Comments on: Personal Disaster Recovery: Backup, Don’t Archive!

By: Personal Disaster Recovery: Backup, Don’t Archive!

Personal Disaster Recovery: Backup, Don’t Archive! — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 05:16:15 +0000

[...] and it really makes me frustrated. Even us geeks sometimes forget, and that is just unthinkable. Geeks are Sexy has a great post up about backing up your computer. Aside from malware/spyware and viruses, the [...]

By: Apple does not know archive from backup! · the occasional blog

Apple does not know archive from backup! · the occasional blog — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 12:09:19 +0000

[...] I wish Apple paid a little bit more attention to their documentation. In the Apple Mail.app documentation, the terms archive and backup are used interchangeably. This could not be further from the truth. For years, IT guys have cried foul whenever this happens and have explained the difference in both methods. Just google the darn thing. If that’s not enough, take a good read at Robb Dunn’s post titled Personal Disaster Recovery: Backup, Don’t Archive!. [...]

By: Sean Hodges

Sean Hodges — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 17:49:28 +0000

This is a nice informative article for alerting novice/intermediate computer users to the dangers of not backing up personal data correctly. However I feel the emphasised separation between archiving and backing up might be a little black-and-white.

In my experience, I have found that regular full backups of all my personal data have become very expensive and time consuming, and as I collect more and more data over the years this is becoming more of an issue all the time.

These days, I have found an equilibrium by using my external storage HDD as a hybrid backup/archive medium. I always ensure that I have a backup of my photos, documents and any other unrecoverable data on both my internal disk and my external one. I also perform a less regular archive of all my digital music and videos to free up space on my internal disk, safe in the knowledge that I can always rip/download them again if the external disk dies (granted this will be an annoying set-back, but not a disaster).

I think making the distinction between backing up and archiving is an important point to make, but I also think it’s important to identify how the 2 can complement each other safely when done correctly.

Altogether though, a very interesting read, thanks!

By: | Personal Disaster Recovery: Backup, Don’t Archive!

| Personal Disaster Recovery: Backup, Don’t Archive! — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 16:04:35 +0000

[...] Geeks are Sexy I hope you enjoyed reading this article. You may now subscribe to my RSS Feed, scroll down to [...]

By: Mackenzie

Mackenzie — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 04:55:32 +0000

dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb
is how I have backed up in the past. When I needed to set up a backup system for my cousin’s company over the summer, I used rsync and cron. I’d like to try rdiff too. It keeps deltas of the files around instead of updating the files like rsync does.

In reality, though, I haven’t backed up my laptop since May. Anything of long-term importance is in the backup, the semester’s over so homework can die, and the one thing I’ve done since then that I don’t want to lose (my resume) is in my GMail.

By: tom

tom — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 19:01:17 +0000

I use a variety of methods.
btw - I’m going to use archive to mean “freeze a copy at a point in time” and not delete it from my data store.

1) - divvy up the data into categories:
keep forever
may be deleted at any time
want the most current copy back if it gets wiped

I have all my family photos on a file server. I want to keep them forever. I have a directory of downloaded stuff. It’d be a pain if it disappeared, but it could be deleted. Instead of My Documents, I use a directory on my server mapped to U:. I have changing data in there. Resumes, Quicken, letters, homework, etc. If it gets deleted, I’d want it back.

I have the data divided into multiple directories I can make archive/backup/delete decisions.

2) use a file server running RAID. All my data is on my file server. The data disks run RAID so that one disk can fail w/o losing data. It’s important you monitor it to find out when a drive fails so you can replace it before a 2nd drive fails and you lose it all.

3) Copy the “I don’t want to lose this” data to CDs, DVDs. Make multiples and store them in different buildings (home and mom’s house for example). I do this with my photos. They are divided up into DVD sized directories.

4) I don’t bother with making copies of the “I can deal with it all being deleted” data. I have it on RAID which increases it’s reliability enough for me.

5) Now you have the data that’s changing that you need to copy. Copy to another medium periodically. Tape, CD, DVD, external drives. I suggest having 2 copies or more so you’re not overwriting your backup. CD-RW/DVD-RW works pretty good. An external drive with multiple directories you copy to (Mon, Tue, Wed, etc or Jan, Feb, Mar.) You work out the schedule and frequency.

If I delete the original from my fileserver, I’ll put it on multiple CDs/DVDs. They’re cheap enough. Once upon a time, I went through all my floppies & transfered them to CDs.

Something to think about - ask any drive manufacturer how long it keeps data if you turn off the power. They don’t measure that. They design the drives to keep data while they are powered on. CD/DVD/Tape/Floppy makers know how long the data will stay intact while not in a drive.