P.S.A. - Data Backups

ScoobyDoofus · Jun 2006

Public Service Announcement: Backing up your Data

Due to a recent hardware failure and error in judgement on my part, for the 2nd time in my life, I've probably lost nearly 100% of my artwork.(obviously not including renders uploaded to my webspace)

A friendly reminder:
Do yourself a favor, and backup your critical data/artwork, programs, and everything else daily.
Create some kind of batch, or process to do it automatically on a schedule. Something. Anything.
If possible, backup onto non-volitile storage optically - CD or DVD media.

Dont be a complete tool like me. Learn from my mistake!
Thank you.

Joao Sapiro · Jun 2006

one word mate

: OUCH

Ferg · Jun 2006

I had this happen to me (also for the second time) a couple months ago and so I must shout out a loud SECOND to Scooby's important message

BACKUPNOWBACKUPNOWBACKUPNOWBACKUPNOWBACKUPNOWBACKUPNOWBACKUPNOWBACKUPNOWBACKUPNOWBACKUPNOWBACKUPNOWBACKUPNOWBACKUPNOW
BACKUPNOWBACKUPNOWBACKUPNOWBACKUPNOWBACKUPNOWBACKUPNOWBACKUPNOWBACKUPNOWBACKUPNOWBACKUPNOWBACKUPNOWBACKUPNOWBACKUPNOW
BACKUPNOWBACKUPNOWBACKUPNOWBACKUPNOWBACKUPNOWBACKUPNOWBACKUPNOWBACKUPNOWBACKUPNOWBACKUPNOWBACKUPNOWBACKUPNOWBACKUPNOW
BACKUPNOWBACKUPNOWBACKUPNOWBACKUPNOWBACKUPNOW

snemmy · Jun 2006

just ordered a dvd burner and 300gig harddrive from newegg.com. getting enough stuff on my drive now that i NEED a dvd burner for backups instead of 7-8 cds every time. and im VERY bad about not backing up data. and going into graduate work this fall i really need to change that.

newegg is having some pretty good Deals of the Day on dvd burners today(Mon June 26). so if you dont have one and want a good deal get going.

ScoobyDoofus · Jun 2006

The sad fact is that I had all the tools required to do regular backups. I just didnt do it.
I have a DVD burner. Tons of blank media.
I have a 300gb external hard drive with a 1 touch backup system that I was just always too lazy to configure.
I had thankfully copied my music & video collection + lots of references to that drive long ago, in addition to a bundle of personal photos & the like, so I've still got a bit of stuff, but next to no recent artwork, no applications, etc.

Ninjas · Jun 2006

Thanks Scooby for reminding me to back up my stuff. Just did it and I feel better already.

I hope it works out for you with your data.

Mongrelman · Jun 2006

Ouch.

I'm not sure if this is helpful to you but apparently there is software that is very good at recovering data from fubared hard drives. A woman in my course had a similar thing happen and a friend of hers used this type of software (afraid I have no idea of the name) and it got about 95% of her stuff back.

Hope you manage to recover it somehow.

hawken · Jun 2006

two external usb HDDs do it for me.

one is entitled "play", the other "work".

vahl · Jun 2006

partitionned disks, external hdd and from time to time, a dvd burn+cleanup does the job for me pretty well

Bradfordart · Jun 2006

I'd recommend downloading Syncback for automated backup software; it has saved me before.

CheapAlert · Jun 2006

heh, I haven't backed up my 2000-2002 stuff yet...

gauss · Jun 2006

I just backed up all of my art folders less than a day ago... but we all get burnt by this at least once, and more than that if we don't learn from our mistakes

never trust the technology completely.

Toomas · Jun 2006

Thats why i use raid-1.
HDD's are cheap and unreliable.

Very important stuff i would still burn and propably mail to my gmail account too just to be safe.

michalczyk · Jun 2006

Sorry to hear you lost much of your data. It's not fun, I know how that feels

Actually I recently wrote an article about how to make proper backups. The article is aimed at digital artists so many here may find it useful:

Backup tips and strategies for Artists

KDR_11k · Jun 2006

Okay, currently burning a new backup. I do make them but pretty irregularly. OTOH I don't make enough stuff to warrant weekly backups. Never been burned badly so far, had numerous harddrives fail but in all cases the failure was slow and I managed to copy everything over to a new drive before the failure was complete.

