Backup Advice wanted

Dave,

I have it scheduled to make a complete image backup of the hard drive
every night.

That seems rather unnecessary to me but then I use a Mac.

I use my computer for business, so data changes daily. Backing up nightly
is a must.

I prefer full backups over incremental backups because I like having a
single file I can restore from. Just personal preference I suppose.

Do you do this using a new disc or do you overwrite the existing disc
from the previous night. How long does this process take (image
backup) ?

Macrium Reflect only backs up the sectors that contain data. I'm only using
about 188GB on my main drive. With compression, that works out to roughly
164GB for each image on my backup drive. It takes less than two hours to
perform a full image backup each night.

Each backup gets saved to a new image file on the backup drive. Macrium
Reflect deletes the oldest backup before performing a new backup. You can
choose how many backup images to keep on the drive, but I also synchronize
video data folders from another drive to my backup. So, two image backups
is adequate for my needs and still leave plenty of free space on the backup
drive (since I never know how much space the videos will consume).

I'd prefer not to keep backing up 100GBs every night as there's very
little change.

My backups run automatically every night while I am sleeping. So performing
a full backup isn't any more complicated than an incremental backup. In
theory it puts more wear and tear on the hard drives, but that's what they
are designed for. I usually buy new drives every 3-5 years anyway, more for
increased storage than failing drives.

That doesn;t sound too smart to me. A friends place got hit by
lightning a Mac TV, DVD player, cable modem/router all got destroyed.
Nothing was on at the time but everything was plugged in. I'd have
thought if a backup drive was connected that would have gone too.

Yes, a connected backup drive is vulnerable to lightning, fire, flood,
computer viruses, etc. That's why I rotate the backup drive with a second
backup drive in a safe deposit box.

However, the vast majority of recovery needs are for user errors.
Accidentally deleting a file or something similar. It's more important to
have a recent backup in that case than worry about major disasters.

Also, keeping a backup drive connected all the time, and automating the
process ensures that I backup every night. If I have to remember to plug in
a drive and manually start a backup, it's not likely to occur as often.

The local hard drive lets me quickly recover from common errors like
accidentally deleting a file or something.
I don't think I've done that this millenium fingers crossed.

True, that's not a common scenario. Most of the time, I just go to the
recycle bin to recover deleted files.

Another common error is accidentally overwriting an existing file. For
example, if I open a text file I'm using as a template and make changes,
then click "Save" instead of "Save As". The recycle bin won't help with
that, but it's easy to recover the original file from a backup.

A good idea for off site but I'll stick to parents and work locations
as that means less traveling cost and hassle.

I work from home and don't have any family nearby. The safe deposit box is
the most convenient for me.

The location for the second backup isn't critical. The only thing you might
want to watch for are the risks at each location. For example, if you live
in a flood prone area and your parents do too, both drives could be lost in
the same disaster. Try to choose locations that don't share the same risks
if you can.

I store photos videos and music as separate unigue backups, I just drag
the music folder from one disc to an bare drive using a docking
station. The that drive goes in a box in the wardrobe, until I feel
the need to re-backup which I don;t need to do every night but perhaps
once a month.

As I mentioned above I use "Robocopy" to automatically synchronize my video
data folder (on a second drive) to my backup disk each night. I record TV
shows on my computer, so the video data changes every night.

My music and photos are on my main hard drive and are part of the nightly
image backup.

I also use Robocopy to backup folders from my daughters computer over our
home network. This occurs daily at noon when she is most likely to have her
computer turned on.

Not had to worry about virus for some time so I don't consider that
a problem and copying a file from drive to drive checks for sector or
other disc related errors so I don't feel the need for yet more
software.

Years ago I discovered some photo files had been damaged. I have no idea
what corrupted them, but they were irreplaceable and were no longer
viewable. I didn't know they were damaged, so I just kept backing up the
files as usual. Of course, this meant I no longer had a usable copy of
those photos I could recover.

