Backup your files?

[Styxx]

What is the best way you found to back up your files just in case your system decides to stop altogether? Any of you still use "hard" copies (you know ... have a secretary that takes musical dictation or a few Monks with parchment, quill and ink). I tend to copy my settings on paper, instruments in tracks, FX, Reverb, Refrigerator, Household Thermostat,...all the important ones.
What have you found that works best for you?

This is a test of the Garritan Musical Emergency Broadinacast network. If this were an actual test you would have failed miserably. :D

Stay tune for an important message concerning the important message mentioned in the important message posted last week on the notice board where the notice hung next to the message on the message board next to the notice no on noticed.

[BarrieB]

Thanks for the reminder! Woke in a bit of a panic last night thinking I should do just that to a couple of projects which are on the back burner while I'm working on something else.
Thing is, I used to to back up religiously because my G3 Mac used to have hissy fits and hangover days and be generally grumpy and uncooperative a lot of the time. Since the G5 everything's been pretty reliable so you kind of forget.
Then you wake up at two in the morning in a cold sweat imagining just where you'd start again if the hard drive head ground into the disc next time you opened up the computer!!!!
So Michael - I just grabbed the two main folders and dropped them onto a DVD while I had a bowl of minestrone for lunch.

Now I'm feeling full and smug.

Will I remember again? Probably not, but one thing is certain. None of us back up nearly enough!

best

Baz

[Styxx]

So, having a separate folder for one's projects is the way to go, and saving to DVD is as well? Hmm, I just noticed Samplitude is saving projects into Documents "my music" folder. Sam should have a separate folder, yes?

[LFO]

Sorry, but I am going to have to scream `NO NO NO!!!' at this one. Copying files is ok for something, but not real backup and full recovery. I'm a large systems guy so I get kinda anal about this stuff. :)

Here's a recommendation:

For a PC, purchase Retrospect. Retrospect will do several things for you:

1) It will make a bootable image of your drive
2) Once you have an image, it will allow you to create file level updates so that you can restore your system to any point you want to, right up to your last file level backup
3) You can create various backups for different drives. For instance you can have an OS drive image / file level backup, a samples drive image / file level backup, a projects drive image / file level backup, etc.
4) You can automate backups so your data is always up to date.

There are other options out there other than Retrospect, but I've found Retrospect to be a terrific solution.

The key here is both backup and disaster recovery. If you have both no matter what happens to your data you will have it safe and sound.

As a side note, you want a separate Windows OS drive image from all of your other stuff. Reason being Windows doesn't like playing with new motherboards. In other words if your box crashes with motherboard A and you have to replace it with motherboard B, you can restore your image but Windows is going to behave very badly. :) Just another reason to buy a Mac. ;) If I'm bringing up more questions than answers I apologize. I'll be glad to answer (along with all the other knowledgeable folks here) anything I can on this very important topic.

Last thing. Retrospect has saved me 3 times in the past 8 or so years. The first was a motherboard gone bad that corrupted disk data, the second was a disk crash, the third was a stolen computer. I never lost a byte.

Hope this helps,

-Kevin

[Styxx]

Hey Kevin this is very interesting. One question .... Retrospect, you install this on your C drive or on another say an external drive?
Thanks for the info!

[Little Red King]

I am unfamiliar with Retrospect, but I do the same thing with Acronis TrueImage. I am very satisfied with TrueImage. I do a full back-up of all of my drives once every two months and in between (once every 2-4 weeks) I do a sequential back-up. Once I've made a new full back-up (and verified that it is good), I delete the older full back-up/sequentials. I make my back-ups onto a USB drive (500 GB) that I keep in another part of the house when it is not actively used to archive. From hearing about Retrospect, it seems like it provides for the same type of solution. You can buy TrueImage via download for a reasonable price. If you look on Google, you can probably also find freeware disk imaging solutions. Disk imaging allows for much faster and simpler error recovery than simple back-ups of files.

In case of a catastrophic failure of the system (c: on a PC) drive, I have a bootable CD with the TrueImage program on it that could be used to reload the back-up c: image from the USB drive. TrueImage will step you through the construction of the bootable rescue CD. So most of the time (hopefully all of the time, since no one wants a disk failure) you will be using the imaging program from the c: drive but in case of a catastrophic failure of c:, the bootable rescue CD with the imaging program will be your recovery tool.

