Best, cheapest, safest way to backup data?

[bob4432]

each computer i have has its own additional hdd in it, so i ghost it to that about once a week and also ghost them to a dedicated machine via the network, the data that is very important is additionally backed up to dvd-r. the dvd-rs are then stored in a climate / fire suppressed /secured offsite enviroment. any dv video i want is usually on dvd-r and also on minidv tape. if after all this i lose my data, i will know i tried my best to keep it and not kick myself in the ass wishing i had done more.

 

[endo1234]

HD's are the best backup, unless your dumping everything into a vault every night. Then tapes are. Hard drives aren't as fragile as you might think. If it fails, then you can always try the freezer trick to get your data off. It ussually works, and if you have 2 different hard drives with the same data that both fail at the same time (extremely rare), then chances are it will work.

Its all about what is the biggest enemy. If its fire, remote server. If its theft then tape. If its hardware then 2nd hard drive. Of course many will disagree.

 

[oldfart]

For me, it has to be external to the PC you are backing up. I backup to a Linux Server, but that is not a good solution for most.

A very simple, inexpensive and easily removable way to do it is an external Firewire or USB 2.0 drive. Firewire is preferable since it is faster in actual throughput.

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

Originally posted by: Grizybaer
hmm, i agree HD's are prolly the best way, live ones set up in raid.

but for things that will be stored away, i'd say optical is the way to go, you figure the cd/dvd's that you store away in a nice padded cd wallet are well protected from light and air. Magnetic media is more succeptable to magnetic fields, not something that we could easily control. Accidents do happen and magnets are everywhere.

You need a REALLY REALLY strong magnet to mess with a hard drive. Probably not a reasonable concern for most situations. However, the drive is mechanical, and it isn't guaranteed to spin up and read correctly when you pull it out of the closet a few years down the road...

 

[DieHardware]

Originally posted by: boomerang
I back up daily using Drive Image 7 from Powerquest to a third HD. I have everything on two Raptors in RAID 0.

In Drive Image I have scheduled an automatic backup for a time of day when my computer is normally on. I have this set up to run every day of the week.

No rebooting, it runs right from within Windows. If you're gaming you will notice a slowdown. But it backs up my 9GB in about 6 minutes.

This protects me from failure of my RAID array and/or HD failure. I backup the entire drive and can restore and be back up in a matter of minutes.

You have to ask yourself what you are trying to protect yourself from. This setup of mine is obviously no protection from fire or theft. You can get as paranoid about this stuff as you want. And I don't mean this in a bad way. Removable drives and off site backups, etc., etc. Whatever makes you comfortable.

With Hard Drives as unreliable as they are these days, for me, that is my primary concern.

Agreed.

 

[HGC]

RAID is great for hardware failures, and I have had a few. But if you have some kind of software corruption or failure, something that has happened to me far more often, it will not help. I think you need to do Ghost or Drive Image or Duocor. The Duocor costs a bit more but is so much faster and easier.

I never thought about a power supply flame out destroying all the hard drives. I will make some CDRs soon of all my important files.

 

[HGC]

Can anyone recommend the cheapest best DVD writer from NewEgg at the moment? Thanks.

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: HGC
Can anyone recommend the cheapest best DVD writer from NewEgg at the moment? Thanks.

newegg has the Lite On DVD-Dual/ CD ReWritable Drive MODEL LiteOn LDW-411S for ~$130. not bad for a +/- burner and it burns cds @ 40x. i have a pioneer a06 and like it to. i think newegg has it for ~$135.

 

[Confused]

If it's important, you should ALWAYS have more than one copy of the data backed up.

Whether that is with incremental backups, rotated tapes/hard drives, burning to multiple CDRs/DVDRs, you should never trust your data to just one medium.

Also, you should look to replace the storage medium every now and then, whether that is copying from one DVDR to another, new DVDR, or otherwise, you should not be worrying about storing one tape/dvdr/hdd for years at a time.


Confused

 

[CDRecorder]

Originally posted by: BingBongWongFooey
My ideal backup situation is to have each machine backup to another machine nightly (obviously, buy more disk space than you actually need). Then burn to cds every so often.

That's exactly how I do it; I wrote a little program to automatically backup my files to a network file server every night. That solution works pretty well for me because I don't have to back up too much stuff. I also archive files to CD-Rs.