Post your data backup strategy

[meloz]

I don't do system level backup.

Instead, I have burned downloaded content to DVDs, content which would waste a lot of bandwidth to re-download. Same for files / content I have created myself, except these I have copied to a USB flash drive in addition to a DVD. I verify the integrity of DVD drives every couple months.

As for the rest of the system (including programs), I simply do not care. When my HDD dies, I will simply install Xubuntu on a new disk, copy the files from DVDs and carry on. Business as usual. I do not have to worry about programs and license activation nonsense that can sometimes occur with Windows since all programs i use are open source and can be installed anytime with Synaptic Package Manager.

Yes, I realize this is not an optimal backup practice for many users, let alone SOHO / business scenarios. But everyone has their own threshold and needs for these type of things.

 

[Red Squirrel]

All my data is stored on my main server which makes it central. i have various rsync bash scripts to backup some folders to another location on the raid array. Some jobs are simple copys, others are rotations so I can go back so many days. Depends on importance. I also have similar scripts that grab data off servers (mostly system file related stuff). I have an online server which is also backed up to this server.

I also have an offsite job that backs stuff up to my online server, since I have slow upload I have to be very specific on the files to backup. Most of them consist of compressed SQL databases, word documents, and other stuff that does not take much space. 1GB total. Takes a couple days to run the job from scratch.

On top of these backups, I also have a removable drive dock with multiple 1TB drives. The drives contain a "job" pointer as I have different jobs and a couple drives per job. I pop the drive in, run a script on the server, and it runs the appropriate job for that drive, and sends me a summary by email. i have a spreadsheet where I keep track of which one was run when. I need to make this better and automate it though. Basically have the system tell me what drive to put in, and handle retention etc.

Some of these drives are also stored in a lockbox at the post office.

Oh and I also have an IBM SAN I fire up once in a while and do a full file backup to it as well. I don't have enough UPS power to protect it though, so I only turn it on to run the job, then turn it off after. I treat this as "extra" though. The drives are proprietary and as they fail, they cannot be replaced with standard drives.

I eventually want to improve my setup and make it easier to manage though. Probably a custom web based app or something.

For system level, when I setup an OS I usually image it and then back that up. Basically if my OS drive fails on any of my systems I can restore that image, then restore any file backups.

 

[John Connor]

Most people in the USA don't have caps

I have Comcast I think the limit cap is 15 GB's a month.

 

[tweakboy]

I don't do little backup app crap. I create system image which is your whole drive.

 

[Childs]

No backups. I lose my data, I lose it. Life goes on. I mainly just have movies and games, so its no big loss.

 

[GarfieldtheCat]

Two-tiered for me:

#1 - Manually copy important data files to 2nd drive in PC

#2 - External USB3 docking station, with two separate 2Tb HD's , make full backups using Macrium to both HD's one after another whenever my setup changes (or once a month anyway), then keep them in closet.

Unless I have a major house fire, I should be OK. Thinking of leaving one HD at relatives house.

 

[Puffnstuff]

Redundancy.

 

[ChambersMonroe]

I have in effect, 3 computers, one being a laptop. Each one has duplicate OS drives and a data drive. The data drives are all sync'd by LAN. That means there are three copies of each. The boot/OS drives are switched weekly. Each machine has a complete reserve boot drive ready to go at any sign of trouble.

The duplicate drives were created by Acronis TI's clone function. I call all of this "planned redundancy." My drive changeover day is usually Tuesday.

I have followed this scheme for over 6 years.

Any plan that works for you for that long is a good plan.

 

[ChambersMonroe]

No backups. I lose my data, I lose it. Life goes on. I mainly just have movies and games, so its no big loss.

I'm guessing you're fairly young? (Not trying to be offensive or anything. I didn't back up anything when I was a teenager.)

 

[Childs]

I'm guessing you're fairly young? (Not trying to be offensive or anything. I didn't back up anything when I was a teenager.)

lol I'm hopefully middle aged, but probably closer to death than I want to admit. I used to back everything up on floppies, but I dont care amymore. Anything important can be reacquired, but I've come to realize I dont have a lot of truly important stuff on my home computers. Come to think of it, when I build new PCs the old boot drives are usually on a shelf somewhere. So there is that I guess.