The following site will also help you create a bootable rescue CD that will allow you to recover from various system disk failures. I highly recommend creating one of these too: http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/

[L0W]

I also used Retrospect for a while (a 'lite' version that came bundled with Maxtor HDD) but for me it failed the acid test - a restore - and all was lost! Chastened I tried a few demos of other back up software and the only one (yes amazingly, only one) that actually passed all my restore tests was Acronis True Image Home so they got my money. Note which apps actually work for individual machines doesn't seem consistent - the Acronis forum has its share of 'it wont restore my back up' complaints and as you've seen Kevin's life has been saved by Retrospect more than once which wouldn't restore for me. So all I can say is whatever you do go for test it (see below for suggested tests) before you rely on it.

I used to use Cubase a lot and when Cubase went belly-up, the only way to get it working again was often a complete Windows re-install. This would take several evenings work to get back where I was before, but True Image home I have used to restore the system unattended in an hour or so.

Both Retrospect (and other apps) get installed on the machine, and create back ups that sit on another external drive (usually, you can specify DVDs if you want or another disk on your machine). You also create or have a boot CD-ROM so if you are facing complete machine failure, stick in the cd-rom, point the app that gets loaded up to the external back up drive and you will be back to where you were with a working system in no time.

I have all my 'programs' on one internal hard drive and all my 'data' on another. I create two separate back ups (one for each). That way if Windows XP goes horribly wrong, I can restore the OS and programs without affecting the latest songs since the last back up. I hadn't thought about the motherboard thing that Kevin mentions but that is good comment. The other thing is when replacing recently a HDD with a bigger one for my songs/data, then I took out the old one, put in the new, and did a system restore on the new one without having to worry about Windows restore as well.

To test back up software I did this:
- backed up to external media
- deleted a bunch of files (permanently)
- attempted to
----restore them individually from the back up
----restore the whole folder from the back up
----restore the whole drive from the back up
- I then attempted to do the above with the provided/suggested boot CD-ROM, including a full system restore.
----repeated parts of teh above tests with 'incremental' back ups

One tip I have for restorers to a new HDD - ensure that DMA is active on the new HDD before you restore. It can make the difference between a restore that takes half an hour to one that takes 36 hours - I know it because I've done it!

[Haydn]

I use Symantec Ghost which is basically like Acronis TrueImage. The version I use is from the Ghost Solution Suite 2.0 which is different than the home versions of Ghost. One machine is a GhostCast Server which stores the image. I then boot my music PC from a boot disk (floppy or CD) and connect to the GhostCast Server over the network. I then save the operating system partitions. I do this every couple months or after a major change to the OS.

I then backup my drives to an extra drive in my machine which captures any OS system state changes, files on OS partitions and files on my project drive. I usually backup at least once per week.

Jim

[AlanPerkins]

ALl of these posts focus on a complete image of your system, which is fine if you stillhave the same hardware or can reproduce the same hardware.

The thing is that if your computer is stolen and cannot be reproduced with the same hardware, your image may not work because of the drivers included to run the different hardware.

Imaging is a great idea, but it might be a good idea to have an additional back up of your key files, your Intellectual Property so to speak.

I do this by having two external hard disk drives plugged in via USB and these are alternated. One person mentioned having a hard drive kept in another part of the house. Unless you are disciplined, this is useless: The idea is you want to have backup that is set-and-forget so that the disk is updated automatically at regular intervals. I have two drives so that I can keep one off site and once a week or so I swap them over.

I use Backup4All to take the backups. The professional version (~$50) provides for incremental backups using standard zip compression (so recovery is a no brainer no matter what tool you use). Incremental is good because it only backs up files that have changed. You can configure how often it takes a full backup.

Do not assume that having a backup regime in place means you are safe - test it, think about it regularly.

Be safe; be happy!

[swinkler]

The key here is both backup and disaster recovery. If you have both no matter what happens to your data you will have it safe and sound.

Something we say at work is that no one cares if you can backup....only that you can restore!!

Personally I only care about the data (finale files, sonar files, etc.). It may be more painful, but as long as I've got the installation cd's and a network connection I can get everything back I need if my system takes a dive. I'd be interested in knowing, as Alan alluded to, how these imaging apps handle disparate hardware drivers, etc.

