How many backups is enough?

eyetrip

eyetrip

eyetrip

Soldato
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8 Nov 2006
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My current system is basically have one full copy of each drive. So run everything off my C and D drives, then have two other drives which I back those up to.

But am not sure its enough. This method has stung me in the past (when I had one primary and one backup) where I landed up formatting my backup drive for some reason, and as I had done that, bam!, my primary drive stuffed out on me, ending in the loss of a lot of photos etc.

So, I will probably be implementing a third level to this and backing up the backups to other drives... but it just gets so blimmin expensive. Having 2 primary drives of 500GB would mean I would need 3GB...

What do you guys think is the best way to be absolutely safe? What are your methods/setups?
 
If all the hard drives are connected to your motherboard then potentially you could lose all four in a surge of power or something. I think the best thing would be a couple of large external drives to backup to so you can unplug them when not backing up.
 
external drive, only connected for backups. backup once a month should do the trick. Good to do a windows rebuild every year or two so you don't get too attached to the layout and become complacement (also gets rid of all the detritus on your PC;))
 
When it comes to data protection people get hung up on backups. You shouldn't be thinking about how to back things up, the important thing is to think about how to recover from a particular event or series of events. If you think about how you're going to do that, how long you're willing to wait for it to happen and how much you have to spend doing it that will drive out your backup requirements.

So consider the following:

  • OS corruption/failure - reinstall or Acronis image
  • Accidental file deletion - local backup
  • HDD failure - RAID or local backup
  • Mobo failure - local backup to USB or other driverless solution
  • Power surges - UPS or separate powered off backup drive
  • Fire, flood, theft - Offsite backups on DVD or HDD.

Each has it's advantages in terms of cost and time, some may be excessive (you may not have any irreplacable content for example), some may not be extensive enough or take too long either to backup or restore.
 
Depending on how valuable your data is I would recommend

Backing up to second hard drive (easy to access if need be)
Regular backups to DVDR of anything that changes on a regular basis (so email/documents), and a backup to DVDR for anything you download that you want to keep.


For example I try to
Copy my documents, emails, pics etc to a secondary drive once a week or so
Back them up to DVD every couple of weeks

And for downloads (patches etc) I tend to store them on the machine (usually in two locations) until i've got most of a DVDR full, when they get backed up to that, and one copy is removed from the PC.

The key is to try and keep track of what has been backed up, and where the backups are (and to check the DVDR backups are working - i tend to check them in a secondary DVD drive to make sure they are readable after burning).

To give an example I copy my documents etc from my C/D drives to J:\backup\01_2008 then that gets copied to the relevent DVD's which are duly checked and labled.


When I build my next machine I'm probably going to budget for 2-4 8gb usb stick, then use them for regular backups of documents etc rather than the hard drive (but still copy to DVDR for longterm storage).
 
Some interesting feedback. Thanks.

I have to admit though, I hate the idea of using DVD's. I know its secure and safe... its just the idea of all those discs.... and as am building up more and more video files for editing, that would be a lot of DVD's :)

Even my photos can take up a lot of room...

Basically, I have got a lot of stuff which is critical, and pretty much irreplaceable (SP?).

However, when I think about it, I would probably not need as much as I said in first post.

I would have primary 500GB (2x250GB Raid 0) Raid because of my video editing - my video files will be on secondary 2x250GB Raid 0 setup, but will will save to primary as single drives really do hold everything back.

I would then have one single 500GB drive which will only contain an image of primary drive, because I hate re-installing windows and all the programs.

I would then have 2 external 500's both of which would initially get all critical data backed up to them, then would leave one attached which would get updated daily, while the other I would leave in a safe place. I would then swap them over on a weekly basis.

Does that sound secure enough? Is only 500GB less space, but that is still about £70 less...
 
if you've got a lot of very large files you need to backup, you might find something like a few external drives could be used - as long as you remember to fully disconnect them when the backups are complete (to avoid anything that could fry the pc's drives also frying the connected external drive).

Failing that tape or similar drives if you've got the money to spend on it (I use HDD's for online storage and DVDR for longer term simply because of cost).
 
A remote FTP server at a relatives/friends house allows you to protect against the old house burning down or theft. Something like the NAS IcyBox sold here would do the trick, especially as that has RAID 1 as well.

Don't forget that redundancy, backups and safe storage are what companies can spend vast amounts of money on, often more that the original storage itself.
 
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