 

[ChambersMonroe]

lol I'm hopefully middle aged, but probably closer to death than I want to admit. I used to back everything up on floppies, but I dont care amymore. Anything important can be reacquired, but I've come to realize I dont have a lot of truly important stuff on my home computers. Come to think of it, when I build new PCs the old boot drives are usually on a shelf somewhere. So there is that I guess.

Hey, the more freedom you feel the better. This is why I refuse to start saving any movies whatsoever (except home movies) when there are so many ways now to view them instantly. I can't see my total data approaching anywhere near 1TB within the foreseeable future and that's how I like it.

 

[black0ut]

aerofs between a desktop, laptop, and file server, with the file server running zfs snapshots every hour/day/week, which are mirrored back to the desktop and a remote fileserver every night.

I only backup important documents, not movies, music ,games, etc, so the overall size is pretty small. Probably 500MB total, with deltas of 1MB or so.

 

[Red Squirrel]

lol I'm hopefully middle aged, but probably closer to death than I want to admit. I used to back everything up on floppies, but I dont care amymore. Anything important can be reacquired, but I've come to realize I dont have a lot of truly important stuff on my home computers. Come to think of it, when I build new PCs the old boot drives are usually on a shelf somewhere. So there is that I guess.

Wow, what about pictures and stuff? Code, documents, misc info like account numbers for services? Resume? What do you do with all that stuff? I sure would not be able to cope with losing stuff like that. You don't realize it till it's gone. Especially stuff you may not use often, but when you need it, it needs to be there.

Stuff like movies, yeah I can understand not bothering to back that up. I actually do, but the only backups of those I have is another drive somewhere, and it's done maybe once a year. Honestly would not care that much if I lost them all since I can just get them back and chances are I would not bother with the ones I saw already.

 

[Childs]

Wow, what about pictures and stuff? Code, documents, misc info like account numbers for services? Resume? What do you do with all that stuff? I sure would not be able to cope with losing stuff like that. You don't realize it till it's gone. Especially stuff you may not use often, but when you need it, it needs to be there.

Stuff like movies, yeah I can understand not bothering to back that up. I actually do, but the only backups of those I have is another drive somewhere, and it's done maybe once a year. Honestly would not care that much if I lost them all since I can just get them back and chances are I would not bother with the ones I saw already.

Pictures I have in several locations for whatever reasons, just like vacation videos. More than likely whatever footage I wanted to use I already did and have finished versions on Vimeo/Youtube. Tax returns used to be important, but now I have a CPA do them. Extended resume and rental history are stored in cloud storage. And I probably have copies on the last 4 or 5 system drives. Work related stuff are on my work home machine and system at work, not to back up, but just because things naturally end up at both places.

Dont get me wrong, it would be inconvenient, but not the end of the world. I have 7TB worth of stuff, and every year or so I buy a new raid enclosure, build a massive volume, migrate everything over. I think I would be better off just deleting everything. Really import stuff I can fit on a 1GB thumb drive. I'm in the process of evaluating a NAS solution, as I am out of space yet again. I'm on the fence as to whether or not to build something new or just blow everything away. Just having the capacity to keep everything is one thing, but there is no way I'd double up to back everything up. The only way I would consider it is if I had a DAT capable of backing everything up, but I dont even think they make those anymore, let alone have tapes capable of storing all the data, at a reasonable cost.

 

[Jimmah]

Every pc has a backup drive with automatic backups. This is mirrored onto a win2k8 server every night, this is pushed to a drive in my shed once every three days. I keep a monthly copy of important things at a friends house and he does the same here.

 

[nOOky]

Every PC we have has a back-up internal drive that I use Windows Backup to save to. I then back up that drive every week with an external USB drive.
We have 4 desktops and 1 laptop, and 2 external drives, one on each of our most used desktops.
I really don't have anything I couldn't go without, but I have a lot of pictures and tax documents that I have paper copies of anyway.
I never clone my drives or use imaging tools because I like fresh installs over images, and I prefer when re-installing the OS to use the latest versions of all my programs rather than the two year old patched versions etc.

 

[biostud]

I use skydrive to sync daily documents between two computers + I take a backup of larger files on an external drive, every two-three months.

 

[KingFatty]

Hey, the more freedom you feel the better. This is why I refuse to start saving any movies whatsoever (except home movies) when there are so many ways now to view them instantly. I can't see my total data approaching anywhere near 1TB within the foreseeable future and that's how I like it.

Agreed - it's almost getting to the tipping point now, where it's more of a hassle to add a movie to a digital home library collection, compared to just streaming it from Netflix or Amazon or whatever.

