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Jeff Malek › Comments
Daily Routines - http://dailyroutines.typepad.com/
Gotta love Churchill's approach :)
- Jeff Malek
To properly back up you need three copies. What is your workflow? What services work best for you? Discuss here:
CLAVEL DALY, Tom Kimmerer, Renée Barrett and 42 other people liked this
To properly back up you need three copies. One on your local drive in case something gets corrupted. One on an external hard drive or other media in case your hard drive dies. One on an external hard drive or other media or storage service that you store someplace else in case your house or office burns down.
- Robert Scoble
Dropbox. Three separate laptops and their Web service.
- Stephen Pierzchala
Forget the external hdd in some other location, and just back up to that webspace you have that you never use, or maybe cloud-based backup.
- Shivanand Velmurugan
For a local backup I run Time Machine on my iMac to an external drive. I also have a remote backup in the cloud using Backblaze. In addition I use DotMac and Mesh for sharing files among different computers.
- Jonathon
Here's mine: The original copy, one stored using Time Machine, one copy on a network storage device (ReadyNAS) using RAID and one copy at an off-site backup location. Works well and I've got my backup scripts running constantly. EDIT: I also use Dropbox for my documents.
- Eric D. Brown
#1 hard drive, #2 another hard drive, #3 old stuff goes to DVD
- barl0w
Carbonite for local machines.
- Todd Hoff
This looks like a good start for rsync to cloud. http://bit.ly/MBB0
- Shivanand Velmurugan
Around midnight I received a weird 'file access error', so I spent the first 90 minutes of 2009 running fsck on my MacBook Pro, then went to bed. First task on waking up? Time Machine (whole system) plus Mozy (home directory). Sadly, using the network support to back up with Time Machine to a disk on my Airport Extreme failed horribly when I tried it, so I'm down to Mozy (over the Internet) and Time Machine to a directly-connected USB drive.
- James
Simple enough - internal drives backup nightly to external drives. The backup copy of my system drive is boot-able. I need to add the off-site factor to this setup. SuperDuper! is my backup software.
- Tom Harrison
I agree the dropbox solution works well for me except for photos and video. In that case I have main HD, backup HD an HD I try to keep off site. If all else fails I have high res jpegs on flickr.
- gfurry
computer, extra hard drive i keep in fire safe at home, WD Passport i keep with me most of the time. I use a self written program to run backups to all 3 places which i try to run it every few days to a week. cheaper then online services!
- Russell Thomas
I'm using TimeMachine. I'm thinking about cloud solutions, but didn't find something cheap enough...
- Simon Robic
Original, one copy on my Drobo via Time Machine and important (and not so huge stuff) on S3 via JungleDisk and on iDisk. Burning houses aren't as common over here as they are in the US. :)
- Holger Eilhard
Each of our pcs has an external hd, an internal backup drive, and we have a backup server. We back up to the internal b/u drive, sync it to the external, then to the b/u server. It may sound like overkill, but we manage a TON of mission-critical data. Websites get backed up daily to the backup server and to off-site FTP.
- Ron's Home And Hardware
I have a (1) a portable HD that I bring to work and store (2) there and also another (3) PC running Windows Server with a RAID5 setup. Tens of thousands of photos to lose would be a disaster.
- Loukas Koufodontes
RAID 1 NAS, periodically copied to external USB hard drive.
- Matt Mutz
Holger we have both fire and earthquakes so I decided no local storage for backups. It's all offsite now and I feel better for it.
- Todd Hoff
Mirrored NAS 500GB each, plus portable HDD... cloud coming soon! Evaluating Amazon vs. Mozy - thoughts??
- Susan Beebe
I agree that it feels good to be backed up. I use duplicate external HD for my photos, and SmugVault (Amazon S3) for offsite. Uploading photos to SmugVault is a pain - it is very slow - but it works. Of course, if you forget to pay Amazon, you lose your backup. Backing up current pix to SmugVault is no problem, but I have a 1.5TB backlog. I tried DVD offsite, but they don't last very long.
- Tom Kimmerer
Dell's DataSafe runs on my laptop, important files (like my photos, vidoes, and music) are manually archived to external drives on a reg basis, and Live Mesh keeps my documents synced between my computers and the cloud. Everything else is online.
- Sarah Perez
todd: if I'd live in earthquake and fire country like, for example, say California, I'd also be worried about onsite backup. But - thank gd - the worst thing that could happen here is a flood, and even that's a stretch...
- Holger Eilhard
I use Second Copy 7 for automated backups. It automatically sends backup copies to two other systems on the LAN and one off-site backup via FTP on a remote server. It also makes periodic copies to a potable drive that is sent to an off-site location. Frequently changed documents are copied every two hours, others are copied every day or once a week depending on importance.
- Vishwas
Media is stored online. Important docs are on an external HD and back up Gmails.
- Mona Nomura
1 weekly copy to external HD, Same again on another HD kept out of the house. Critical files changing more rapidly to Dropbox. Not perfect, but has worked for me.
- Pete Marshall
Windows Home Server - two copies of each file. And i'm thnking of JungleDisk or somthing to Amazon S3.
