Topic awaiting preservation: Do You Backup?!?!

And if yes! What software do you use?!?

I'm looking for some backup software to backup my portfolio and some other files, music etc so I was wondering which softwares do the inmates use and which are good?? I've never actually looked into all this before...

Well personally I'm too hard to backup

But I've a family member who also has a portfolio of work he has created over the years, and he simply burns everything he can to DVD's, infact I think they are rewritable DVD's so he constantly add to them and change their contents.

Cheers,

I didn't... http://www.ozoneasylum.com/26253
I will... http://www.ozoneasylum.com/26292

I'll go with a hardware RAID controller card and a RAID 1 setup to mirror ALL data to another disc from now on.


My main requirement is that it must be totally transparent and automated, I'll sooner or later forget otherwise.
/Dan

{cell 260} {Blog}
-{ ?There are two major products that come out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX. We don't believe this to be a coincidence. - Jeremy S. Anderson" }-

I do my backups "by hand"... I have all of my valuable data (i.e., stuff that needs to be backed up) on a separate partition, so I just burn that to rewritable CDs . It works well enough, and I've just never gotten around to looking at backup software. I guess I'm more of a do-it-yourselfer (or a do-it-the-hard-wayer, depending on how you look at it).

___________________________
Suho: www.liminality.org | Cell 270 | Sig Rotator | the Fellowship of Sup

I burn stuff to CD every now and then. Nothing special.

I use tar, gzip, bzip2, 7zip, zip or some combination. Toss in a cron daemon and a simple transfer setup and that's all you need.

I burn important stuff to CD every once in a while. I don't get fancier than that.

--Amerasu--

I've found that 7zip gives ridiculous compression rates. I don't have the need for constant backups (most of my work goes straight online or is done on backed-up systems through ssh), so I just do the job manually every quarter or so.

Of course, I'm a Linux guy, so the software I use likely isn't going to be used by other people. For me, it's just a matter of compress everything important into an archive file (bzip, gzip, <insert program of choice here>, make it into a CD iso image (mkisofs), and then burn it to CD (cdrecord). Nothing fancy, works great.

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Website

I use ViceVersa Pro, which I have set to copy my data drive to a backup data drive every night in the wee hours. With files that are changed, I have it set to archive the previous backups of those files for up to X number of copies (or days, I forget which now). That way, if I realize something got screwed up after a backup, I can go get the archived version.

This drive, incidentally, is kept in a removable drive bay in the event that something tragic happens -- grab and go. On top of that, there's an A and a B of the backup data drive, one of which is always kept in a safety-deposit box in case something tragic happens when I'm not home. I switch them out whenever I go to the bank to make a deposit.

I thought about the mirrored RAID solution for a while, but I didn't like the idea of everything automatically being copied the moment it changed. If something becomes whacked or if you save over the wrong file accidentally, the same thing happens on your "backup." The RAID, as far as I see, only helps in the event of a drive failure, not in the event of human error, which seems to happen to me far more often.

I've been writting to cds for quite sometime now but my cds keep going bad i think its the dust a bit too much around these parts. Also I've never seemed to be able to have my desk clean for more that 2 days... ok 1 and half days!! Perhaps thats why the idea of getting a backup software came into mind, then again maybe it's the effect of my recent journey into a new screen resolution...

... anyways. I was kind of fed up of wasting my money on all those cdr's... I'd try this ViceVersa thingy if only it was free, can I help it if I'm a freeware addict! What's this RAID thingy?? I've noticed it on Linux...

RAID is a principle built on a controller that can distribute data over several physical discs.
There are several different setups, from treating several discs as one, mirroring data over several discs and several other combinations. A very common use is in servers where you need a higher security for the data, faster accesstimes, hotswapping discs and so on.

Normally you do this with SCSI discs which makes it a whole lot more exensive, but there are controller cards that can handle regular IDE discs, both ATA and SATA.

The controller cards can be a combination of cards and drivers for a specific OS or pure hardware that hides the discs from BIOS and acts as a disc in BIOS, then controls the discs from there.
The HW based ones aren't OS specific, those with OS specific drivers are.

Do some googling for more details.

And yes, it's true that it doesn't protect you from accidental deletes & overwrites, but you can always combine it with sceduled burning of CD's or DVD´s for critical data.
To me after a mechanical failure of an 80Gb disc that would need a cleanroom datarecovery process for X thousand $$ I definately can see the use of always having a mirrored disc.
Accidental deletes & overwrites is a LOT cheaper & easier to restore with software.
/Dan

{cell 260} {Blog}
-{ ?There are two major products that come out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX. We don't believe this to be a coincidence. - Jeremy S. Anderson" }-

(Edited by DmS on 07-23-2005 12:21)

My Dreamhost stuff is gzipped and FTPed down on a regular basis.

My home servers are all backed up by three DAT drives via Backup Exec 10.0.
I don't save anything on my workstations.

I also have some stuff synched to an external USB drive that I sometimes take with me.

I really really ought to backup.. but I don't.

Been living the last ten years according to the old saying:
Real men don't do backups.. they just cry..

quote:

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Nimraw said:
Been living the last ten years according to the old saying:
Real men don't do backups.. they just cry..

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I've cried enough already that's why I need to backup my files...

RAID no free... oh well back to Google then! I'd use GMail as a backup area but I have Dial Up and I think that would be against the GMail code!

*presses Ctrl-N and opens a new tab... "g I WANT TO BACKUP"*

I'm a bad, bad boy. I am a first-class hypocrite, and I freely admit it. Though I'm always ranting about making proper backups, I'm more than a little lazy about it at home.

Apart from backing up my software and keeping a copy of my more important files on a 30GB Zen Jukebox that goes everywhere with me, I haven't made any major backups from my machine since I first built it. Though I have performed one in-place upgrade, repaired a corrupt OS twice, and even cloned and rebuilt a damaged partition a couple of times - I have been running this machine on pure optimism for almost four years now.

No RAID, no regular backups, no "fail-safe" recovery software... if I lost it all, I'd have to rebuild the OS and get all those intricate little tweaks and tassles back the way I've spent years getting them. I'd have to kiss goodbye to all that accumulated email, all those movies, clips, MP3s, documents, and obscure little files of unknown origin.

Oh well. A fresh start is always good.

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Blaise said:

he simply burns everything he can to DVD's, infact I think they are rewritable
DVD's so he constantly add to them and change their contents.

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I was trying to burn my dad's photos from his laptop onto a DVD and whenever I put a DVD in the drive the drive says that it's CD-Drive and couldn't save the photos on it. may I please know why?

BTW the drive IS a DVD-R/RW.

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What is the operating system? What software were you using to attempt the burn? Was the software set to CD/DVD or DVD rather than just to CD?

Information!

You could ask why your car doesn't start, and state that you know the starter-motor is fine, but that says nothing for the engine, fuel, or battery...

Example: If I wish to burn to a DVD-RW/DVD-R on a Windows 2000 machine, I might use something like Nero - ensuring that I selected DVD as the media type - as (when I last used Win2K) such a procedure is not supported by the OS.

Windows XP has a burning software embeded in the explorer. It's useless but it's there, try from that but I always prefer Nero.

As for my backup dilema, I've found a nice freeware software SyncBack it's got just what I need! I've set all my working folders to be auto synchronized with their backup points nicely tucked away on my brothers 20GB HD which I've disected out of his PC now that he's away, every 10 minutes! There's also compression capabilities...

Say Yannah weren't we related!

*quickly runs away*



(Edited by templar654 on 07-30-2005 05:39)