What’s Your Backup Strategy?

[Jammo the OrganizedFellow]

Just finished reading http://webworkerdail...our-backup-strategy/

I recently bought a second hard drive. Going to start backing things up soon. Sooo ... whats your backup strategy?

[tomos]

essential stuff (mainly current stuff I'm working on):

• gets versioned/backed-up to second harddrive*
• these get copied to multisession DVD one a day (or often less often..) along with programmes settings (see below) and other bits n pieces.
  This gets stored outside the home once a week or so (i.e. I have a couple of DVDs going. This could be done easier maybe e.g. Amazon S3 but I'm used to this for now..)
• also keep three versions of current work on usb stick AND a mirrored/synched copy.
  Various other bits n pieces get copied to usb stick as well

• Basically every thing gets backed up to second harddrive except photos which are already there (on second drive).
  I also copy these to DVD & store elsewhere but dont have a strategy for backing up edited/worked photos.
  i.e. only the originals are backed up.
  I've been trying to figure out an easy way of backing these up but like having them in the original folder (by upload date) so I can easily compare with original image..would be easier to backup though if in different folder.

• Use Backup4all to back up programme settings (with plugins)
• Also Acronis true image for backing up windows/software partition

I dont have any music.
So basically I have copies of pretty much everything on DVD here at home & elsewhere
Unfortunately still not very organised (the discs...)

* Was using SFFS, now using SFFS and Filehamster.
Hope to move to mainly FH for current work in the future - when I'm sure of it

[tymrwt33]

Drive C backed-up weekly, using Acronis True Image. I do it manually, even though an automatic backup can be set up. Just most convenient for me personally to do it this way.

Data drive backed up periodically, depending on frequency of use. MS Money program backed up after every use. All my sensitive personal files are on an encrypted virtual drive.

All the above backups are to an external HD.

[J-Mac]

I use Acronis True Image Home 11 (though it is giving me fits currently!), and I also use Supper Flexible File Synchronizer to sync all data and media files that I consider important.  All goes to an internal Seagate SATA HDD, and also to an external Western Digital My Book Essential USB drive.  (Fortunately I am blessed with lots of HDD space -- both the Seagate internal and WD external drives are 500 GB, and all my working files are on another Seagate internal drive with 500 GB.  My C: drive is a Western Digital internal SATA drive of 80 GB and it only has Windows XP and my installed programs).

On top of this I also subscribed to Mozy Online and backup all my data and media files to their servers.  I currently have that set to update the online backup once daily.  Mozy cost me about $45 for a year.  I did use it recently when I had one of my hard drives fail.  I didn't even need to use an Acronis image (fortunately!), but I simply logged on to Mozy and downloaded all that had been lost.  Worked nicely!  It takes a while to download - it's not a speed demon at all when restoring.  But I just started it when I was going to bed and checked the following day and everything had downloaded - back into the exact same file and folder structure that it had been in.  Nice!

I also have BackItUp, which a module that is a part of Nero Ultra.  I do make a full backup of everything with that monthly.

All files that I consider critical -- those that I feel I would definitely regret losing - I burn to several DVDs weekly and store them out of my house.  Sounds like a bit of overkill, but I have had to try and help too many friends who have lost data and seen the panic they are in.  One friend thought he was backed up well - he kept a backup on an internal drive, plus one on an external drive, and even a set of DVDs weekly.  Unfortunately there was a fire at this house.  Very small - the firefighters said it was a smoldering fire, mostly inside the walls - electrical, I think.  His office wasn't affected directly, but water they used got into the office ceiling and it collapsed onto his work station, and causing a shelf on the wall to fall.  Computer was shot because of water, and the backup DVDs had been on the shelf and were also ruined.  Weird things can happen!  You can't be too careful - it all depends on how much you value the data on your machine.

Jim

[Babis]

FirstDefense-ISR, you have to see it to believe it. Apart from excellent back up abilities its the perfect uninstallation tool, disaster recovery and much more.

Home page: http://www.horizonda...sys.com/253715.ihtml

Forums: http://www.wildersse...orumdisplay.php?f=84

[Armando]

There are many threads on backup strategies (like these two, among others : SuperboyAC's DC blog #3 (My Unique Data Backup Solution) and How do you backup your files? ).

You could also check this : http://www.taobackup.com/

My tools are : acronis true image & SyncBackSE.

The "problem" with firstdefense is that it doesn't replace a "real" backup : you can't (well, you couldn't some months ago) store the data on an external hard drive.

[Babis]

With firstdefense you can store as many back ups as you want to an external hard drive as archives and restore them any time. But true the intend use is not mainly as a back up tool, rather disaster recovery.

I find more its more exiting use, after a clean windows installation to create different windows snapshots each with different antivirus, word processing programs, utilities and even install windows 2000 or vista on the top of windows XP and return to the original installation any time.

[Polynom]

I prefer True Image. Every week make scheduled backups of my work files. Also have an image of the hole hd and media archives.

[f0dder]

First of all, I have a RAID Mirror. This is not suitable for backup, but it gives some protection against harddrive failures. Peace of mind. Apart from that, some of my programming projects are under version control, but not all of them.

And this is where things get embarassing: I haven't done regular backups of any kind since I moved out on my own, because I left the fileserver with my mum & brothers.

I've finally manage to scrape enough money together (a little over US$590) so I can build a new fileserver, including 2x320gig (yep, RAID Mirror) storage. With this in place, I'll move my subversion repository to this fileserver... and setup an automated backup job from my workstation to the server (not exactly sure what kind yet, but I'll figure out), and do automated pushing of the svn repo from my fileserver to the old server at my mother's place.

The subversion repository is obviously some of the most valuable data I have, which is why I'll push it nightly to the other server. Local backups don't help if your apartment burns down, or the server is stolen.