- Roberto Bonini
Drobo for storage, I back up important personal docs to S3/Jungledisk nightly. $5/month dirt cheap! I use an external disk for my 750+gigs of media (iTunes, photos (100+ gigs!) and my own videos, etc) that I take off site. I run time machine on my Macbook Pro at the office, take the macbook home, time machine drive stays here for offsite.
- Lon Seidman
Time Machine to an external drive does well enough for me. Maybe I'm not paranoid enough, but I just don't see the value in an off-site backup for personal use.
- David Wynn
from fftogo
2 x Backup drives, alternate backups to each drive daily, and adrive.com for offsite backup (nice 50gig free account :o) ) along with DVD backup on adhoc basis
- Carl Grint
Server to local using SyncBack SE, then Carbonite copies the local data off site.
- Michael Krigsman
Virtually everyone who chimed in on this thread is a techie. Think for a moment about the typical consumer. There are no easy solutions. Larger hard drives make it easier to accumulate tons of docs, photos, music, and videos. Hard drives last a few years (and what data is there on reliability of drives that haven't spun up for years?). DVD-R and CD-R are probably only good for a few years (and of course are tiny relative to the data sizes we're talking about). Solid state still has a high cost per gigabyte.
- Tinfoil 2.0
Online backup is useful, but will the company be around in 3 years? 5 years 10 years? What about the privacy of your documents? Break up your data into chunks and upload encrypted files? Also, consider how fragmented data is for many consumers... multiple computers, gaming consoles, mobile devices, etc.
- Tinfoil 2.0
Mozy is in the cloud, backed by EMC, pretty simple to use (even for non-techies) and pretty cheap. Great support when you chat or call in.
- Lee Herman
@Logical Extremes - your comments are definitely spot-on for Windows users. I think the Mac has a great built-in (and easy to use) solution. While Time Machine may not be configurable enough for us geeks, it's a real winner for trouble-free unattended backups. Very easy to swap disks too for taking them off site.
- Lon Seidman
@Logical I see that a lot of non-techies are using external HDDs. They're pretty easy, but yeah, nothing lasts forever.
- Sarah Perez
I've been using mozy.com for over a year now for pictures, personal files etc and it works well. I'm kind of a techie (a CTO @ ADP.COM), but, consider myself a consumer when it comes to my home stuff (has to be easy, wife doesn't have to think about it etc). I've recently started using Live Mesh to push files across all of my home devices as well which is great (esp. for one note,...
more...
- Richard Anderson
Logical: That's what Carbonite does. You can easily backup 100GB to them. David Friend, their CEO, told me he got the idea when a family member lost photos when laptop was stolen from a car.
- Michael Krigsman
Every copy of data you put onto S3 is replicated (within and across data centers) so it's highly durable. It's where all my important data goes (through Jungledisk) and has been for a long time (disclaimer: I work there now, but was a user long before). Hard drives at home (a few TBs) are for things I look at every day and for sample libraries :)
- Deepak Singh
Right, I know there are tons of components to an overall strategy out there, but for the masses, they're lucky if they have an automatic on-site backup like Time Machine. My point is that computers aren't like a file drawer or an appliance. Good backup today requires a good strategy and a combination of tools, and most consumers aren't up to it.
- Tinfoil 2.0
The points raised by Logical Extremes are the same reasons I have not signed up with an online backup company. How do I know they'll still be here in 10 years, and how do I know I can trust them with my data?
- Tom Harrison
Quite true @Logical Extremes--We all learn the importance of back-ups the same way: we suffer a data loss. Somethings I have backed up to DVD or another computer or "in the cloud" some projects live on in the "oral tradition" where I simply describe how great this thing is to someone else--an if it's lost--it's legend lives on...(silly)...
- Rob Michael (Atmos Trio)
External hard drive is 1. Mozy is 2. Mesh.com for extra important stuff is 3. Skydrive for paranoia
- Jeff (Team マクダジ )
The other issue that hasn't been mentioned is data obsolescence. Us techies can handle it if we plan for it, but as applications and data file formats get older, more and more files become unreadable for most folks. How many of you have old files that you don't have a reader app for anymore? I always encourage people to choose the simplest, most prevalent, and most open data format for a given application. ".txt" rules!
- Tinfoil 2.0
And I hope that people rank highly the availability of simple, open format, file export capabilities, when choosing which services will house their data (backup, social, etc.).
- Tinfoil 2.0
Re the trust issues with online backup, I think you have to go with a bigger player / name (like EMC owning mozy.com), that was my reasoning at least
- Richard Anderson
Microsoft Mesh to sync across all machines, backup (using Syncbackup) of one primary to network attached storage, and Jungledisk to Amazon S2 as well for off-site + periodic checkpoint copies to external disks. I am a fan of backup software that stores the backup as individual files.
- Ian D. Nock
Windows Vista Backup to 2 external drives at 2 locations + burning to DVDs. All long-term backups are regularly re-hashed and checked to make sure they can still be read. In addition, most of my backups contain a copy of an entire computer so all the programs are there.
