Backups!
The number one piece of advice anyone can give to somebody working with computers is to keep regular backups of important data.
This morning, I turned on my laptop, only to see the message:
NTLDR is Missing
Press any key to restart
I'm sure we all know the feeling when you see a message like that!
Luckily I have a desktop computer that I could look up a fix on, and it wasn't too difficult to repair - but it got me thinking: Is all my important data backed up? Are the backups recent enough?
All of my client work gets backed up to a server every time changes are made, and financial information is printed out, but I'm not always so strict when it comes to my own projects - I have a new downloadable product waiting to be released, and my last backup of it is a week old - it would have been a significant amount of work to recreate.
I am currently looking in to the services of rsync.net to automatically back up my data. They charge $1.80 per GB per month, or $3.15 to have your data backed up to multiple locations.
I will keep this post updated with any comments on the service provided.
Comment by Chris H — August 4, 2006 @ 2:18 pm
One of those tasks that we know we should do but……..
Pricing for rsync.net seems good. An alternative I saw mentioned on a forum was Carbonite for $5pm for unlimited transfer.
Comment by Chance — August 4, 2006 @ 2:36 pm
I urge you to try Mozy- they give you 2GB free. If anything, it will let you try out online backup (its not the greatest for everything), and if you need more space their premium plans or something like $4.95 for 30GB. I've been using it for a couple weeks now to have a place to share files between home and work, and its great.
If you use my referral link to try it out, we both get an extra free 250GB of space- Referal Link or go straight to http://www.mozy.com
Comment by Corby — August 4, 2006 @ 4:54 pm
I learned the lesson the hard way. Lost all my files a couple years ago.
Now I have my workstation which I back up to my fileserver. Fileserver is RAID-5 and backs up to an external harddrive every night at 3AM. This way if my fileserver and development machine go down at the same time, I can still access the files immediately using my dual USB2/Firewire backup drive on my laptop (Which is only ever 1 day behind at max) It's also setup to upload additional files to my ftp server (15GB or storage) and if any problems occur during the process, I get emailed immediately.
From there, I make project backups on DVD-R and store them offsite…Never again will laziness cause me to lose my backups…
Comment by Blaine Moore — August 4, 2006 @ 8:30 pm
Speaking from my websites as opposed to my local system, I try to do as much as my development in wordpress now as I can even on projects that don't "look like" blogs.
I keep copies of my templates on my webserver, a few hard drives on my local machine, and on my local machine backups.
My content for the website itself gets emailed every night to a GMail account as a database backup.
Comment by James — August 5, 2006 @ 5:04 am
My data drive failed just a few weeks ago. It had to fail while I was transfering everything to a new computer too.
My bet is you will have more problems with that drive. You should replace it.
Comment by Oli Allen — August 5, 2006 @ 8:32 am
Signed up with rsync.net shortly after making that post, and now have my laptop and workstation backing up important files every night. Should hopefully be able to get my web hosting accounts backing up there too.
I signed up for the standard plan, as it's only being used for backup purposes rather than the sole place I'll store my files.
Pretty impressed with the service and support provided so far
Comment by Chris H — August 5, 2006 @ 1:12 pm
Just signed up with mozy after 3 attempts (didn't seem to send emails to one of my email addys
). Seems ok but it won't allow you to backup anything from the Program Files folder. Some of my apps store their data their so gonna be a no-no on mozy. Will look at rsync later.
Comment by Dave J — August 5, 2006 @ 1:37 pm
I have back-up paranoia after losing data in early encounters with PCs.
I now run dual hard-disks in all machines and clone copy to the secondary drives on a reglaur basis - this lets me restage a machine in minutes rather than days if the worst happens. I also run an external drive which is used to back everything up once per month.
Our server hosts run raid and make full back-ups every night together with "off-site" back-ups to a secondary data centre each week.
All current design work also goes off-site on DVD/CD each week.
Can't be too careful!
Dave J
Comment by zeros — August 5, 2006 @ 10:55 pm
You should try
http://www.carbonite.com
$5/month for practically unlimited storage
Comment by Ray — August 6, 2006 @ 11:38 am
I recently started up my own data recovery blog. The blog really made me think about the impact of loosing even a few days work.
Although hard drive data recovery techniques are relatively sophisticated these days it can cost a fortune, so there is no real substitute for frequent (daily/weekly) data back up.
Ray