I also think there's a difference between archiving data and storing it somewhere that's easily accessible. In the enterprise space, we talk about tiering data. Data has a "life cycle". The less it's accessed, the cheaper the media it's stored on until finally it moves to tape or is simply expired. Come to think of it, I can think of a few pieces of music I've written that should probably expire; but I digress.

So along these lines, does anyone use NAS drives to store their files? This is something I've thought about using. For that matter does anyone use tape as a backup method at home? Just curious. Interesting discussion.

Steve Winkler

[rwayland]

Backup is an absolute essential. I use Norton Ghost for a backup of my C drive (operating system and application hardware on this drive). I use Nero to backup all of my data files, which are stored on a separate drive (almost every day) The backup drive is a separate drive, usb. On an irregular basis, I backup to DVD. A few years ago, I lost 1 music file, but it was of recent composition, and I was able to reconstruct it. I have the disks for all of my applications. I don't think I have all updates available, but they can be obtained easily. I have used Ghost to restore, without trouble, as the CD that starts the restore has a boot function, which is good if you have set the CMOS to boot from CD. I have at least three Ghost backups and three Nero backups always! I think I am well covered.

Off the subject, but good virus protection is also extremely important.

Richard

[Styxx]

This has been a very educational post for me with these great suggestions. I'm set on purchasing one so started ready all about them. You guys are Great!

[nikolas]

I don't have a DVD writer, because I don't even have firewire!

That said I should buy a DVD writer to put in the leftover PCI slot in my motherboard...

That said I use syncback, which is free, and it does a pretty nice job along with a SLOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooow USB hard disk of 300 GB.

Once I'm done with audio projects (a whole game, for example), I tend to copy everything in CDs and delete all. I can save 10 GB this way each time...

[L0W]

ALL of these posts focus on a complete image of your system, which is fine if you still have the same hardware or can reproduce the same hardware.


ALL your points are very valid Alan, but to be fair to the original posters most were talking about creating a separate back ups for the OS and for the DATA and Kevin specifically cited the hardware problem as justification for this. Having a separate OS and DATA back up means that you certainly can restore your songs/data even on a new dissimilar machine. Secondly there is nothing stopping you using a disk image back up to pick out individual files/folders for restoration if the software allows you to do this (True Image Home does, some don't). Thirdly there is nothing stopping you using Restoration, True Image, etc to do a 'file-based' back up if that is what you want to do.

[LFO]

Hey Kevin this is very interesting. One question .... Retrospect, you install this on your C drive or on another say an external drive?
Thanks for the info!

Hey Styxx,
You can do either, it doesn't really matter. The main thing is to have your data backup sets being written to other drives, preferably external.

I read through the comments and thought I would clarify a few things.

1) There are several good packages out there so Retrospect does not have to be the go to app. I like it because it has worked for me and I am familiar with it. As with any package there will always be good and bad experiences out there. Why the software works for person A and not person B is a mystery to me. (To avoid being person B always remember number 2 below.) That is the way it is though, so make sure you Ghost is another great candiate, I used it long ago, and what Alan recommended could be perfect for you too.

The rest of these bullet points apply to any backup software:

2) When you create datasets you want to run whatever validation feature the software has. No one wants to lose data because of a corrupt data set. :)

3) I've found using encryption is dicey. Not from a software perspective, but from a software/Windows/hardware perspective. Encryption will greatly increase the backup time required. This can lead to all sorts of things happening like Windows going to sleep or putting a drive to sleep. I think the technical term for those kinds of things happening is `bad'. :D

4) The backup package should allow to recover any subset of a data set that you have. In other words, it should allow you to recover just one file if that is all you want.

5) In our world, one data set is not the way to go. Use multiple data sets. One for the OS drive, one for samples, one for projects, etc. This is mainly due to Windows causing restore issues if you are not recovering to the same motherboard. Peripherals don't matter too much because you can change them without much trouble. Well, at least in theory. It is still Windows you know!

6) Once you have the initial image, your file level backups should be updated regularly. If you can, once a day. I tend to run automation if I've made good progress on a project.

7) I copy my backup data sets to one more external drive. I have to so I can sleep at night.

8) Backup over a wireless network is still in my mind dicey. YMMV.

9) When backing up don't do anything else with your computer. I run backups at night when I am sleeping.