Do people still maintain their own home libraries of printed books? We used to, but now are selling off the books as it's just too cumbersome. I think the same will happen to DVDs and Blu-Rays, just sell those off and then seek out the data on Netflix or Amazon etc. if you feel like watching a movie.

It's a lot cheaper to stream the same movie 3 times, compared to paying more to buy the movie and then convert it over to your digital library where it will sit unwatched but maybe 3 times over a decade etc.

 

[KingFatty]

I am partial to solutions where you maintain a backup that has older files, in case you intentionally delete something but then want to get it back. If you use some kind of duplication system to protect against hardware failure, that will also duplicate your intentional deletes and then when you change your mind you are stuck.

 

[thestrangebrew1]

Windows home server. done and done.

This for me as well. Although I also have a 2tb ext. harddrive that I also make an extra backup of all my photos/docs/home movies. Not too worried about my music or movie files.

 

[jiffylube1024]

1. Dropbox for many of my documents on both a laptop & desktop
2. Data drive is 3tb x2 in raid 1 to prevent data loss in a drive failure
3. Ssd boot drive is backed up every month or two to hd
4. Important files on raid array backed up to external 2tb drive occasionally

I tried a bunch of backup software for windows but didn't really like any of them so I just have gone back to manually copying entire directories.

 

[BadOmen]

-What do you backup?
Everything but the system disk. I enjoy a good format & reinstall every now and then.
-How often?
Not scheduled
-What backup software do you use (if any)?
None

I use a 1.5TB green drive on a docking station to replicate my most important stuff.
Stuff that doesn't get updated too often also go on DVDs.

Pictures get special treatment: They are in the computer HD, in the backup HD, in all memory cards (I never reuse those) plus in DVDs stored at another location.

When it's time to update the backup HD, I compare it with my computer HDs via Dupechecker and see what's changed.

(perhaps it's time to find some tool to help me in the process, especially the incremental backup. I tried Nero ages ago, but hated the fact that it saves files on a proprietary format)

 

[slayernine]

Preamble
Dedicated backup server running bare metal (also offsite backup server). All servers and storage on 1-2 hours of battery backup.

Yearly Full Offsite Archive
Custom script that grabs all critical data and zips it to an external USB Hard drive. This includes a copy of image level backups.

Image Level Backups
Veeam backups for all virtual machines to backup server.

Replication
Veeam replication of all virtual servers to secondary hardware on other side of large facility. Secondary storage device that mirrors primary, also stored with secondary server hardware.

Continuous Backups
CrashPlan backups/archiving on site with file revisions going back 1+ years.

Daily Offsite
Business critical data sent over internet via mono directional synchronization. I was using CrashPlan for this but I've changed to a simpler solution that just straight up copies anything that changed to a windows accessible directory that doesn't require any &*(# software to read.

 

[VeroK]

Wow. That's quite the spectrum.

Is it ok to post a link to this thread elsewhere in the forum (a related thread)? I'd ask the mod but I can't send private messages b/c I'm too new. I'll delete this post after I get an answer. Thanks.

 

[Red Squirrel]

All my data is on raid, so that protects me from a disk failure. That's sorta my first level of protection, though it's not backup, obviously.

In case of any other data loss such as accidentally deleting a file or if the entire array was somehow lost, I have the following strategies:

* Very important data is rsynced to my online server on a nightly basis. Since online disk space is a very high premium compared to what I can build at home (and pay only once for, not montly) I really have to pick and choose.

* Local backups within the file server, this is mostly just for versioning as well as for basic protection against deleting/overwriting of files etc... basic stuff. Obviously I lose those backups if the entire array fails.

* removable disk backups. Basically I have a bunch of hard drives and a backup dock and each drive has a specific job it's assigned to and there are duplicates. I put a drive in and run the backup once in a while. Currently this solution is sorta not working properly, did not get a chance to look at it but think my drive dock died. Need to find another PC that has esata and try it.

* Old SAN enclosure. I have this old IBM SAN enclosure that I turn on every now and then, and run a full environment backup to.

* OS images: Every now and then I may take an OS image of my systems. you can backup all the files you want but if the OS craps out, it's still a huge pain in the ass if you have to rebuild it from scratch. So with images I can just reimage it.


Top server is my main file server, and the 4 enclosures are the IBM SAN enclosure:



The drive dock can be seen on the left: