[PeterParker]

Hey!

I never really tidied up my normal backupping. I'm a student and I don't do extremely much with my notebook - but I use it for my studies, my personal emails and I also do rather much digital photography every once in a while.
What to do? How often do you backup? Every month? Every week? Do you backup everything (with an application) or only parts? Does is help?
My question mainly is how 'fearful' to be... I mean, we now have Macs for nearly 15 years - and some HDs actually crashed, although only twice or so. But does it still happen? What do you think?

And then: Do you use USB sticks, USB HDs or USB SSDs? (and anyway, if I bought a USB 3 HD, would it work with USB 2 ports though, perhaps I would have to connect it to some roommates' computer sometimes, just thinking...)

Thanks!
Pete

[subego]

Fearful? You should be terrified.

Here's what everybody should be doing at an absolute minimum. It's called the 3-2-1 plan. It was developed by a digital photographer (i.e. someone who generates a ton of data and for whom backup is critical).

Three copies of everything
One is your original, the other two are backups.

Two different types of media
One of these can be cloud storage, which is nice because...

One backup is offsite
This is key. A million backups in your house are worthless if your house burns down or you get robbed.


The simplest way to achieve this on a Mac, but by no means the cheapest, is with a Time Capsule and a cloud backup solution (I use Crashplan Pro). That also takes care of how often to backup, since both are automatic.

[Spheric Harlot]

Basic rules of thumb:

1. If it's important, you have a duplicate.
2. If you don't have a duplicate, it wasn't important. (Note the past tense.)
3. Triplicate for the really life-threateningly important stuff, preferably elsewhere.

That's it.

Your hard drive(s) WILL fail. And if you can't afford to lose some stuff, you need to treat them as if they were already failing. That diploma paper you're working on that decides whether you graduate or not? Your two best friends get a copy of that via e-mail, weekly. You keep a copy of the latest version on a USB stick in addition to the Time-Machine backup.

I use Time Machine (usually at the end of a production day; I have auto-backup switched off for disk performance reasons) and keep duplicate backups of archive material.

[subego]

Friends don't clutter up friend's email boxes.

Something like Crashplan is only US$50 a year for unlimited storage. There's no excuse not to use it.

[PeterParker]

Hey guys... Thanks for the quick replies already, still thinking... I have an old 3.5" 100 GB Firewire HD which I usually used for my backups, it's 6 or 7 years and I don't want to use it any more; if I replace it, which label to use? Still wondering about anything else anyway.
When I wrote some important paper, I also did daily backups or so, but other than that, hmm... Reactions welcome!

[subego]

I've been happy with Western Digital for the drives themselves. I've got 12 spinning right now and only have had one flake in the past year. Can't speak to single drive enclosures, I do more network RAID type stuff.

Personally, I like to get models one step lower in capacity than the widely available maximum. 3TB is the max., so I get 2TB drives. I don't want what's possible to cram on a platter, I want what they've gotten really good at cramming on a platter.

[Eug]

1. Time Machine (several times per day)
2. External hard drives (roughly a dozen times a year)
3. Optical media, including DVD and Blu-ray (only specific stuff, up to 25 GB, but some of it I store off site)
4. USB flash drive (only very specific stuff, and only temporarily)
5. Dropbox (only very specific stuff, and only temporarily).
6. Email (only individual files or small groups of files, up to about 10 MB at a time)

The benefit of optical media is that you can't delete anything even if you wanted to, and it doesn't crash. If you buy good quality media it lasts a long time too. My burned discs from a decade ago still are fine... although discs that old usually aren't useful to me anymore. Still, I keep them, because the other benefit of optical media is that it's so easy to store, including both locally and off-site.

I also have a NAS but I mainly just use it for media files, which for me are not my work files. It is RAID 1, so I have 2 x 2 TB = 2 TB.

[turtle777]

Everything except my Media (Movies, Music) is backed up via TimeMachine.
My Media is on a Drobo, so a HD failure (which I just had) is not an issue at all. I just swapped the broken HD for a new one.

All my documents are also backed up "in the cloud", so even if my house burns down, I still have all my files.

-t

[subego]

I'd still backup that RAID somewhere else in addition to the cloud. Just because you can swap out a drive doesn't mean your RAID controller is immune to total ****age.

Essentially, you're baking the safety of all your media on how well some company has their shit together.

