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Dumb backup method - lost several years of notes

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nudone:
Well, I was having such a good day today (posted elsewhere on the form about receiving a full refund for a pc I had to return), but I've just discovered that I've lost several years of important notes I was recording in Surfulator.

I'm still a bit shocked by this as I *thought* I was backing up the Surfulator database along with everything else I continuously backup with MirrorFolder. Seems at some point I decided to stop backing it up - or, maybe, I've just gone and manually deleted the backup whilst half asleep.

This massive error has only happened because the Surfalator database was on a RAID 0 drive, which died when the machine it was inside died. And I thought I had the database mirrored to another drive - so, yep, I thought I could format the drives in the RAID 0 setup, which I did. Now I've discovered there isn't any mirrored backup.

So, I've lost lots of little technical notes that I referred to on a weekly basis. Probably more stuff than I realise. I'm sure I'll rediscover the most important ones online again - but it will take hours of searching at the very least.

I really thought I'd got this kind of data loss covered. Seems I'm just so dumb I wasn't even monitoring it - the worst kind of backup method you can imagine. Incredible.

40hz:
Wiw! You just can't catch a break from it these last few days, can you? That truly rots! :(

I'm not partial to swearing...

But right now I think you're well within your rights to fire off a good Saxon cuss word or two. (Maybe you'd better make it a baker's dozen while you're at it.)
 :o

cranioscopical:
Bad luck, what a royal pain!

So many of us have been bitten by something like this at some time or another. I can sympathize with the sense of astonishment and loss. At least, by posting, you've probably caused a review of practices that might help others.

As you say, you will get back most of the information in some form or another. The real pain will come from not knowing ahead of time all that is missing. That means having to scramble for information at the moment of maximum inconvenience.

You don't have any of the info on something like a spare drive that you might have pulled from an old machine?

mouser:
What happened to you happens to most of us.. we *think* we are backing up stuff but we're never called to test our recovery systems until it is too late.
This is one of the reasons it's useful to occasionally migrate from one machine to another, just to force yourself to find and copy all of your important data.

nudone:
If I could reach my head with my foot, I'd give myself a thoroughly good kicking. I have been monitoring all important files and folders for years using MirrorFolder and always noticed that "databases" were backed up. Seems I was hallucinating.

I honestly think I've just been too clever and too quick to tidy things up after moving all my hard drives around across all these old and new machines. At some point I've decided to delete a few backup folders thinking they weren't required.

Have I got them stored elsewhere? Good question. I know I've transferred things to other drives occasionally so will start hunting.

Quite honestly. I think I should just stop using the computer until I've worked out a reliable idiot proof backup system. I'm obviously not going to stop making idiotic mistakes in the future so need protecting from myself.

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