud backup is the one.

Gromett will give more in depth and exact info I imagine but for basic home user that wants "house fire" protection the costs per GB these days is nothing and can be restored to anywhere.
Click to expand...
I've never liked the idea of storing my data on someone else's server.
 
Lenny HB said:
I've never liked the idea of storing my data on someone else's server.
Click to expand...
Neither did I or still dont I 100%. Even though it all points to being secure.....but it's the way it's going..and as I see now how it's all locked down..maybe...just maaaaybe I'll trust it one day.
I'm using it though for work..lol.

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Lenny HB said:
I've never liked the idea of storing my data on someone else's server.
Click to expand...

Me neither.

My backup consists of a big data dump to a large drive which covers most of my "valuable" data. Media, pictures etc. I rsync this around once a month. I keep this at mum's.

I then have 2 local backups, one in the "house" and one in the van, these get swapped periodically and updated.

For stuff that changes daily, I encrypt and push to one of my servers which is not something most people have the option of.

For most people. Having an external drive that is stored in a fireproof and waterproof case and kept in the van or car boot. Not ideal conditions due to varying temperatures. But with solid state drives not so much of an issue.
If you have more data than can be stored on a solid state SSD. Then it probably won't change that much. Things like media, pictures, music, videos, films, tv etc. These can be stored on an external drive and left at a relative or friends house.
Only the fast changing stuff is backed up to SSD and kept out of the house.


Lenny HB said:
If the house burned down or flooded the last thing on my mind would be my data.
Click to expand...
It would be the first thing on my mind. Everything else I can replace and none of it has sentimental value.
My pictures though are irreplaceable. My films/TV's took a lot of time and money to collect.
The work stuff thankfully is backed up to 5 locations minimum.
 
Andacami said:
Have you tried to recover a backed up file? Backups are great but only as good as the ability to get it back :giggle:
Click to expand...
Yes, done that a few times after hard drive crashes and after buying a new laptop.
Coolcats said:
Just how big is your family?
Click to expand...
As I am back to the early 1700s on several lines with every descendant then traced back to 1939 or even more recently it's a lot of data!!! On one of the lines a family of 10 children was "small". One couple had 16 children who survived to marry and have children of their own. The report of their golden wedding stated they had 116 grandchildren!!!
 
Having lost everything way back in the 90's I don't use the built in hard drive I save all documents to an external hard drive and a memory stick, on the first of every month I copy everything to a second hard drive which is removed so safe from ransom although it is in the house so a fire would get it
 
Puddleduck said:
Yes, done that a few times after hard drive crashes and after buying a new laptop.

As I am back to the early 1700s on several lines with every descendant then traced back to 1939 or even more recently it's a lot of data!!! On one of the lines a family of 10 children was "small". One couple had 16 children who survived to marry and have children of their own. The report of their golden wedding stated they had 116 grandchildren!!!
Click to expand...
Wow that’s a lot of tracing well done you and suspect many try and do this. Must be nice to see the family lines.

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Lenny HB said:
I've never liked the idea of storing my data on someone else's server.
Click to expand...
This is true although, I do think there is levels of trust interns of who want to look at your data, in some ways IBM HP BT etc are the more traditional data warehouses, whereas Amazon Google etc are the new boys who make money from data and data intelligence.

Data from out Macs are 'backed up' to time capsule a NAS at home and cloud backups which are dated and not overwritten so the oldest data in the cloud is only a month old and held for 12 months so the oldest in the cloud and NAS is 12 months, where as the Mac time capsule goes back years which in someways is irrelevant in that if I was to restore from time machine/capsule everything gets put back in place automatically whereas if I do it from the NAS or cloud I would have to place the data back manually in to the relevant folders.
 
I follow the common recommendations for households - hard disc on computer, backup on external disc, and cloud. I check occasionally to ensure I can retrieve information from these. We also save some documents in a fire proof filing cabinet. I don''t set fire to the cabinet to occasionally to check how secure it is but I do check to ensure my filing is reasonable. Our simple wills' documentation is kept in the filing cabinet, on the solicitors IT system, and a store somewhere in London.