[Eug]

BTW, my Time Machine backup totally hosed itself a few months back. There was NOTHING on the drive that was recoverable by conventional means. Luckily, my original data was fine, and my other backups were fine too.

The other thing about Time Machine is that it doesn't protect you from user error, unless you have a ginormous drive, much larger than the one you're backing up. If you delete a file, time machine will also delete it from the most recent backups, and eventually the older backups will be deleted as well.

[subego]

How'd it happen?

[Eug]

Originally Posted by subego 

How'd it happen?

Dunno. I came home one day and it was hosed. I think somehow my iMac lost contact with the drive during a backup or something because the drive light was flashing and Drive Utility couldn't see it and neither could Time Machine. (Yes the drive is on a UPS.) So, maybe more a driver glitch than a Time Machine software glitch per se, but either way the end result was that the drive was unreadable. I had to reformat.

[Doc HM]

Time machine is great because it's there and automatic. It should form the basis of your backup strategy in that you should use it. However I certainly wouldn't risk having it as my only backup.
Far too many clients bring in Macs and Time machine backups only to find that either the backup is corrupt and useless (this is usually on Time Capsules, backing up to a usb drive is much more robust, or that their older files have been deleted to free up space.
Time Machine
Off site automated backup (Carbonite etc)
Vital files on dropbox
Regular (weekly at least) cloned bootable backup
Archive old data to two external drives. Store one off site

Understand the difference between backup and Archive <-- this is very important

[subego]

Originally Posted by Eug 

Dunno. I came home one day and it was hosed. I think somehow my iMac lost contact with the drive during a backup or something because the drive light was flashing and Drive Utility couldn't see it and neither could Time Machine. (Yes the drive is on a UPS.) So, maybe more a driver glitch than a Time Machine software glitch per se, but either way the end result was that the drive was unreadable. I had to reformat.

Well, at least it told you it was hosed rather than waiting until you needed it.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by subego 

I'd still backup that RAID somewhere else in addition to the cloud. Just because you can swap out a drive doesn't mean your RAID controller is immune to total ****age.

Good point. I need to find out if I could swap all Drobo HDs into a new Drobo enclosure and keep going.

Originally Posted by subego 

Essentially, you're baking the safety of all your media on how well some company has their shit together.

The issue is, it's too much data (several TB).

My music is on iCloud, so that's safe.
The videos are not mission critical. For me, the potential loss of it is not worth a secondary RAID system.

-t

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Eug 

1. Time Machine (several times per day)
2. External hard drives (roughly a dozen times a year)
3. Optical media, including DVD and Blu-ray (only specific stuff, up to 25 GB, but some of it I store off site)
4. USB flash drive (only very specific stuff, and only temporarily)
5. Dropbox (only very specific stuff, and only temporarily).
6. Email (only individual files or small groups of files, up to about 10 MB at a time)

7. Github (all project work)

[andi*pandi]

Time Machine (although I'd like to set it to am/pm update time not every hour) Lacie 1TB
Manual backup (copied to external 500Gb drive... old computer still has music library etc on it)
CD/DVD (but I should move copies of these offsite)
Dropbox (a few files)

I also have some of my pix uploaded to flickr, snapfish, shutterfly etc, so technically there is some backup there, but it's nowhere complete to the library.

[subego]

Originally Posted by turtle777 

Good point. I need to find out if I could swap all Drobo HDs into a new Drobo enclosure and keep going.


The issue is, it's too much data (several TB).

My music is on iCloud, so that's safe.
The videos are not mission critical. For me, the potential loss of it is not worth a secondary RAID system.

-t

I'll pimp Crashplan again here. $50 a year unlimited storage, network volumes included. I've got over 3.5TB backed up to it.

[turtle777]

Thanks, I'll check it out, it sounds like what I could need.

-t

[subego]

The only thing which concerns me about them is the value is way better than anyone I've found. That makes me concerned about the viability of their business model.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by subego 

The only thing which concerns me about them is the value is way better than anyone I've found. That makes me concerned about the viability of their business model.

LOL, I think the world is ready for the first backup Ponzi scheme

-t

[Athens]

One of my setups

Macbook Pro and iMac both have a Time Machine External. Its more for restoring the computer or accessing easily accidentally deleted files local to the machine

Most data actually is stored on a Server in a Raid setup

Volume 1 is a Raid 5 array of 5 500GB Drives
Volume 2 is a 2TB Single Drive in a pull out cage

Volume 1 and Volume 2 is in a Mirror Raid

Volume 2 is supposed to be swapped out with a 2nd 2TB drive at the end of every week and stored off site.

