A thread everyone should read regarding backups

If your house/office burned down today would you still have all your precious images, memories, and important documents? How about if you had a hard drive fail, how long would it take to get your computer working again?

Today I:
- Took a mirror of my system drive using both Ghost and the free DriveImage XML. With either I can get my system back up and running in 30 minutes once I have a new hard drive. I use a boot CD that runs windows from CD to do the backup, and can do the same for the restore, but make sure you have tools to do this. The DriveImageXML website will no doubt tell you how.
- I did my weekly backup of all my images, media, and data, using RoboCopy (SyncToy works well too and is easier to use). The drive's stored offsite, along with a backup copy of my archives.
- I ran the free Mozy backup utility to back up my frequently changing data - mostly financial documents and contracts. It runs automatically up to twice a day when the computer's idle, but I do it manually sometimes. Note that's an affiliate URL, I get something like 500MB extra storage if anyone signs up for a free account using the link... I don't need the extra space, but why not?!

If my house burned down the one thing I wouldn't have to worry about is losing data.

Excellent. Thanks Tim. I'm actually following about 95% of your recommendations.

Sometimes people balk at the price of some back up solution I propose (usually not a very expensive solution) I ask them if they lost their data how much would they pay me to get it all back. The back up usually looks more reasonable with that in mind.

Even if they take a hard drive only twice a year off site that would save a lot of grief for many folks. More often is better but even a little effort is better than none.

Good advice Tim - It's all very well having a back-up drive sat on your desk, but if the house gets burnt to the ground, or broken into by some nasty little man and it's gets stolen it's not a lot of good.
I also have a mirror of my external back-up drive off-site in my desk drawer at work.

I'm lucky enough to have access to both of my workplace's fire safes (different buildings) so I keep copies of DVDs and Blu-Rays in there as well as cloned hard drives from my main PCs taken at pristine, fresh installation state. I clone my hard drives with one of these.

Here is what I do:

1. My PC philosophy is pretty simple. Keep the original operating system disk. If that gets destroyed, I will just buy a new windows disk, etc. However, I always keep the original software app installation files safe. Most of the time, these days, these files are downloaded, so I keep a folder named "ORIGINAL INSTALL FILES" and a sub-folder for each app within that folder.

2. All data gets saved to a "DATA" folder and its associated subfolders. This requires planning. For example, in apps like Lightroom, do not accept the default folder location for the Lightroom Database files. Instead, I manually select a sub-folder for these files under the "DATA" folder. I also backup the Lightroom database in a sub-folder under "DATA". Basically, for ALL DATA, it goes under DATA. The only exception is the MASTER IMAGE LIBRARY which is its own parent folder. But, I name folders with data in ALL CAPS. This way I know what must be saved.

3. I purchased an external hard drive - a 1 TB Western Digital "My Book" - along with the carry case accessory to hold the drive, power supply and USB cable. All in it was like $150. I copy all the folders in capital letters (including the original install files and all data, master image library, etc.) onto the mybook drive. This takes about 5 hours to do the transfer. Currently I have about 600GB of data. So I let it run before I go to bed. I then pack that drive into its carry case and take it to work. I repeat the process every 30 days on the first of the month.

4. I never had a drive crash, but I reformat my PC every year to clean out all the garbage. I format the drive, re-install apps, reinstall data, and reconfigure the settings. It takes about 1 day. But during that process, ita amazing how many updated drivers you will find are avaialable, i.e., from Dell, etc., and i always update any new versions of software. Its amazing how much faster everything runs when i do this.

True, if i crash in between backups, I will loose incremental data. But with 600 GB of data to back up, this is my approach.

Adam

Good advice. We actually had an office fire and everything gone. The afternoon before the fire I had done a full backup and took it home off-site. Our office of 15 people was back up and running in a temporary office that was fortunately available within a day - the time it took to get new computers and install.

NinetyEight wrote in post #9115050
I also have a mirror of my external back-up drive off-site in my desk drawer at work.

I tried putting my external drive in my drawers, but it hurt like H*LL when I sat down... So now I keep it in a locked metal file cabinet.

Good info! I usually keep all of my images backed up on my Picasa account. Since Google dropped the price on 20GB of extra storage to $5.00, it was hard to pass up buying a bit of extra storage. Now, I don't even bother resizing the images; I just upload them all at full size.

1080iAddict wrote in post #9115333
Here is what I do:

4. I never had a drive crash, but I reformat my PC every year to clean out all the garbage. I format the drive, re-install apps, reinstall data, and reconfigure the settings. It takes about 1 day. But during that process, ita amazing how many updated drivers you will find are avaialable, i.e., from Dell, etc., and i always update any new versions of software. Its amazing how much faster everything runs when i do this.

I need to dispute this. There comes a point where if everything is running stable and fast, why would you want to tip the balance by installing some new driver or software update for dubious or no returns? I recently violated my own rule to don't fix what ain't broken and wiped out my mini-laptop.

I also believe that many Windows XP die-hards will be starting to experience classic BSOD crashes due to installing "Windows 7 compatible" software updates. I recently experienced some crashes which ended when I rolled back certain software updates. Until I do a full install of Windows 7, I'm not accepting or installing any more software updates. My XP system is rock stable now and I want to keep it that way.

1080iAddict wrote in post #9115333
4. I never had a drive crash, but I reformat my PC every year to clean out all the garbage.

All mechanical devices fail eventually. It's a question of when, not if.

ChasP505 wrote in post #9116141
I tried putting my external drive in my drawers, but it hurt like H*LL when I sat down... So now I keep it in a locked metal file cabinet.

Ha!

Last week, I took some pictures in the house of a family who experienced a fire in the home's basement earlier this year. A lightning strike led to an arc that ruptured and ignited flexible natural gas tubing.

Had they had any computer stuff in their basement, like I do, it would have been toast.

It behooves everyone to back things up, and ideally, store some or all of that backed up data OFF SITE.

ChasP505 wrote in post #9116141
I tried putting my external drive in my drawers, but it hurt like H*LL when I sat down... So now I keep it in a locked metal file cabinet.

Eeek!

All good advice here. It takes a bit of disipline, but how much are your photos worth? I have a three tier approach that works quite well for me.

1. Daily backups to a drive at home
2. Weekly backups to a drive that I take into work and leave there until the weekend (on the Friday I take the drive I have at home into work and rotate it with my previous 'weekly' drive)
3. Monthy backups that I send to my brothers house on another drive

Potentially I could lose a weeks work if a disaster occurred... but that's better than months or years of work.

It works in two directions... I keep an external drive on my desk at the office and back up all my department's current working files. I bring it home every weekend. Recently it rescued us when my boss's Mac "hiccupped" (I know Macs never crash ). Instead of losing a few days of advertising work, we were set back only 2 hours.