Hawken: What if a virus corrupts all your harddrives?

thomasp · Jun 2006

yeah, good reminder, preparing a new backup DVD as we speak.
so far, i had hardly any data loss myself, fortunately. most of it was a result of user error (rm -rf * in my homedir, yeah, great command line fun... - and in another case selecting the wrong partition for a linux install. DOH!)

daily backups seem a bit over the top for a private user though

even when working on contract stuff, i hardly backup more often than once a week.
having a second machine can be really helpful to troubleshoot things, btw.

edit: just read your article, michalczyk. cheap CDR's can definitely be problematic, i agree. i had several noname's from the late 90'ies where the recordable surface started to peel off. the brand CDR's are still alive however - with 9-10 years of age for my oldest media. and i'd advise against using compression wherever possible. if the archive get's corrupted, all the work might be lost. i'd rather buy more DVD's to store the data in uncompressed fashion.

sledgy · Jun 2006

KDR, for viral corruption, it's best to have an external that you can take offline when not backing up.

Here's something I wrote for Maxtor: (not as pretty as michalczyk's)
http://maxtor.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/maxtor.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=2538

And while I turn my head the other way here's a link to some good software that you can schedule backups with. On my machines I just threw an extra 250G ATA drive in each which are hella cheap now and set it to back up every day at 5am (when I know I'm asleep)

ftp://ftpdownload.maxtor.com/pub/Personal_Storage/OneTouch/OneTouch_CD.iso

You can get rid of the OneTouch drivers after the installation and keep Retrospect Express to do the backups.
Please don't post this link around with wild abandon since we still like to make money

It comes with our OneTouch externals.

ScoobyDoofus · Jun 2006

Thanks for all your help so far sledgy. Youre my hero. I havent recovered my data yet, but I'm certain I've come far closer thanks to your help.
My 300gb external is a Maxtor OneTouch II, so I happen to already have that app on CD.

shotgun · Jun 2006

oh scoob

sorry to hear that bro
hey they say everything happens for a reason ah?

Tulkamir · Jun 2006

Owch man, nearly happened to me

Not sure of the circumstances were for you, but don't touch HD if you can. I found some fairly cheap (80 bucks) software online that worked great for me. I forget what it is now, but if you give me somet ime I'll find it again.

It does a free assessment on you HD before you buy it to make sure you can get your stuff back.

Marisa · Jun 2006

OMG I'm so sorry man. I know how you feel too. I had my hard drive stolen from me a couple months ago, so there was no way I could recover my stuff. Maybe there is still hope for you. I'm crossing my fingers.

snap.crackle.pop · Jun 2006

I try to stay away from Maxtor HD, i remember that i wiped a whole HD just by clicking a *.mov file last year, im not saying that Maxtor are bad but they tend to be easily corruptible, same with western digital.

KDR_11k · Jun 2006

Watch it, if you mention that near Sledgy he'll start making long posts about how Maxtor isn't bad and how they've gotten better and whatnot

.

sledgy · Jun 2006

Nah - I work for Seagate now

Most drives are comparable for reliability. But clicking a .mov link and thinking it corrupted your drive is like saying you turned on your windshield wipers and it caused your engine to misfire, after putting sugar in the tank.

snap.crackle.pop · Jun 2006

[ QUOTE ]
Nah - I work for Seagate now

Most drives are comparable for reliability. But clicking a .mov link and thinking it corrupted your drive is like saying you turned on your windshield wipers and it caused your engine to misfire, after putting sugar in the tank.

[/ QUOTE ]

Wait a minute, a mov file certainly didn't corrupt my HD, what i was trying to say is that, when i randomly clicked the file my computer froze and restarted itslef, and never got back to Windows again, i looked at my HD in an other PC and it was whiped out.