Hope this helps,

-Kevin

[Steve_Karl]

Seperate is the way to go in my opinion.
I image my OS to an other partition and back up all personal data files, audio, samples etc. with .bat files, to other machines on the network or an other physical drive in the same machine.

Example: ( one of about 20 in use on my system )
Local:
--------------
xcopy /s /D /Y C:\chkdsk_master.bat J:\backup\d_drive\my_bat\cdm\
xcopy /D /Y J:\chkdsk_J_restart.bat J:\backup\d_drive\my_bat\cdm\
xcopy /s /D /Y D:\*.* J:\backup\d_drive\
REM xcopy /s /D /Y C:\progra~1\symantec\act\layout\andersen.cly J:\backup\c_drive\act\layout\
xcopy /s /D /Y C:\progra~1\symantec\act\layout\sk_2.cly J:\backup\c_drive\act\layout\
xcopy /s /D /Y C:\progra~1\symantec\act\layout\sk_3.cly J:\backup\c_drive\act\layout\
xcopy /s /D /Y C:\progra~1\symantec\act\report\sk_10.env J:\backup\c_drive\act\report\
xcopy /s /D /Y C:\progra~1\symantec\act\report\sk_task_list.rep J:\backup\c_drive\act\report\
xcopy /s /D /Y C:\progra~1\symantec\act\report\sk_task_list_2.rep J:\backup\c_drive\act\report\
xcopy /s /D /Y C:\progra~1\symantec\act\report\SK_Week_Calendar.r ep J:\backup\c_drive\act\report\
xcopy /s /D /Y C:\docume~1\alluse~1\applic~1\symantec\pcanyw~1\tb ird_~1\*.* J:\backup\c_drive\symantec\tbird_~1
xcopy /s /D /Y C:\progra~1\noteta~1\favori~1\*.* J:\backup\c_drive\noteta~1\favori~1\
xcopy /s /D /Y C:\progra~1\noteta~1\docume~1\*.* J:\backup\c_drive\noteta~1\docume~1\
xcopy /s /D /Y C:\progra~1\noteta~1\librar~1\*.* J:\backup\c_drive\noteta~1\librar~1\
xcopy /s /D /Y C:\progra~1\macrom~1\dreamw~1\downlo~1\*.* J:\backup\c_drive\dreamw~1\downlo~1\
xcopy /s /D /Y C:\progra~1\macrom~1\dreamw~1\config~1\commands\*. * J:\backup\c_drive\dreamw~1\config~1\commands\
xcopy /s /D /Y C:\PROGRA~1\ECHODI~1\Console3\GINA24~1\*.* J:\backup\c_drive\echo\front
xcopy /s /D /Y C:\progra~1\cuteftp\*.* J:\backup\c_drive\cute\
xcopy /s /D /Y C:\DOCUME~1\STEPHE~1.KAR\MYDOCU~1\MYMUSI~1\MYPLAY~ 1\*.* J:\backup\c_drive\wmp\
RD /S /Q J:\backup\c_drive\favori~1
MD J:\backup\c_drive\favori~1
xcopy /s /C /Y C:\docume~1\stephe~1.kar\favori~1 J:\backup\c_drive\favori~1
xcopy /s /D /Y C:\docume~1\stephe~1.kar\locals~1\applic~1\identi~ 1 J:\backup\c_drive\outloo~1\identi~1
xcopy /s /D /Y C:\DOCUME~1\STEPHE~1.KAR\APPLIC~1\Mozilla\Firefox\ Profiles\CZE65O~1.DEF\bookmarks.html J:\backup\c_drive\firefox\
xcopy /s /D /Y H:\sightsea_music J:\backup\sightsea_music
xcopy /s /D /Y G:\misc J:\backup\g_drive\misc
pause

