How do you guys manage and backup your files ?

Original data is stored on my internal 1TB data drive.

I then have two backups. One on my eSATA drive and one on my Synology NAS.
 
NAS backsup set folders on my machines and a second backup is made by uploading a password locked .rar file to a webservers private data folder (only accessible via ftp).
 
thing I backup...

Music
Videos
Photos
Steam

each one has a robocopy file that I double click to backup, Music/Photos are the most important to me, so they're backed up to a pc in my house, an external drive and a raid3 at my mum's house (I take the external to that, once a month ish)
 
I have Raid 1 in my HTPC and I back up photos and music periodically to DVD which I store at work under lock and key. I'm paranoid about loosing my photos from someone stealing my PCs so I have always had a back up at a different secure location. Just remember Raid 1 is not a genuine back up solution it only protects against a single HDD failure.
 
I just have one eSATA RAID Box with port-multiplier support which can take four drives. I put 2 WD 2TB, and two Samsung 1.5TB in mirror mode, so I have 3.5TB data backedup. All other 20TB are normal, though I started backing up some data on BD-R 50GB discs.
 
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If I could afford it, I'd have:

2xraid1 drives for my files (in case of drive failure) and a further 2 drives of the same capacity. One internal for a quick backup in case the raid array dies, and one external to keep a backup completely seperate from the rig.

As it happens, I have one drive right now and am worrying a lot about it; I'll be ordering a new drive tonight though, thank god - and hopefully not have to send this one back.
 
I've got too much stuff to make it practical to back it all up, so currently I don't back up anything. Oops.

Actually, that's not quite true. I do at least have resilliency against single drive failures - two 2TB Drobos and two 400GB RAID1 arrays. I've recently had both of the disks on one of the RAID1 arrays go offline, but I broke the array and both drives are still readable so I didn't lose anything (I also had two days warning between the two failures and took the opportunity to copy all the data to one of the Drobos).

I need to re-organise all my stuff (about 6TB worth). A lot is old rubbish that I should dump. My plan will be to organise stuff into five priority levels:

1. Important documents, valued photos, etc. Sync offsite - Dropbox or similar.
2. Documents, work files, photos, software I'd really rather not lose - keep on a Drobo and a second disk (TBD). Archive to DVD where possible.
3. Work files. The most important stuff is backed up already - version control and fault tolerant hardware. The rest I need to decide what's best. A lot can go into category 5.
4. Media collection. Far too big to back up, so I won't. It'd be an irritation if I lost it but not the end of the world.
5. Rubbish. Bin it.

The problem is finding the time to do it - so far I've just ended up firefighting. If there's a problem (be that a disk error or full disk), I've done whatever was needed to fix it. No significant data loss to date but I'd best watch my back, or get bitten.
 
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I have a external hard drive which I use Acronis to copy all my documents and ect to.
Plus dvd's for the important stuff.
 
I have 6 drives in total:

Two 60GB Vertex in RAID0 for the OS

Two 74GB 15K RPM IBM SAS in RAID0 for apps

Two 1TB Sammy F1s in RAID1 for data.
 
sorry for the slight hijack but having a bit of a dilema here...

I tend to backup my stuff onto an external hard drive and once the backup is done I turn the drive off and then do the same cycle again in a weeks time - to keep any sort of virus 'invasion' to my backup data - bit OTT probably but meh lol.

My idea is to get two drives and raid them, and whatever is copied to one drive is mirrored onto the second drive. However... I'm finding problems in doing this.

I find it really time consuming to delete all files of the backup, and copy and paste all the folders etc again back onto the drives with the updated files - what can I do to just transfer the 'updated' stuff over to the backup drive ???

Also looking for the fastest transfer method... is it e-sata? Also is there any way of getting a NAS drive to have fast transfer speeds? Ideally id like it within the home network but speeds are ridiculously slow IMO.

again sorry for the slight hijack but I felt it was in an appropriate thread.
 
Online backup: 1 Month ago (300GB out of 1.5TB)
My last offline backup was in January.... (came to around 200GB)

Still deciding on a solution, but will most likely result in buying 2x of every drive and doing a weekly backup of everything. At all other times it will be offline.
 
sorry for the slight hijack but having a bit of a dilema here...

I tend to backup my stuff onto an external hard drive and once the backup is done I turn the drive off and then do the same cycle again in a weeks time - to keep any sort of virus 'invasion' to my backup data - bit OTT probably but meh lol.

My idea is to get two drives and raid them, and whatever is copied to one drive is mirrored onto the second drive. However... I'm finding problems in doing this.

I find it really time consuming to delete all files of the backup, and copy and paste all the folders etc again back onto the drives with the updated files - what can I do to just transfer the 'updated' stuff over to the backup drive ???

Also looking for the fastest transfer method... is it e-sata? Also is there any way of getting a NAS drive to have fast transfer speeds? Ideally id like it within the home network but speeds are ridiculously slow IMO.

again sorry for the slight hijack but I felt it was in an appropriate thread.

Take a look at Synctoy or RichCopy - they allow you to sync a source and destination drive/folder/file.
 
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