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[Technology] You back-up your data, right?



Wozza

Wozza

Shite Supporter
Jul 6, 2003
23,695
Online
Just a friendly reminder that backing-up precious data is A Really Good Idea.

I wiped out my entire photo collection (7TB) on Tuesday when I made a mistake configuring (extending) a hard drive partition.

I had a restore option which probably would have worked, but I wouldn't have known until next day. An excruciating overnight wait when the data is so precious.

Thankfully, I have two full back-ups on the go (as well as some partial back-ups)...

1) An always-on, remote back-up at (the excellent) www.backblaze.com/ - but the data is so big I would have had to have requested a hard disk be shipped from the US. Not ideal.

2) A weekly incremental back-up to an external hard disk. I'd just come back from a week away, so this 100% was up to date.

Within a few hours I saw this....

recovery.png

*phew*

Backblaze costs something like £50/year (haven't looked for a while). The external drive was around £150. Worth every penny.

Sorry it's not an entertaining data loss story. But, seriously, back-up your important data folks!
 








M

m@goo

New member
Feb 20, 2020
1,056
99% of us don't really have "important data" do we?

Google give you free 15GB of cloud storage, Amazon give members unlimited photo storage.
 


Bozza

Bozza

You can change this
Helpful Moderator
Jul 4, 2003
55,856
Back in Sussex
m@goo said:
99% of us don't really have "important data" do we?

Google give you free 15GB of cloud storage, Amazon give members unlimited photo storage.
Click to expand...

For most families, "photos of the kids" probably comes under "important data". You wouldn't want to lose absolutely every photo of your child right from positive pregnancy test to university graduation.
 




Tom Hark Preston Park

Tom Hark Preston Park

Will Post For Cash
Jul 6, 2003
70,431
Wozza said:
Just a friendly reminder that backing-up precious data is A Really Good Idea.

I wiped out my entire photo collection (7TB) on Tuesday when I made a mistake configuring (extending) a hard drive partition.

I had a restore option which probably would have worked, but I wouldn't have known until next day. An excruciating overnight wait when the data is so precious.

Thankfully, I have two full back-ups on the go (as well as some partial back-ups)...

1) An always-on, remote back-up at (the excellent) www.backblaze.com/ - but the data is so big I would have had to have requested a hard disk be shipped from the US. Not ideal.

2) A weekly incremental back-up to an external hard disk. I'd just come back from a week away, so this 100% was up to date.

Within a few hours I saw this....

View attachment 141900

*phew*

Backblaze costs something like £50/year (haven't looked for a while). The external drive was around £150. Worth every penny.

Sorry it's not an entertaining data loss story. But, seriously, back-up your important data folks!
Click to expand...

:needpics:
 


W

Wardy's twin

Well-known member
Oct 21, 2014
8,482
m@goo said:
99% of us don't really have "important data" do we?

Google give you free 15GB of cloud storage, Amazon give members unlimited photo storage.
Click to expand...

Depends on whether you think the pictures you take are important e.g. have have 36 years worth of my kids and grand kids....irreplaceable.

I would advocate a proper backup strategy and that would include an off site copy to protect against wider damage to the property where pictures are kept.
 






T

TheJasperCo

Well-known member
Jan 20, 2012
4,597
Exeter
I lost an entire morning's work recently while writing up my thesis, because I didn't hit Ctrl+S and my laptop froze. Wasn't connected to the internet, so no automatic cloud back-up.

Felt like I needed therapy after that.
 


A1X

A1X

Well-known member
NSC Patron
Sep 1, 2017
18,111
Deepest, darkest Sussex
I did similar with my photo collection a few years ago, fortunately had it stored elsewhere but definitely learned my lesson on that one, this stuff is a lot more precarious than we might like to think
 






Wozza

Wozza

Shite Supporter
Jul 6, 2003
23,695
Online
m@goo said:
99% of us don't really have "important data" do we?

Google give you free 15GB of cloud storage, Amazon give members unlimited photo storage.
Click to expand...

Well, no, not everyone is heavily into music, photography, movies or video production etc with large digital assets - but I'm sure it's more than 1%.