The missus keeps her craft and ancestry information on 12 flash drives and paper. When she goes upstairs laughing on me going down on the express escalator, it's unlikely anyone would be interested in her information because they don't show much of an interest now. Nor mine.

In truth, I wouldn't be crying if I lost the lot. Irritated perhaps. I could just Google myself; it seems to know everything about me!
 
When I had the first attack, in the 1990's a virus took a random document from the my documents folder and email it to all my contacts wit a copy virus, not a big problem for me but a friend who had the same virus had an extremely personal document taken. Since then I don't used the "my documents" folder, I create another folder for documents and have that in a sub folder as well, so it's unlikely a similar attack would find anything private today.
 
Trust the nebulous Cloud? Not me. Sounds like a hackable server farm, beneath the fluffy PR image. Over which I have no control. I did discover by accident that Windoze had sent some megabytes of my data to MS' "free" cloud storage without my knowledge. What cheek! I deleted it all, and changed security settings. I suspect that there is some kind of unauthorised backup that MS have kept regardless.

There isn't much irreplaceable stuff on my computer(s). The risk of a house fire destroying my HDD data backups is extremely low. Same goes for loss by burglary. That level of risk is reflected by my very low home insurance premium.

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SpeedyDux said:
Trust the nebulous Cloud? Not me. Sounds like a hackable server farm, beneath the fluffy PR image. Over which I have no control. I did discover by accident that Windoze had sent some megabytes of my data to MS' "free" cloud storage without my knowledge. What cheek! I deleted it all, and changed security settings. I suspect that there is some kind of unauthorised backup that MS have kept regardless.

There isn't much irreplaceable stuff on my computer(s). The risk of a house fire destroying my HDD data backups is extremely low. Same goes for loss by burglary. That level of risk is reflected by my very low home insurance premium.
Click to expand...
Hackable server farm...the only secure data is that with is not connected to the internet, personally I would trust IBM, HP, BT, Cisco the other suspects or my mate has a cheap hosted website service (could be in his mates garage lol) im not so sure about
 
Retired as IT Manager at a local state school 18 yrs ago. We were 'Grant maintained' so ran our own payrole.
7 servers all backed up on DAT with a tape for each day of the week. Tapes kept in Fireproof safe and every week the previous tapes were in the boot of my car!
Now for my personal stuff it's a NAS in the garage - separate building on a fibre line. Backed up nightly.
If I lost the pictures of the Grandkids my wife would kill me :oops:
 
Coolcats said:
or my mate has a cheap hosted website service (could be in his mates garage lol) im not so sure about
Click to expand...

Oi, That is how I started my hosting company in 1998. Had a 128Kbs leased line into the back bedroom of my 2 up 2 down terrace house in a northern town. Quickly outgrew that and ended up here in the Docklands, London.

Apple, Microsoft, google all started in a Garage as well as did I suspect many other major companies. Don't knock it :p

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Driventemple said:
Retired as IT Manager at a local state school 18 yrs ago. We were 'Grant maintained' so ran our own payrole.
7 servers all backed up on DAT with a tape for each day of the week. Tapes kept in Fireproof safe and every week the previous tapes were in the boot of my car!:oops:
Click to expand...
We did similar when I was working for smaller organisations except usually we had an arrangement with nearby offices - we stored their backups and they stored ours :) One of my Tuesday jobs after running the payroll was to meet Jamie for lunch and exchange discs.

We kept the monthly backups for a full year and the annual backups for 10 years, all stored off site - I was only there for 10 years - by the time the 10 years were up the back up system was probably obsolete. At that time we were still backing up onto a tape drive.
 
If anyone wants to look at my data they are welcome to do so but are likely to die of boredom. Nothing personal in there - not even bank details.

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