Randy Cassingham's Blog

Posted by Malcolm, Ireland on May 9, 2009:

Having had computers since 1980 and hard drives since they were called "Winchesters," I never had a crash until I bought a Dell Dimension 5000, since when I had two. I think Dell mounts the drives upside down for ease of access during installation but it means the read heads hit the drive disk from underneath instead of floating contactless above it on the usual air cushion. Since standing the tower upside down (inverting the CD-drive etc to make it right again) I've had no trouble. Even so, the desktop and laptop still back up new/altered files to each other nightly and the desktop backs up to Mozy nightly and both machines back up to a USB drive weekly. These precautions saved me after those crashes.

Posted by Michael from Irving, TX on May 9, 2009:

I'm a Support Escalation Engineer in the Microsoft SQL Server CSS team. I cannot tell you the number of corrupt database issues I have seen -- my first question is always, "Do you have a backup?" No need to tell you what the answer usually is....

First, do not trust a RAID array to completely protect you. When hardware goes south far enough and fast enough, you WILL get burned. This is probably more advanced for most, but keep in a mind that a RAID-5 pays a performance penalty with write operations.

Second, review your System Event Logs regularly. Treat any event from "ftdisk" as a message of impending doom. There are other events to watch out for and you'll learn to spot them.

Posted by Doug, Michigan on May 9, 2009:

I used CD-RW and now DVD-RW to make backups that I kept in my fire safe and in my safe deposit box. I had been thinking about moving to some slightly larger USB flash memory sticks. But I have also started using some software called CrashPlan. [Disclosure: my brother-in-law works for the company.] It can be used with their on-line service; however, it is geared towards peer-to-peer backup. Their main focus has been the Apple world but I use their PC and Linux clients. I am letting my family backup to my Linux server but I am still trying to find which one them has the space to let me back up to their PC. So for now I still do DVDs for the safe deposit box.

Posted by Roger, Connecticut on May 9, 2009:

Just wanted to thank you for pointing to the NAS unit that you purchased. I use an external drive tied to a desktop on the home network that I only turn on once a week to do a weekly backup. Figure that will help extend drive life. I was not looking for new capability but the features of the NAS are really attractive and look like they would address a number of needs that I have. Thank you.

---

My pleasure. Network Attached Storage drives are particularly good for people who have more than one computer. I have a computer for me, for video editing, and for order entry/processing, so the one backup drive gets the videos, the sales data bases, all my writing, etc. When the first (failed) NAS gets a new hard drive, I'll be adding it to the mix too, to backup the backup. -rc

Posted by Richard, Courtenay, BC on May 9, 2009:

Even when you think you have a good backup (checking the size of it just isn't enough) try restoring some of the data.

I used to work for a software company doing medical charting software. This was used in a HUGE hospital down south somewhere (not allowed to say where). When we went and installed the software we spent quite a bit of time emphasizing the backup procedures. We showed them how to do it, and we even gave them checklists to ensure they followed all the procedures. Part of this was to restore part of the data in this huge database. Well they religiously backed up every night, but got lazy and assumed that the lack of error messages meant that there was no problem. Came the day when the system crashed and they went to restore only to find (you've guessed it) that the backups were corrupt and had been so for 6 months. So they lost all records of patient interaction for the entire hospital for 6 months. Fortunately (for us) it wasn't our software that had the problems but the database we were using. After lots of work we restored most of the data, but there were a slew of jobs in IT that suddenly needed filling down there!

Also please remember that a backup drive is just that, a backup. Don't delete the data off the main drive to save space. We had a police officer with a hard drive that had simply frozen (bearings seized!) with the only copy of thousands of crime scene pics and witness statements on.

Posted by Chuck, MD on May 9, 2009:

Do a google search on "data recovery" and you will find that even seized bearings aren't a deterrent to recovering data off the original disk. Even with a head crash, most of the data is recoverable. The only data truly lost would be that scrapped off by the head crash.

I like the idea of using flash drives for backup. I currently have more data to backup than even a DVD could hold. I'm going to start watching sales and pick up a few 8 to 16 GB flash drives to use. That should last me a while....

Posted by Matt - San Jose, CA on May 9, 2009:

You've been luckier than me - I've averaged a laptop drive failure every 3-4 years. My 3rd such crash happened last year, and backups have saved my bacon, losing only a few hours worth of work.

In addition to a local 'bare metal' backup of everything on the disk, I recommend an online plan as well. I used to use a commercial grade service, which was a little pricey, but now use and recommend Mozy, which I've been using a couple years, and runs about $50 annually.

The 'swap DVDs' method (or take them to a safe deposit box) are fine - but I've got about 100GB (lot of it is photos from my line of work) protected online, and updated every night, rather than every week or two - with no need to leave the house.

Posted by Jay, St Pete FL on May 9, 2009:

You bet I have some comments. :-)

I have Zero Tolerance for people encouraging others to believe that spinning magnetic storage in the same building constitutes a "backup"; it doesn't.

Let me ask you two questions, Randy:

1) What happens if the building burns down while you're away?

2) What happens if *either* hard drive crashes while you're copying files to the other?

At the very least, you need to maintain 2 separate backups, so that if your source disk dies *while you're making a copy* you've got *something* to go back to* (you have got a broken source, and a half-overwritten target), and you're *much* better off backing up the really critical stuff to movable storage (CD/DVD-ROM, or preferable tape -- I like DLT and LTO), and taking at least one generation of it out of the building.

Whether you encrypt your backups is a matter of taste. It makes them less likely to get scarfed by someone usefully, but makes you run the risk that you will have trouble restoring them.

Don't forget to *test* your backups as well -- down to a bare-metal restore if that's the sort you're making -- if you can't restore it, it's not a backup.

And finally, consider the longevity of whatever software you're backing up with. I can restore 25 year old Unix tar tape backups today, for free. Commercial backup software has a nasty tendency to go out of date on you, or not be installable on your new OS, or what have you; been bitten by 5 different versions of that problem in 20 years.

I don't mean to go off on a rant, here, but lots of people listen to what you tell them... and you're perilously close to starring in one of your own pieces by intimating that a NAS box is good enough to qualify as a "backup".

If that's all you've got, you're not Backed Up, yet.

---

To answer your questions, 1) I already addressed that very scenario, and 2) Then one of the copies is lost. -rc

Posted by Cory, Topeka Kansas on May 9, 2009:

Yes! I keep a backup of all my files. I keep two, actually.

All files from my laptop and desktop backup to a simple USB hard drive array connected to the desktop. Both the desktop and the laptop transfer the files to the disk array via SecondCopy.

I also use mozy.com to backup the backup. This is my "few miles away" insurance policy. If something crashes I have the local copy get me up and running fast. But should the backup and the desktop both die at the same time, I can restore files via Mozy.

I do have to say thank you for this article. I have too many clients who don't practice good backup. Sucks for them when something goes horribly wrong.

Posted by Charles from backwoods Arkansas on May 9, 2009:

For a home user, or even a small business, there's free and easily used backup solutions available. My favorite is Gmail from Google - I just email my backup account with the important documents attached, never delete it from my email, and voila, Google's backing it up for me.