---------
Network:


xcopy /s /D /Y \\nf7s\i\progra~1\eastwe~1\ewqlso~1\ewqlso~1\multi s\ (file://\\nf7s\i\progra~1\eastwe~1\ewqlso~1\ewqlso~1\multi s\)*.* \\x2\g\progra~1\eastwe~1\ewqlso~1\ewqlso~1\multis\ (file://\\x2\g\progra~1\eastwe~1\ewqlso~1\ewqlso~1\multis\ )
xcopy /s /D /Y \\nf7s\i\progra~1\eastwe~1\stormd~1\stormd~1\multi s\ (file://\\nf7s\i\progra~1\eastwe~1\stormd~1\stormd~1\multi s\)*.* \\x2\g\progra~1\eastwe~1\stormd~1\stormd~1\multis\ (file://\\x2\g\progra~1\eastwe~1\stormd~1\stormd~1\multis\ )
xcopy /s /D /Y \\nf7s\i\stylus~1\sage\stylus~1\patches\multis\use rmu~1\ (file://\\nf7s\i\stylus~1\sage\stylus~1\patches\multis\use rmu~1\)*.* \\x2\g\stylus~1\sage\stylus~1\patches\multis\userm u~1\ (file://\\x2\g\stylus~1\sage\stylus~1\patches\multis\userm u~1\)
xcopy /s /D /Y \\nf7s\i\progra~1\eastwe~1\ewqlso~1\ewqlso~1\multi s\ (file://\\nf7s\i\progra~1\eastwe~1\ewqlso~1\ewqlso~1\multi s\)*.* \\a64\h\progra~1\eastwe~1\ewqlso~1\ewqlso~1\multis \ (file://\\a64\h\progra~1\eastwe~1\ewqlso~1\ewqlso~1\multis \)
xcopy /s /D /Y \\nf7s\i\progra~1\eastwe~1\stormd~1\stormd~1\multi s\ (file://\\nf7s\i\progra~1\eastwe~1\stormd~1\stormd~1\multi s\)*.* \\a64\h\progra~1\eastwe~1\stormd~1\stormd~1\multis \ (file://\\a64\h\progra~1\eastwe~1\stormd~1\stormd~1\multis \)
xcopy /s /D /Y \\nf7s\i\stylus~1\sage\stylus~1\patches\multis\use rmu~1\ (file://\\nf7s\i\stylus~1\sage\stylus~1\patches\multis\use rmu~1\)*.* \\a64\h\stylus~1\sage\stylus~1\patches\multis\user mu~1\ (file://\\a64\h\stylus~1\sage\stylus~1\patches\multis\user mu~1\)
pause

Recovery is simple. Just do it in reverse direction.


MAC - Darwin command lines might do the same work.
-------------

[sammy24]

What have y'all found to be the simplest way of storing these backups? Someone mentioned storing the external drive in another room of the house. Seems it would be better to store off-site completely, but that makes it much harder to remember to make backups often and keep disciplined with it.

[LFO]

What have y'all found to be the simplest way of storing these backups? Someone mentioned storing the external drive in another room of the house. Seems it would be better to store off-site completely, but that makes it much harder to remember to make backups often and keep disciplined with it.

External drives. I have drives that are used for backup on a daily basis (well, almost daily). I have one external drive for each data set. OS disk, samples disk, projects disk. Disk size varies from 250 gigabytes to 500. (250 for OS drive, 500 for projects, samples though they are not full.) I then have two 500 gigabyte drives that I make copies of my backup data sets to every week or so. I should keep those drives at my neighbors house but I don't.

Currently I am experimenting with backup up to the Internet using box.net and a domain with unlimited storage that I pay $8.95 a month for. So far it has worked very well. I just have to make sure that copies are sent to the Internet while I'm sleeping. I am 85% sure that my data set backups will be copied to the Internet starting in about a month. I just want to finish testing first.

Hope this helps,

-Kevin

[LFO]

Seperate is the way to go in my opinion.
I image my OS to an other partition and back up all personal data files, audio, samples etc. with .bat files, to other machines on the network or an other physical drive in the same machine.

Example: ( one of about 20 in use on my system )
Local:
--------------
xcopy /s /D /Y C:\chkdsk_master.bat J:\backup\d_drive\my_bat\cdm\
xcopy /D /Y J:\chkdsk_J_restart.bat J:\backup\d_drive\my_bat\cdm\
xcopy /s /D /Y D:\*.* J:\backup\d_drive\
REM xcopy /s /D /Y C:\progra~1\symantec\act\layout\andersen.cly
...
Recovery is simple. Just do it in reverse direction.


MAC - Darwin command lines might do the same work.
-------------

Steve has a pretty good system here (I really miss the days of batch file writing on my PC!) but I would add 1 suggested addition and 1 caution.