With many thousands of digital photos and many gigabytes of home movies, I
am not able to review each file invidually to ensure they are still intact.
A program like MD5 file hasher performs these checks for me and alerts me
if a file changes. This lets me recover the damaged file before it is lost
for good.

It's all a matter of risk management. I can't risk losing those valuable
photos and movies, so it's worth it to me to go overboard ensuring they
remain unchanged. It's entirely possible that they will never be damaged,
but I can't take that one in a million chance.

Take care,

Anthony Watson
www.mountainsoftware.com
www.watsondiy.com

On 8/18/2014 10:08 AM, Mayayana wrote:
| I would go with a disk image including installed software.
| Then put *all* data on other drives. The data and the OS
| + software is like the tralier and the tractor. If the tractor
| (C drive) dies you can attach a new one and be on your way.
| There's no reason to risk the cargo.
|
| there is not a clean separation and restoring everything is much easier
| than piecemealing it.

There are probably important distinctions here for
Mac vs Windows.

I've been doing disk imaging for years and have no trouble
making a "clean separation" between OS and data. But one
does need to know where important data is and how to
back it up. That can require some research on Windows.
Generally any folders/files that one didn't directly create
oneself are either in the Documents folder or in the personal
App Data folder. I don't know how it works on Macs. Maybe
what you say is true for you if there's no realistic way to
find your data on a Mac.

On Windows, at least, once one knows what needs to
be backed up, and how to do it, the disk image system
works well.

I think it's important to distinguish between disk
imaging and backup imaging. What many people are
doing, what might be called backup imaging, is incremental
and/or periodic backups of their C drive. That's like
Windows System Restore. It developed as a popular,
non-techy substitute to disk imaging. That's
OK if you don't want to get into learning the technical
aspects of making disk images and backing up data
separately, but essentially backup imaging is a clunky
method for people who don't want to deal with technical
issues. (I don't even have Windows System Restore
enabled. With disk imaging it would just be a waste of
space.)

Either way, it still comes down to the same thing:
You can do whatever you like for backup so long as
it works for you and it passes the basic backup test:

If your computer is cooked today by an electrical
surge, are you OK? If your house burns down today,
are you OK?

OK means having a copy of your OS,
all of your software, and all of your data, that you
can easily restore to functionality. With disk
imaging, using Windows, I only need an image and
my backup data. I can then install the image to a new
machine if necessary and all of my software is there.
If you don't have that then you'll need backup copies
of your software install disks, product keys, etc. And
all of those need to be also backed up offsite by
copying the install disks and writing any necessary
activation codes on those disks.

With Macs, since you can't just buy or build a cheap
box to reinstall on, I guess you'll have to just buy a new
Mac if yours is cooked or stolen. And I have no idea
whether you can actually make disk images of your
Mac system with programs like Photoshop and all other
software already installed, to be restored back to disk
in the future. (Photoshop may no longer be relevant if
you're using Adobe's cloud system, but I assume most
everyone still has software that gets installed on dosk
from an install CD or DVD.) That may be another factor
in favor of your approach, for people on Macs: There's
no point having disk images if you can't use them. For
people on Windows that's not a problem. The only obstacle
for Windows disk imaging is possible technical challenges
in making images, restoring them, restoring them to new
hardware with a different motherboard, etc.

| I like to disk image (using BootIt), then back up data,
| email, etc periodically. That's all on 2 different disks that
| are mostly redundant. I also write the backup to CD, then I
| occasionally also store those CDs elsewhere. I wouldn't
| trust anything to just being on local hard disks.
|
| true but cds are a poor choice because of the hassles, potential bit
| rot and very small size.
|
| i have single files that need a dozen cds just for one file.
| at least use dvd.

