webcrawler42

yes, data loss does occur for one reason or another, i was wondering what people here are doing to prevent it or make it not as bad. im curious about backup hard drives, raid, backup programs, ect.

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Jeffbx

As long as you keep at least 2 copies of your data in different locations, you should be good.

My most critical (small) files, I just e-mail to my Hotmail or Gmail account & keep a copy there. My everyday files get backed up to a 2nd HD inside of my computer, and important large files (like pictures & music), I dump to DVD occasionally, and I keep a copy of those backups in my office at work in case of fire or other disaster that could kill my backup drive at home.

The method or media doesn't really matter - you can back up to CD, DVD, USB key, external drive, whatever. The important thing is that you DO backup any data that you don't want to lose, and try to keep it in a different location than your PC.

DarkFury

Personally, I have multiple hard drives in my main PC to which I use Norton Ghost to perform incremental as well as full backups throughout the week.

Pretty much it would take something catastrophic (like my house burning down...) to destroy all of my copies of my main hard drive.

Personally, I don't trust RAID all that much...and with hard drives going for "cheap" nowadays (plus the ability to backup to DVD) I don't see the point in it.

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seqiro

The point in RAID mirroring is you have a redundant copy of everything automatically without having to schedule a backup and, if one drive fails, the other still works and you haven't lost one bit of data and you don't have to reinstall anything. It is definitely the fastest and most secure way of maintaining a full backup with little downtime.

My father had one hard drive in his RAID that I sent up for him fail and I picked up a replacement drive, cloned the good drive to it in a matter of minutes, and he was back up and running exactly where he left off.

DVD is great for offsite storage of important data, but I'd never try to back up 180GB to it.

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Markel

Raid 1 only gives "security" over hard drive failure. I've known several people with Raid 1 who recently got burned by OS "failure" - i.e., file system corruption. In such cases, both hard drives get equally corrupted. The moral: never depend on any Raid system for your backup.

Personally, I would also never trust any hard drive that is always "live" in your computer for primary backup, either. A nasty virus, or a power spike, and you could be toast.

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seqiro

Well my father also has a USB 2.0 external drive which does nightly backups. That still doesn't mean that RAID has no place, there are still very good reasons to have it.

Markel

No argument - Raid 1 is very good protection against a single drive failure. But not a complete solution in itself.

Backups also are not necessarily good protection, unless you test the restore process. When I worked for DEC, we had one customer who ended up corrupting their database. When they went to restore from tape backups, they found that the tapes were corrupted (long story as to how that happened). It was not a pretty scene. By the way, they were one of the largest title insurance companies in the area.

DarkFury

I still trust my Ghost backups more...

I don't run a server, so I don't have to guarantee 99.99% uptime... but using Ghost I relative assurance that almost anything that happens to my primary O/S drive can be undone in about 20 mins.

webcrawler42

thanks, i think a usb2.0 hard drive is the best bet, although i might look more into norton ghost, and raid arrays seem pointless beause its the same as the original hard drive, the only purpose would be hardware failure on one of the hard drives.

Dem0072

RAID 1 is good if your working the piss out of your drives whilst running a corporate network data or network server.

If I had the funds & was running a corporate network/data sorage server I'd run Raid 0+1

Though, raid 0 does little for performance.

Raid 1 is only good for saving your data in case of drive failure.

A UPS backup system can protect against surge & replace damaged devices under connected devices warranty.

Trans-server & hard-media (DVD/external drive banks) can protect against dual drive failure.

The operating system disc & recovery console can fix most boot issues in usually 15 minutes.

If your a corporation that takes to a godlike level time efficiency & money as a balance, then a backup server is by far the only real sure fire way of making sure everything is going to be 100% reliable in a 99.9% uptime guarantee.

DarkFury

Yeah, but the "key point" here is... while Raid 1 will mirror the original drive, if the DATA CONTENTS of the original drive are corrupt... the mirror of that drive will be corrupt as well.

With Ghost, you backup your drive BEFORE it gets corrupt (and if you are like me, you keep about 3 grandfathered copies of your drive backed up just in case one of them gets corrupted as well during the scheduled incremental/full backups.

Ultimately, I offload backups periodically to spanned DVDs which I can shelve so that god forbid the worst happens, I can still restore my drive to the last time I offloaded a backup.

Honestly, unless you are running a server, I still don't see the point of running RAID these days... but hey, some folks just like having it just to say that they did it I suppose.

mechmike0034

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