Backup your files! !

jamesmtl514

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I know, i know, but until it happens to you it's someone elses problem.

I was going to backup my phoneSD card a couple days ago, i couldn't find the cable.

Fast forward to yesterday, google + updated on my phone a new feature that auto uploads my photos to their server for safekeeping, well that's brilliant if it didn't corrupt my SD card!
It completely fried it.
When i put it into my card reader my pc didn't detect it. When i pulled it out it was very hot!

So please take time today to back up your files!

James
 
I need to back up a ton of photos. I never do; just lazy or don't have the time. I'm asking for trouble.
 
I got bitten years and years ago, so I make sure things are backed up.

SkyDrive and Dropbox are good for online backup :)

Sent using Tapatalk 2.
 
I need to back up a ton of photos. I never do; just lazy or don't have the time. I'm asking for trouble.

Make the time. A friend reported that a coworker recently had their home broken into. They lost a laptop with the first 5 years of their child's life (they never got around to making backups or printing any pictures).
 
While you are at it, make a backup of your backup. Yes, I'm serious.

I have a perfectly good (or so I thought) 1 terabyte dedicated backup system, complete with mirrored drives and internal batteries for clean shutdown during power failures. A disk went bad. No biggie. It's mirrored. I bought a replacement drive, and as I was getting ready to install it the other drive died.

There were files there that were once on my wife's old machine, and had never been copied to her new one. Several years of backups for my 6 home systems were gone too.

"BUT WAIT!" you might say. That's not all that common, is it? I'm afraid to say that it is. Consumer grade hard drives are currently made for a very short lifespan. Writable DVDs are only good for a short span of years and should be copied to new DVDs every 5 years or so too.

I used to manage backup and archives for fortune 500 companies. Tape, Disk and DVD all have finite lives.


Daniel
 
I recommend backblaze.com. $5/mo unlimited. Add in an external hdd for good measure.
 
I've been backing up to 25GB Bluray discs. Spindle of x50 for $32.00, Japanese generic branded. Gone through 2 spindles and only lost about x2 discs to write errors.

If I could have my way, I'd build a RAID5 Array with an MD1000 or MD3000 using SAS drives, but the controller card and drives are very costly.

***and yes, SD cards are prone to corruption so make sure you have a backup of the data. Sometimes simply putting an HC SDcard in a reader that isn't designed for HC can corrupt/damage the card. Too many variables.
 
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Writable DVDs are only good for a short span of years and should be copied to new DVDs every 5 years or so too.

I used to manage backup and archives for fortune 500 companies. Tape, Disk and DVD all have finite lives.

CD/DVDs are the only backups I trust but I thought they were supposed to last around 100 years! Of course, this cannot be proved for another 60 years or so.
 

Nice read, thanks! Since CDs are not bulletproof, I think I may try the convenience of an external hard drive. The cost has really come down in the last year or so and they eliminate the "I don't have time" excuse since I can just drag and drop and walk away. DVDs and CDs are cheap but I hate sitting there switching out disc after disc and labeling them.
 
Remember that hard drives fail, too. I can put most of my stuff on a pair of 32GB flash drives every few months (Two copies).
 
I use Carbonite. Automated, customizable, different levels of service available, SSL-encrypted, and has already saved my bacon (and that of several of my family members), so it's proven.

I really recommend off-site backup like this, no matter whether you choose a paid service, like this one or the one mentioned above (although I have no personal experience with that one), or whether you choose to handle the file transfers yourself. Either way, the off-site backup method protects you against the loss of your files even if your entire home is destroyed (fire, flood, earthquake, mudslide, ...) or your electronics gear gets fried by lightning, or even if it gets stolen.

Keep in mind that it's your data, so it's your choice. It's also your responsibility.
 
Nice read, thanks! Since CDs are not bulletproof, I think I may try the convenience of an external hard drive. The cost has really come down in the last year or so and they eliminate the "I don't have time" excuse since I can just drag and drop and walk away. DVDs and CDs are cheap but I hate sitting there switching out disc after disc and labeling them.

That is OK, but as other posters have already recommended, back up that external hard drive to yet another external hard drive.

Another guideline: nothing is backed up until there are at least two copies of the files, and one of those copies is _off-line_ and the HD is shut down. Multiple file copies on spinning disks is still a significant risk, as another poster also commented.
 
Another guideline: nothing is backed up until there are at least two copies of the files, and one of those copies is _off-line_ and the HD is shut down. Multiple file copies on spinning disks is still a significant risk, as another poster also commented.
Better yet...make sure that backup is off-site (ie. put work data at home, or personal data at work) on an encrypted drive.

You don't want to lose both copies if they are in the same location and get stolen, burned down, flooded, etc.
 
"BUT WAIT!" you might say. That's not all that common, is it? I'm afraid to say that it is. Consumer grade hard drives are currently made for a very short lifespan.
Correction: they are made to be reasonably cheap. Many will last a long time. The way they work, it's difficult to say which will fail soon, which will fail just after warranty, and which will last 20+ years.

Writable DVDs are only good for a short span of years and should be copied to new DVDs every 5 years or so too.
More importantly, only use known good quality media. MCC w/ AZO, or TY, will, stored well, last 5+ years, and I have many CDs that have held up for over a decade now. Then, also make new copies after several years.

I wish there were consumer tape drives, honestly. Several tape formats are cheap enough per tape, and tapes have the best aging, but $500 gets you the cheap drives, typically.
 
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I worked in the computer industry for many years. One lesson to learn - do your backups - and then do them again.

OK - I am overly cautious - I have my pictures and music as well as my data files on:

laptop disks - 160G, 250GB, and a 320GB - I swap these in and out of several laptops.

external disk drives - two 500GB drives, one 1000gb drive and an old 160 desktop drive.

and - finally a desktop PC with a 500gb drive.

I back stuff up fairly regular basis. Not to the all the same devices at the same time.

I keep my pictures on an SD card until the Hard Drives are backed up. I have my pictures stored by years, so all I have to back up is the current year.

I have my music on a few different iPods - there is a way to retrieve the songs from an iPod and put them back in iTunes.
 
My main backup is a Netgear STORA. It has 2 bays for 2 drives. Setup as a RAID1, the 2nd drive mirrors the first drive. The hardware will detect a drive failure and email your email list of the warning. You then have time to replace the failed drive with a new one **hot swappable** (must be the same or more capacity). The mirror is rebuilt and you can continue on without worry. It's portable enough to grab and go in case of an emergency, and also has network capabilities. All data can also be accessed online from any computer with user authentication.

Main point here, you have a chance to avoid disaster, the other features are gravy.

My Bluray backups are backups of the backups.
 
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Better yet...make sure that backup is off-site (ie. put work data at home, or personal data at work) on an encrypted drive.

You don't want to lose both copies if they are in the same location and get stolen, burned down, flooded, etc.

Yep... I keep one USB hard drive in my safe deposit box. Hard to imagine losing that copy at the same time that my other backup drives fail or get damaged/stolen/burned up.
 
It seems like you hear the horror story all the time. People never back up their data. I have two hard drives in my computer that both constantly back each other up automatically as soon as any contents are changed.

Then about once a month or so or anytime I put something important on there I plugin the USB external hard drive and it backs up the D drive automatically as soon as its plugged into the USB port.

So I always have 3 discs that mirrored to eachother. I should have some kind of off site storage I worried about that.

sent from a non Apple device
 
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