- Zian Choy
SuperDuper! plus selective JungleDisk for Mac. unison to server at school for laptop. SmugMug for photos.
- Emil Sit
I'm beginning to think I should try online backup for offsite backups of my personal data. Has anyone used both BackBlaze and Mozy.com? How do they compare? Would anyone recommend another service at a similar price point? ($5/mo, unlimited)
- Mike English
Roberto: Also look at Mozy Home -- It is also 5$/month unlimited.
- Robert Miller
Different kind of workflow, also for @LogicalExtreme's non-techies: Keep an Outbox folder on every machine. Store pretty much every document you can there. Copy Outbox(es) to USB drive every week or so. Keep the USB drive in your car or on keychain. It's not a full-state backup, but 98% of computer state is not life-critical. Emergencies are rare and it takes less than a week to rebuild computer state.
- Christopher Galtenberg
(Can also have VitalNonPrivate and VitalPrivate folders in Outbox - zip and email both to yourself, the latter with encryption -- that's your 'cloud backup')
- Christopher Galtenberg
Just spent a few days sorting my backups out. Now have 1) machine image (Vista Ulitmate backup could use Acronis or Ghost) which will only be updated occassionally - on an external drive, 2) system image and incremental (updated monthly) on a protected local partition using Acronis 3) daily incremental backup of user data areas using Acronis on external drive and 4) daily copy of user data areas on an external server using Mozy - easy set up, good price, unlimited capacity. Can't be too careful!
- Mark Warren
+1 Mark -- Good practices.
- Robert Miller
I love my ReadyNas (http://www.readynas.com/) and have already failed over from a bad disk. Killer timing on this thread; getting ready to rsync to the cloud...
- Jeff Malek
Currently Local system RAID 1....soon adding backup to NAS (also RAID1) & using an Offline backup service like Dropbox or other AWS hosted service.
- Mark Krynsky
Carbonite. I just lost all data on my laptop a week ago. Restored my mission critical files immediately (after reinstalling Windows), then restored everything else over the next few days. There is no need to personally maintain three copies when you're using an online system with it's own redundancy such as Carbonite.
- John Morley
Web-based backup -- Carbonite, Mozy or Jungledisk with Amazon S3 work nicely. I've shared John Morley's experience.
- Sean McBride
I'm seeing Carbonite, Mozy and Jungledisk regularly mentioned... anyone care to chime in on why one versus the other?
- Sean Katona
Sean Katona: I prefer Jungledisk with Amazon S3 to Carbonite and Mozy, because of price, user interface and reliability. You might want to try all three to judge for yourself.
- Sean McBride
I used Jungledisk and switched to Carbonite because it backs up everything automatically as it changes and I don't have to worry about it at all.
- Todd Hoff
I haven't tried Jungledisk or Mozy. Carbonite is great for me because it's seamless... you just don't ever have to worry about it. If it's not backing up properly it will tell you. If you have any files over 4gig that you want backed up though, you do have to manually tell Carbonite to keep those backed up or else they'll be skipped.
- John Morley
I back up my important files on a back-up server then I back-up the back-up twice on tapes: One copy in my office, the other in my wife's office.
- Charles Nadeau
I've found backing up to be far less important than it used to be - almost everything I have is in the cloud. Code is in version control hosted offsite and backed up, documents are in google docs, email's in gmail, photos are in flickr, not much else left to back up.
- Parand
I've implemented a tiered system with numerous local snapshots (Time Machine, in my case), and automatic remote sync (Jungledisk). Details and overall considerations for any backup strategy here: http://tr.im/2v7b
- Phil
IDrive is one of the better solutions. It is faster for backups and restores compared to other services, and easy to use. But nothing beats a local drive based backup. Online Backup services are simply too slow.
- Kitu Gidwani
Some people might find Adam Tow's strategy interesting: http://www.tow.com/2008...
- Joe Perrin
Someone needs to come up with software that lets you backup to a USB drive stored at your friend's house. You backup to the drive, take it to his house and plug it in, then do incrementals over the web. Encrypt everything. You do the same for him.
- Dom
I just back up things to an external hard drive. And I refuse to back up to the cloud as I can't trust something that isn't under my control.
- Mathew™ aka Youngblood
I use Acronis to back up an image to my FreeBSD box with ZFS. (Sorry Scoble, they're western digital drives :). Then, I also use rsync.net (lots of space for cheap), and - you guessed it - rsync the important files (documents, pictures, etc) to the cloud.
- David Andrzejewski
I've been using Mozy and have recently been trying Syncplicity [http://www.syncplicity.com]. I don't know if I can justify the $10/mo for 50GB, though. The benefit to Syncplicity for me is that it's near real-time sync with unlimited computers.
- Cory
Locally I have a RAID5 array on a dedicated server, otherwise Backblaze/DropBox.
- Michael Laccetti
Robert - THANKS! I was one of the lucky 20 winners of the Jungle Disk software by @Mosso - wow, this is awesome and works seamlessly with Amazon s3 online "cloud" data storage services. Finally, I have offsite, encrypted backups!! Thanks again! Keep getting FFers cool promos like this! :)
- Susan Beebe
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