Suggestion:
Add /V to the xcopy command line. /V is for verify, something you want to do whether you are using xcopy or a software program.

Caution
xcopy is known to have issues with short name aliasing. In other words, even though you might have file names that are 20 characters long, the OS stores them in a traditional 8.3 format. xcopy can sometimes handle aliasing incorrectly. You won't know this at write time, you'll find out when you try to restore a file and you can't. /V does not pick this up, or at least not always. The only 100% workaround I knew of to fix the problem was to use a 3rd party xcopy. I can't think of particular .exe names (it's been a long time) but they were always named similar to xcopy like myxcopy or xxcopy or something like that.

Hope this helps,

-Kevin

[Steve_Karl]

I agree ... external drives would be my choice also.

Yea. I've only very occasionally ( over many yrs. ) seen a file naming issue with xcopy, but restoring has never been a problem.
In those rare situations the names have always been close enough to understand, the files still worked and weren't corrupted, and were easily renamed to the orignal name if I want to.
It's probably been about 8 yrs. since I've seen any naming issues.

/v ... cool. I'll check it out.


Update:
Now I remember why I haven't seen naming issues for a long time. That problem seems to have been fixed starting with WinXP.

From here: http://commandwindows.com/command2.htm ( you'll need to scroll down the page because the top half is blank )

"The old DOS also had an “xcopy” command but it sometimes had trouble with long file names. The XP version has no such problems."

[KE Peace]

Oh wow, I am glad I didn't read this thread before I went to bed last night, or I'd be having data disaster nightmares! Great posts! Excuse me, now I have to go take a traquilizer. Seriously, though, very important, thanks for alot of good info, everyone.

It wasn't too long ago that I first stopped thinking of my composition activities as Playtime for Karen, and started thinking of them as a Real World Concern. That's when I started to think seriously about backups.

This is very embarrasing to admit, because, in my former life, I was a large-scale systems database designer/administrator. (shhhhh!)

I have a long way to go, I can see, in the PC world, where I still think of myself as little more than a [barely] moderately savvy end-user. Right now, I use MacAfee utilities to back up key data (eg, Finale music source files, tax documents, my writings, the key for my Secret Decoder Ring and the like) to an external hard drive. Also, I back up the same things to Dell DataSafe Online -- which takes my stuff off-site. I think it costs $60 a year or something like that for ???? amount of storage -- can't remember, but for me it was enough.

I've never really understood PC's all that well. Give me a unix system without all these cutesy little icons, a C++ compiler and an Oracle database, and a really smart sysadmin so I don't have to think about hardware failures LOL! and then I feel more at home. I don't back up all my applications, etc, because in a pinch, I could re-install critical apps from disk, I think, and maybe that would get rid of all these pesky cutesy little extras that lurk about on my PC, uninvited and unused, cluttering up my workspace, but which I am too lazy or busy or stupid to do anything about :D

Oh, and also I have another good quality PC system downstairs! I forgot about that! So In the event of a total disaster (except if my house as a whole blew up), I guess I'd re-install apps on that machine, attach my backup harddrive to it, and/or download stuff from DataSafe. I also occasionally make "straight" copies of my music files to a CD -- really ought to store those in my bank safety deposit box.

Oh I hate this stuff! :p:confused:

I am sorry I am not providing more details on my backup scheme, schedule, dataset configuration and so on. It's something I really ought to take a closer look at before [BOOM!]

[AlanPerkins]

Berar in mind if you are using Striping (RAID 1), where data is written to more than one disk (I am talking about splitting the byte rather than mirroring) it is even more crucial.

I have a setup with 4 x 15000 RPM SAS drives (Serial Attached SCSI) and a 750GB SATA II drive. If any one of the 4 SAS drives fail, it is curtains for the data on al 4 drives!

[Styxx]

Wow! Interesting stuff here people! Never knew there were so many options. Keep 'em coming!

[KE Peace]

Berar in mind if you are using Striping (RAID 1), where data is written to more than one disk (I am talking about splitting the byte rather than mirroring) it is even more crucial.

I have a setup with 4 x 15000 RPM SAS drives (Serial Attached SCSI) and a 750GB SATA II drive. If any one of the 4 SAS drives fail, it is curtains for the data on al 4 drives!