You're making all sorts of assumptions that are
not valid. First, I've never failed to retrieve data
on a disk. Second, I make redundant copies and
replace them occasionally, just in case. Third,
*I don't need DVDs for my basic backup*. My
OS/software disk image fits on a CD. My periodic,
recent-files backup also fits on a CD. I then use
DVDs for graphics, photos, large data files, etc --
large amounts of data that I want to keep but
which don't change.

I'm distinguishing between permanent, large
scale backup (Windows service packs, old photos,
large software installers, videos I want to keep)
and recent backup (email, work docs, program
data, and any other personal/business/system files
that might be handy to have on recent backup).

Again, it might not be your chosen method, and
it may or may not be the best choice for PeterN,
but it's worked well for me. It's also the method
I use for several friends whose PCs I manage.



&
I would like to thank everybdy for their input.
In setting up my Bu plan I have considered that I have a bit over
100,000 images. My data files, other than images are minimal. I am not a
professional photographer. In the event that my house is severly
damaged, while I would be upset about losing the images, their recovery
would not be a very high priority.
My plan is C drive image recovery files once a month. Images & data
incremental, daily BU.

--
PeterN

My data files, other than images are minimal.

One other thing that hasn't been mentioned is important
files that are neither data nor photos. Many people don't care
if they lose their computer because they don't save files on
it and don't configure it. But if you do configure it there may
be things you want to keep that you might not think of.

I keep extra backups of various things that I'd like to
be sure to have even if I somehow lose my normal disk
image and data backups. I put those things on CDs
periodically and save them in several places.

Examples:

Hard-to-find or discontinued utilities.
Drivers for old hardware.
Firefox/Pale Moon bookmarks.
Mu customized HOSTS file.
Fonts I've collected over the years.
My favorite Desktop wallpaper.
And my prize possession: A small animation of the
Cape Neddick lighthouse in Maine, which I use as a
custom activity indicator in Firefox/Pale Moon.

Those are all things I could live without but which
I appreciate having and which would be difficult or
impossible to replace.

In article , PeterN
wrote:

In the event that my house is severly
damaged, while I would be upset about losing the images, their recovery
would not be a very high priority.

Keeping a simple copy of your photography related files and databases at
your place of work, at friends or relatives and update that every few
months is not very hard work...
--
teleportation kills
http://tinyurl.com/androidphotography

On 8/20/2014 9:53 PM, Mayayana wrote:
My data files, other than images are minimal.

One other thing that hasn't been mentioned is important
files that are neither data nor photos. Many people don't care
if they lose their computer because they don't save files on
it and don't configure it. But if you do configure it there may
be things you want to keep that you might not think of.

I keep extra backups of various things that I'd like to
be sure to have even if I somehow lose my normal disk
image and data backups. I put those things on CDs
periodically and save them in several places.

Examples:

Hard-to-find or discontinued utilities.
Drivers for old hardware.
Firefox/Pale Moon bookmarks.
Mu customized HOSTS file.
Fonts I've collected over the years.
My favorite Desktop wallpaper.
And my prize possession: A small animation of the
Cape Neddick lighthouse in Maine, which I use as a
custom activity indicator in Firefox/Pale Moon.


Nubble is such an old chestnut, that I tried to do somethig difrent.
Two of my interpretations of Nubble.
Long exposure just after sunset.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/97242118/nubble%203475.jpg

sketch:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/97242118/6Nubble%20%20impression.jpg

Pemaquid at dawn: (Yes I know it's not Nubble. ;-)
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/97242118/pemaquid%20at%20dawn.jpg

I was pleasantly surprised to find the restaurant there is NOT a tourist
trap, but decent at reasonable prices.

Those are all things I could live without but which
I appreciate having and which would be difficult or
impossible to replace.


I know what you mean.

--
PeterN

On 8/20/2014 11:11 PM, android wrote:
In article , PeterN
wrote:

In the event that my house is severly
damaged, while I would be upset about losing the images, their recovery
would not be a very high priority.

Keeping a simple copy of your photography related files and databases at
your place of work, at friends or relatives and update that every few
months is not very hard work...


