[SteveB]

Thought I'd start this topic as a separate thread, as it could be a novel all to itself.

Not sure who on here counts a the biggest computer geek, but I'll put on my overly paranoid semiconductor industry hat on .

Note: I could just be unlucky....

Some Rules:

1) Never rely on one technology, spread your bets - bit of Hard Disk, flash, optical, online storage.
2) All technologies will fail, be out of date, bite you in some unforeseen way between 3-5 years.
3) When a Hard Disk drive reaches 5 years old - ditch it (use a sledge hammer on it to destroy it (Copy off your data first )
4) Flash drives fail - they are designed to expect more faults as they get older. They come with extra capacity so that when a bit in use is about to fail, one of the unused bits gets used in it place. The extra capacity runs out, then you get file corruption.
5) CD's/DVD fail. Personally I would only use DVD-R/+R for backup, don't use RW - cant point you at facts an figures, just my own paranoid experience. AND NEVER just rely on DVD as your only backup, even if its multiple disks - spread the technology risk - remember IT's GUARANTEED, IT WILL FAIL!

Hope I've not scared anybody too much yet

Not rules but what I recommend when I'm asked

1) Your PC, is that over 3 years old? yes?, get a new one, and relegate the old one to your backup PC
2) Ok your PC is not three years old yet, is is making more noise than it used to? Have you vacumed the filter/slots/vents recently?
3) Does the power supply "whine" not just the fan noise but that high pitched "sparkly" noise that gets you between the eyes? - get it replaced. Power supplies are the most stressed component in any PC, and when they blow, they generally take something else with them (usually HD and motherboards - I've had both)
4) Separate your operating system Disk from your file disk i.e. have two disks. Use an image program such as Ghost or Arcronis to create a backup of the OS on the file disk, so you can easily recreate your setup on a new disk.
5) don't use windows documents folders, create a file structure of your own on your data disk and always navigate to that disk to store files (if you know what you are doing and can tell windows to move stuff - its just easier to get in the habit of the simple way)
6) don't used RAID - If you haven't paid £5K for it, its probably not resilient and it will bite you (you need backup power supply, backup controllers in addition to the raid disks for it to be SAFE)

My File disk backup scheme:

I have one disk with all my files on it (30K photo collection Plus project files). When it becomes 80% full, I buy the biggest disk I can get (currently using 750G disks)

I have 1 live disk. In use all the time. I have an online backup disk (i.e. it in the PC and Powered all the time) - this syncs to the main disk every 3 hours using SW. Little processing overhead this way.

I then have 3 offline backups, 1 off site at any time, the other two rotated and kept elsewhere in the house using a 1hour document fire safe. Offlines are updated daily to weekly depending on how much work I've done, Or how much it will hurt me if I loose something.

I don't use DVD's I have too much data - hence all the disks

I am considering 2G of online storage for current working files, email etc

That's about it for now, need to get some sleep, I'll try answer any questions if you have them.

And remember, don't have nightmares, your data is safe - honest

Steve the paranoid

[adaml]

I'd agree with much of what you say, with a significant exception: RAID. RAID is very powerful and doesn't need to be expensive. For those that don't know RAID is a Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks (originally, but nowadays Independent is used).

In a backup context (as opposed to performance) it means you let the computer automatically write data onto two or more disks at once. As far a you are concerned it looks like there is one disk. As disk failure is probably the most desctructive of computer failures, having your data automatically written to two physical disks at once means you can suffer a single disk failure and still not lose your data. Hardware RAID is preferred to software for performance and because a drive failure/replacement is usually simpler. RAID1 is the simplest to understand - data is written to two disks simultaneously - but their are many other flavours.

RAID isn't the complete answer but should be part of your backup strategy, especially on mission critical boxes such as your servers.

Automated online backup is probably the way to go nowadays. For businesses, a quality online backup service is usually a lot cheaper and more reliable than manual backup and doesn't get forgotten at just the most inopportune time! But there can be issues with uploads when you have several 10s of gigabytes of data as we still have appalling broadband services in the UK.

For home users, Carbonite is a good one to look at. It's cheap at around £30/year, fully automated while not stuffing your bandwidth when you need it and has no effective storage limits (although there are daily upload limits).

[SteveB]

I'll clarify my position on RAID.

Its good, and on any major server I would recommend it wholeheartedly; for home office/small businesses RAID 1 (mirroring) is fine anything else I cant recommend.

I had a RAID 5 card and 4 disks (RAID 5 means that even if you loose 1 disk, you loose no data and can carry on reading/writing to the disk array). Problem: the controller card went down. OK, get a replacement card - which I did but the bios had been updated, was not backwards compatible, and would not recognise the array and no way to go back to an old bios. (Had data in 2 location so thats fine but there was an issue I'd not though about before)

So unless you buy specialist RAID 5 hardware, that includes backup controllers and power supplies - its false security and not worth the money you spent (In my book)

It also why I don't use some of these cheaper NAS units from the likes of Netgear. Yes they mirror your data, so if a disk fails your fine, but if the controller fails your stuffed. You cant take the disk out and stick it in your windows PC as its not a standard windows format - there may be tools, and they may have changed the formatting by now, I've not checked but to me the risk is too great.

I now rely on NTFS formatted disks. If any PC/controller breaks, you can go to ANY pc or mac and read the data.

If you rely on RAID 1 mirroring on a "Desktop" PC, before you get any data saved, make sure you can pull a disk, read the data on another machine, put the disk back and NOT loose the data.

[admagic]

After losing the whole lot to a virus that got past mcafee last april

I concluded the worst problem isnt the data.
I had that.

It is reinstalling all of the licenses for lots of applications....
which took weeks to get back.

So I now use a wonderful tool called "acronis trueimage"

That creates bootable backups of my entire disk in a partition of a second drive ( in my case a 250G external) so that if ever my system goes down completely. I will be up and running 5 minutes later.