Alan, is the striping scheme for speed, I assume? What do you do if one goes bad -- ie, you have another drive/drive set for backup? Is it configured the same way?

Just curious. Miss the shop talk! Maybe a limerick on the topic of exploding computers, crashing music apps, and catastrophic loss of data is in order?? (My hard disk intermittently starts to make an alarming noise, such as I imagine the space shuttle might just before launch. That is when I got the off-site backup :-). I later learned that some disks do that and it's OK -- some function the manufacturers build in (so I am told -- I hope that's not the "it's no a bug; it's a feature" thing like in Dilbert!)).

:) Karen

[Sleutelbos]

I had my external HD crap out on me a few months ago. Lost about 40-50 tunes. So now I make sure I upload every song I do to atleast one online server, plus I now run two external HD where one mirrors the other. The backup drive is only connected when adding stuff to it, so any lightning-strike or other 'acts of god' should have no effect on it. Unless my appartment burns down, but I guess that'll mean more then just a few lost tunes...

[swinkler]

I wonder if the folks who are using online storage services would mind posting who they use? There have been a couple mentioned, but one thing that appeals to me about using a service is they presumably have enterprise equipment that's in a cooled datacenter with backups, etc., etc. That's something that the average person just can't do at home.

Mean time to failure on stuff that you and I can buy at our local computer store is rated differently than what companies should buy for their enterprise. Of course the price difference is staggering not only for the hardware but for any license to use and support costs that go with it. So paying a little per year doesn't seem like a bad deal if you're getting that type of platform and service.

I asked this earlier, but does anyone use NAS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network-attached_storage) drives at home for mass storage?


Give me a unix system without all these cutesy little icons, a C++ compiler and an Oracle database, and a really smart sysadmin so I don't have to think about hardware failures LOL! and then I feel more at home.

Amen! I've been a solaris admin off and on over the past 10 years or so. How I wish these applications would run on an 8-way SPARC machine ;)

Steve Winkler

[KE Peace]

I wonder if the folks who are using online storage services would mind posting who they use? There have been a couple mentioned, but one thing that appeals to me about using a service is they presumably have enterprise equipment that's in a cooled datacenter with backups, etc., etc. That's something that the average person just can't do at home.

Mean time to failure on stuff that you and I can buy at our local computer store is rated differently than what companies should buy for their enterprise. Of course the price difference is staggering not only for the hardware but for any license to use and support costs that go with it. So paying a little per year doesn't seem like a bad deal if you're getting that type of platform and service.

I asked this earlier, but does anyone use NAS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network-attached_storage) drives at home for mass storage?

Quote:
Give me a unix system without all these cutesy little icons, a C++ compiler and an Oracle database, and a really smart sysadmin so I don't have to think about hardware failures LOL! and then I feel more at home.

Amen! I've been a solaris admin off and on over the past 10 years or so. How I wish these applications would run on an 8-way SPARC machine ;)

Steve Winkler

Hallelujah Brother!!

To answer your online question, I use Dell DataSafe -- but just started and can't say much about it, except that I think its running each night :D.. I like the online idea for the reasons you mention -- good equip and presumably people like yourself managing it (so i don't have to:p)

The link is at: http://www.dell.com/content/topics/topic.aspx/global/shared/services/datasafe/datasafe?c=us&l=en&s=dhs

On a cursory exam, the file names seemed bizarre to me (i mean the backed up ones), but I did all that in a big hurry, early in the morning -- when my hard disk was beginning to sound like launch was imminent!

I'll be interested to hear your opinion of it if you use it or research it....

Best wishes
KE

[KE Peace]

Mean time to failure on stuff that you and I can buy at our local computer store is rated differently than what companies should buy for their enterprise.
Steve Winkler

Except for Alan! He's got an enterprise's worth at home :wow::D

[LFO]

Update:
Now I remember why I haven't seen naming issues for a long time. That problem seems to have been fixed starting with WinXP.

From here: http://commandwindows.com/command2.htm ( you'll need to scroll down the page because the top half is blank )

"The old DOS also had an “xcopy” command but it sometimes had trouble with long file names. The XP version has no such problems."

Perfect, nice update. Didn't know XP had fixed the issue, I never bothered with command line stuff post Win98.

Lets all keep the good information going!