I know.A also know myself. If the BU is not automatic, it becomes a
round tuit process.

--
PeterN

In article , PeterN
wrote:

On 8/20/2014 11:11 PM, android wrote:
In article , PeterN
wrote:

In the event that my house is severly
damaged, while I would be upset about losing the images, their recovery
would not be a very high priority.

Keeping a simple copy of your photography related files and databases at
your place of work, at friends or relatives and update that every few
months is not very hard work...


I know.A also know myself. If the BU is not automatic, it becomes a
round tuit process.

You really should treat yourself and get a Mac... (It's only money!)
Then just swap the Time Machine drive once in awhile (you need two
drives) with the one you store at your beerbudys mansion! :-)
--
teleportation kills
http://tinyurl.com/androidphotography

| Long exposure just after sunset.
| https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/97242118/nubble%203475.jpg
|
| sketch:
| https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/97242118/6Nubble%20%20impression.jpg
|
| Pemaquid at dawn: (Yes I know it's not Nubble. ;-)
| https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/97242118/pemaquid%20at%20dawn.jpg
|

Thanks for sharing those. The last looks picture
postcard perfect but somehow doesn't move me.
The first, though, is very atmospheric. I can almost
hear the timeless silence of transitional time of day.

Dave,

if you do need to recover how long would it take to get it all back?

A complete "bare metal" restore to a new hard drive would only take as
long as the hardware could copy the data from one drive to another. Maybe
an hour or two, depending on how much I have backed up. That's a lot
faster than having to format the drive, install the OS, reinstall all of
my programs, and reconfigure all my settings.

'easy' you have to restore the whole OS and all your data amounting to
100s of GB becausee you deleted one file.

No, I can "mount" the backup image as a virtual drive, and quickly
restore a single file or two. That only takes a minute or two, and I've
done it many times.

When was the last time you tried recovering as if you'd had an
incident or crash.

About three weeks ago. My main hard drive was developing bad sectors so
I replaced it with a new drive. Booted up the recovery CD, copied the
backup to the new drive, then restarted the system. About two hours
total.

I thought all sectors contained data.

Macrium Reflect only backs up sectors with "used" data.

There is no reason to backup the "free" space on the drive.

Each backup gets saved to a new image file on the backup drive.
Macrium Reflect deletes the oldest backup before performing a new
backup.

BEFORE that sounds rather dangerous.

You can't do it after or you would run out of disk space.

For example, lets say you have a 500GB drive and need to backup 200GB of
data each night. The first two nights would be fine. The third night
would exceed the drive capacity if you didn't delete the first backup.

It's not a big concern as I still have the full backup from the previous
night on the same drive. Not to mention two more older backups on my
other backup drive.

Is the safe deposit box handy at work, and do you use this the next
day.

The safe deposit box is about 8-10 miles from home. It is my "archive"
drive. I would only need to access that drive if a major disaster here at
home takes out my computer and local backup drive.

For quick restores, I simply copy files from the local backup drive.

I swap the backup drives about once a month so the archive drive doesn't
get too outdated, and to ensure both drive mechanisms remain functioning.

if I did happen to delete a file, I could get that back
within a few minutes I'd hate to have to copy my entire OS and all
the data back because I was missing a 10kb word file.

As mentioned above, I can mount the backup image and copy a single file
back quickly and easily.

With time machine I have the option to backup every hour.

I could backup more frequently if I wanted to, but nightly works fine for
my needs.

Mine don't go in the bin unless I want to delete them.

Haven't you ever thrown a paper in the trash and had to dig through the
can later to find it? Sometimes I delete a file on purpose, then
realize I wanted something in that file afterall. Human brain fart.

I use "Robocopy" to automatically synchronize my video data folder
(on a second drive) to my backup disk each night.
I used to do that sort of thing in the 90s but decided it was a bad
idea after I found that in order to recover I needed a working copy of
the recovery program which I didn't have access to at the time.