For casual users (most people), there are loads of free or small storage options (some of which I use in addition to full back-ups), but it gets messy spreading big data around. Amazon gives unlimited photo storage, but only 5GB video storage, for example.

As for Google's 15GB... I took more than 15GB worth of photos every day last week. :lol:

Anyway, feel free to ignore the advice/reminder if not relevant to you. Only trying to help...
 
Last edited:


W

Wardy's twin

Well-known member
Oct 21, 2014
8,482
Wozza said:
Just a friendly reminder that backing-up precious data is A Really Good Idea.

I wiped out my entire photo collection (7TB) on Tuesday when I made a mistake configuring (extending) a hard drive partition.

I had a restore option which probably would have worked, but I wouldn't have known until next day. An excruciating overnight wait when the data is so precious.

Thankfully, I have two full back-ups on the go (as well as some partial back-ups)...

1) An always-on, remote back-up at (the excellent) www.backblaze.com/ - but the data is so big I would have had to have requested a hard disk be shipped from the US. Not ideal.

2) A weekly incremental back-up to an external hard disk. I'd just come back from a week away, so this 100% was up to date.

Within a few hours I saw this....

View attachment 141900

*phew*

Backblaze costs something like £50/year (haven't looked for a while). The external drive was around £150. Worth every penny.

Sorry it's not an entertaining data loss story. But, seriously, back-up your important data folks!
Click to expand...

A good reminder. One thing to consider is that most data loss is due to mistakes not hardware failure i.e. changes made or deletions and some of the hardware backup processes will just replicate the mistake as it just sees it as another change in data status so taking backups separate to that gives you a simple and defined recovery point.
 


happypig

happypig

Staring at the rude boys
May 23, 2009
7,977
Eastbourne
All my data is backed up to my (linux) server using ResilioSync. The backup gets backed up monthly to a HDD stored off-site.
All my photos are also backed up in iCloud.
 






jakarta

jakarta

Well-known member
May 25, 2007
15,639
Sullington
m@goo said:
99% of us don't really have "important data" do we?
Click to expand...

All the work data I have accumulated since 1996 is rather important and gets backed up every Saturday Morning to an external hard drive which goes into a fireproof safe.

If only because so many of my Clients lose my historical reports so I can charge them a second time when I reissue them! :thumbsup:
 


Ooh it’s a corner

Ooh it’s a corner

Well-known member
Aug 28, 2016
4,931
Nr. Coventry
Bozza said:
For most families, "photos of the kids" probably comes under "important data". You wouldn't want to lose absolutely every photo of your child right from positive pregnancy test to university graduation.
Click to expand...

When Gladys Thrumpsore staggered towards me with her positive pregnancy test the last thing I wanted to do was take a photo of it!
 








S

Shropshire Seagull

Well-known member
Nov 5, 2004
8,535
Telford
If you've never experienced that gut-wrenching feeling when it dawns on you that you've lost data you've been very lucky.

Whether you've been busily working away for an hour or so only to find the save option doesn't, or the program / device crashes or when a computer refused to boot-up or even switch on - you have been fortunate.
I've been working professionally in IT for 30+ years and I have 6+ computers around the home, all networked. This has happened to me so I know.

Simple mantra I use now is - always have my data saved on at least THREE separate devices [used to be "more than one spindle" but that's a bit dated now].
I use a freebie tool called Synchredible [highly configurable & easy to use] which runs every night on each PC / laptop and copies all "My Documents" [only new or updated files] on to a "server".
Then periodically I copy the server backup onto a large portable USB drive and this is kept in my detached garage.

Theory is, if a single PC goes AWOL, I can get to the data from any one of the other PCs via my network to the server.
If I have a fire in my office which took out my desktop / laptop AND server - I still have the data [off-site-ish] on my USB.
If an aeroplane crashed on my house and took out all the house and the garage - I'd have bigger issues to worry about than lost data ....

The "value" of data is interesting and everyone will have a view - but for me it's easy - anything that I can NEVER reproduce [photos] or letters / spreadsheets that I "might" be able to reproduce but would take me a huge amount of time and effort.
Best example of this is a piece of software I wrote [programming] - literally man-years of my time have gone into this - if that code was permanently lost I'd be more than gutted ...
 


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