-Kevin

[LFO]

Alan, is the striping scheme for speed, I assume? What do you do if one goes bad -- ie, you have another drive/drive set for backup? Is it configured the same way?
Karen

Karen you are correct. Striping is strictly for speed enhancements through parallel multiple disk processing and is not for data backup / redundancy purposes.

BTW, I work with large scale RISC and CISC systems, mostly CISC using Linux for consolidation of applications onto IBM System z with z/VM running lots of Linux guests. Ironically, one of the best applications to consolidate is Oracle! Go figure. There is a highly publicized story about the Province of Quebec consolidating 165 Oracle databases onto 5 CPUs on one System z box. (System z is what mainframes are now called.) That represents over 250 Oracle licenses (costing about $20,000 apiece) being reduced to 5 (costing $20,000 apiece) to one box with 125 Linux guests running under z/VM virtualization. Memory requirements went down and performance went up. Pretty cool stuff for Oracle DBAs to work with since Oracle doesn't change a bit when migrated to another platform. I thought you would be interested as a former Oracle DBA. :)

-Kevin

[LFO]

A couple of things based on questions throughout the thread:


For information about online backup services checkout http://www.backupreview.info/ for reviews. I will say this also and in doing so I want everyone to know it is quite painful to do so. Mozyhome, provided by the despised EMC, is a pretty darn good solution. http://www.mozy.com Give it a good look.


Karen, if you are are on a month to month with Dell you should look at other options. You are paying too much! For instance, Mozyhome is $5 for unlimited storage. Of course, you are risking all of your data since it is on EMC disk that is a glorified name for cow patty hard disk platters. :D I'm kidding. Its an IBM versus EMC thing. Anyways, you would probably get a much better bang for the buck at Mozy.

I do not, nor will I ever trust DVDs as a backup medium. My personal experience is that there are too many variables with the burners you use in a home machine and disk quality to feel 100% comfortable. Then again, I don't trust hard disks either, hence I backup my backups. I never trusted tape either (for home purposes which is completely different than enterprise tape).

-Kevin

[Styxx]

Man, people this is an informative post. I'm real glad to hear all the suggestions. Like I said before, I'm not too versed on this subject and really appreciate everyones experiences.

[CallMeZoot]

I use SyncBack for DAILY backups of a lot of my key documents, and weekly backups for most of the rest of my documents.

I use Acronis TrueImage every few weeks to clone my entire program drive.

I have these scheduled to run automatically, usually at around 3:30am. I am running a laptop which is not always connected to my big external drives (and they are not networked), so my backups backups go to a secured FTP. The paid version of SyncBack allows for backup to FTP. Whenever I get a chance, I backup to an external drive as well.

Additionally, I have just discovered Amazon S3 and JungleDisk, which is a pretty cheap solution for online backup. I haven't used it much but it seems to be a good deal.

When I finish a musical project, I usually back it up to DVD in addition to the other stuff. I try to include everything in the folder (including special fonts, images, audio files, etc.). Usually a project will consist of SONAR files, audio tracks, Finale or Sibelius score, extracted parts, and a font/image or two. Usually I keep some text files documenting important notes about the piece that I may need if I reprint several years from now).

All of my email addresses funnel through a gmail account, which is synced to Thunderbird via IMAP. I keep my calendar / appointment data on Google Calendar, and I'm looking forward to a good way to sync that locally.

As long as Google and Amazon don't blow up, my stuff is pretty secure. If they do, then the world is probably in some serious trouble and my files are the least of my worries!

chris.

[swinkler]

I never trusted tape either (for home purposes which is completely different than enterprise tape).

Very interesting. You'll save me looking into tape for home. It seems like a media that's easier to recycle as opposed to r/w cd's. I deal with enterprise tape every day and it seems very stable, but I understand we're not talking about fiber channel tape drives at home :)

I also appreciate the EMC argument. We replaced them with HDS and NetApp and aren't looking back.....but I digress.

Here's another online company (http://www.idrive.com/) that looks good. They claim they don't let your files roll off after 30 days like the other guys. They do block level incrementals which means after the initial backup successive backups will be very small. This is probably common to most of these services I would guess. You can sign up for a free account for 2GB of space and $50/year for unlimited disk space for personal use. It's alot like MozyHome (http://mozy.com/home)except for the 30 day "feature".

Steve