Robocopy simply synchronizes the video folders with the backup drive.
They're just standard files. I don't need any programs to restore those
files, I just copy them back to the main hard drive if I need them.

Most of my music is from CDs I brought in the 90s

Mine is evenly split from CD's we've converted to MP3's for playing in
the car, and songs I've bought from iTunes or Amazon.

Actually, I have a small collection of songs I bought on records and 8-
tracks back in the 70s/80s. I transferred those to cassette tapes in the
80's, then to CD's in the 90's. Now they exist as MP3's on my hard drive.
Most are of low quality but we still listen to them on occasion when we
want to remember the old days.

Years ago I discovered some photo files had been damaged. I have no
idea what corrupted them, but they were irreplaceable and were no
longer viewable. I didn't know they were damaged, so I just kept
backing up the files as usual. Of course, this meant I no longer had
a usable copy of those photos I could recover.
There's someone on here that claims that sort of thing is
impossible.

They can make whatever claims they wish. I experienced it first hand.

The above is why I keep clones or archives.

Yes, I archive my static data (music, photos, video, documents) to Blu-
Ray discs as an additional archive backup. However, optical media are
notorius for degrading over time. I learned this the hard way years ago
when I used to backup to DVD-R's. After just a year many of the backup
discs were unreadable.

The Blu-Ray backups are just another layer of protection. I would never
rely on them as my sole backup.

With many thousands of digital photos and many gigabytes of home
movies, I am not able to review each file invidually to ensure they
are still intact. A program like MD5 file hasher performs these
checks for me and alerts me if a file changes. This lets me recover
the damaged file before it is lost for good.
I assume you didn't have that at the time you lost the files above.

Correct. I started using MD5 verification a couple years ago. However, I
was having to run it manually, which meant I often forgot to do it or had
to recalculate the MD5 hashes when I added/updated files.

I found MD5 File Hasher about a month ago which lets me automate the
process so it gets updated every week. It also notifies me automatically
if it detects a file has changed.

I only use the MD5 verification on static files that shouldn't be
changing over time (music, photos, video, documents, etc.).

I don't understand the need to back everyone of them up everynight
is it because you don't trust your previous nights backup?

Primarily I like the simplicity of having my entire drive backed up to a
single file. I don't need to worry about having all the parts to
recombine an incremental backup.

It all takes place over night while I sleep, so two hours for a full
backup isn't any different to me than a 10 minute incremental backup.
Either way, the backup is finished when I start the next day.

Finally, I NEVER trust a backup. Redundancy is key. Backups can be
corrupted. Backup drives can fail. I just assume a single backup is never
reliable and keep multiple copies. Overkill, yes. But I can lose my main
hard drive and multiple backups and still stand a good chance of
recovering my data.

I have lost a lot of data over the years for a variety of reasons. But, I
learned the weaknesses in my backup procedures with each incident. I'm
always learning and refining my backup methods.

Anthony Watson
www.mountainsoftware.com
www.watsondiy.com

On 8/21/2014 10:59 AM, android wrote:
In article , PeterN
wrote:

On 8/20/2014 11:11 PM, android wrote:
In article , PeterN
wrote:

In the event that my house is severly
damaged, while I would be upset about losing the images, their recovery
would not be a very high priority.

Keeping a simple copy of your photography related files and databases at
your place of work, at friends or relatives and update that every few
months is not very hard work...


I know.A also know myself. If the BU is not automatic, it becomes a
round tuit process.

You really should treat yourself and get a Mac... (It's only money!)
Then just swap the Time Machine drive once in awhile (you need two
drives) with the one you store at your beerbudys mansion! :-)


I will not get into a Mac v PC discussion. ;-) My reasons for doing
Windows rather than MAC are the same. And, it's not because I'm anti
Mac. It's just that some of the progrms I like to play with are not
available for Mac.


--
PeterN