But hey! you probably know more about this little adventure i had than my lost Hard drive himself.

sledgy · Jun 2006

I see what you're saying now. Sometimes when you move an ATA drive on a 32-bit controller to a 48-bit one or vice versa (like an ATA-133 controller that supports >137GB, assuming it wasn't a SATA I or II drive) the data won't be read properly and the volume will show up in Disk Management as needing a signature and a format. Hard to tell without running diags on a drive if its a logical or a hardware problem. Still a real drag when you lose a whole drive worth of data in one poof

Bronco · Jun 2006

i had this,at work,luckily everything was backed up bar afew images but I was very lucky as i hadn't backed up in awhile (just had couple of unproductive days).

I now use a program called "handyBackup" and a new exsternal drive connected to my PC which is purily for back-ups. The buety of Handy Back-up is that you can schedule it to back-up at a set-time,at work i have mine set for 5:00pm Daily and as long as the computer is on at the time it will jsut run the back-up automatically.Take sall of 15mins or so to set-up.

Highly recommended.

Good-luck getting your stuff back Scoob

John

KDR_11k · Jun 2006

You could just use Windows' scheduler with a DOS batch file. Or, for Linux, a cron job.

poopinmymouth · Jun 2006

I thought handy backup was cool too (the lite version is free), but everytime I used it, the jpegs would be corrupt. All other files were fine, but any and all jpegs were full sized but unreadable in any program.

Also, Sledgy, I'm pretty sure the retrospect software is available (the full 141 mb file) from the maxtor website, is your .iso different somehow?

sinistergfx · Jun 2006

I use Vice Versa Pro to backup my files to a secondary hard drive and also to my laptop.

snemmy · Jun 2006

heh, when you order a nice new 300gig harddrive make sure you know that SATA requires a different connection than the harddrive that comes stock in your computer

sledgy · Jun 2006

Poop, I don't believe we have a standalone version on the web for download. The ISO image is the same image that we sold with OneTouch 1 drives and contains Retrospect Express 6. There's an upgrade (and update to the upgrade) on the site which will bring Express 6 to Retrospect HD which is a custom version that we paid EMC/Dantz to do for the OneTouch 2's. I prefer using Express 6 because of its custom script ability and that it will schedule duplicates. Retrospect HD will do duplicates but you can't schedule them. By default HD does a "Backup" which compresses the selected files/folders into a "backup set" which you then need HD to be able to restore the files. I prefer being able to schedule duplicates of certain folders, then have open access to those files on whatever media I backed them up to.

What RetrospectHD IS good for is making a full system backup verbatim, so if your entire system crashes you just need to install the OS, service pack, then restore and everything including settings are restored. I just prefer reinstalling the OS and programs manually every 6 months or so and just call it "Windows maintenance"

ScoobyDoofus · Jun 2006

Yeah. I have a 300GB Maxtor One Touch II external that obviously came with Retrospect. NOW Im going to be diligent about using it.

Snemmy: I would hope that anybody who is planning on replacing a hard-disk themselves knows the differences between those!
Ive never owned a store bought computer. Every computer I've ever had has been built from the ground up.

Keg · Jun 2006

http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?s...mp;promoid=1048

good deal for those up in canuck land, heck even with shipping it looks to be a good deal. dunno what newegg has such a drive for.

sledgy · Jul 2006

Here's a suggestion for those that don't want to blow half the PC budget on a SCSI setup (they are pretty expensive and not only the drive) get a couple of large SATA drives and set up a RAID 1 (mirrors on the fly) Many newer motherboards come stock with RAID 0/1 controllers these days and I've seen 300G drives as low as about $100. But beware ye don't get lured into the performance RAID 0 trap! You can double your sustained transfer rate but halve your reliability. A SATA RAID is very easy to set up and you have a direct copy of your drive if (when) one fails. If you want to go full bore you can do a RAID 5 with 3 or more drives and have higher reliability with the higher speed. If you're feeling saucy you could do a 0+1 with 4 or more drives so you get the RAID 0 (stripe) speed plus the RAID 1 (mirror) reliability - best of both worlds but you take a hit to the wallet.

P.S.A. - Data Backups

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