This setup protects against Theft, Fire, data corruption, and hardware failure.

It started out with just the Single Raid 5, and while it protects against hardware failure, it does not protect against data corruption. And using 2 drives in mirror is good against hardware failure but also suffers from corruption since it mirrors the corruption. I added the 2TB drive to the setup for off site reasons. When the drives are swapped the mirror rebuilds itself. It was a lot easier to replace a single drive then 5 drives which is why the second volume is not a second raid 5 setup.

If the raid ever totally failed the data on the single mirrored 2TB is still accessible easily vs the 5 drives that make up volume 1.

[PeterParker]

Follow-up:
After using computers in my parent's household for nearly 15 years, we had never set up a proper backup solution. There was one rather drastic HD failure many years ago and another HD failure which, however, resulted in no data loss. I opened this thread to make the change to a way of backup that really works.

Decision:
I bought two 320 GB Western Digital USB 2 drives ("My Passport Essential", 60€/drive) which are supposed to be very quiet, consume little energy and appear to be very reliable (and no Y-USB-cable and no external power supply). My mum's iMac will receive a robust Time Machine backup, so that debate is over. Being on a Windows laptop most of the time, I decided for backups every two or four weeks.
I also tried switching all our email accounts to IMAP, I found my dad's me.com account being IMAP already, my GMX account cannot switch except for a 'big' fee (3 €/month which is 36€/year), and my mum's mail box totals at nearly 10 GB as she has sent and received lots of pictures, so that's not going to work, or cheaply. But a regular backup should help, though.

Discussion:
As far as I understand, as a whole, it is a question of data being non-'solid'. When I switch my computer on tomorrow, who knows if all the data isn't lost, even if it starts up and most of the PC is still fine, HDs come and go... When I open a book tomorrow, it's the same as yesterday.
It's a nightmare, I think; from this, people may deduce that data is unsavable, that you need 5 backups and that you should be more than worried -- the only solution would be to invent a hard drive that cannot fail, which is technically not possible. Any machine could fail. However!, there is something to add.
With Time Machine - or - cloud services - you do receive a total backup and need to think no further. A Time Machine backup is total by definition, it's an entire mirror of the state of the drive. When one drive fails, the mirror is still there. The simultaneous failure of both is technically impossible; therefore discussion over. It's identical with cloud services - in fact, service companies which are used to backup data for large companies offer this service for private people, too, for a small fee. Again, this is extremely reliable and with a daily backup, the solution is, again, total.

This is about where my thoughts wonder, I don't know if I can explain myself well enough. More than one 'total' backup is not necessary. By definition, any machine can fail, therefore there is that feeling - anything could happen (as in "the house may burn down" - yes, but then there's much more trouble: costs, organization, neighbours shrieking, wife angry), but that's not true. A Time Machine backup is an absolute solution and needs no further addition. Same for cloud services, with difference of backup intervals however (that may change over the years, as internet connection become even faster, a quick, even hourly, backup may be no problem).

I had hoped this makes sense to somone. In a way, I found a note on the web for the best solution to be to build two hard drives into each computer - basically, the thinking is very good, but how would this feel? I would feel even more insecure, probably, and the feeling counts, too.

Good night,
Pete


(If I buy a book on Tuesday, it still works on Thursday.)

[ariellauthentic]

Subego has the best solution I find. I do a little bit less but I will improve on this. My strategy :

1-Always have drives in pairs. Never have an uneven number of drives.

Your computer has an internal drive, and you should at least have one external that is its bootable mirror (achieved through SuperDuper! or Carbon Copy Cloner work great.)

When your internal drive fills up and you buy a second external drive as the "overflow" drive, you will instead buy two drives. One is the overflow, the other is the backup of it.

2-Update that bootable mirror every day. I have SuperDuper! set to update the mirror every day at 3am.


In the future I'd like to :

-Use cloud storage more for off-site storage
-Get more drives for physical off-site storage (I have monthly bandwidth caps, so cloud storage is hard for me to invest fully into)

My current setup :

Internal 1TB iMac internal drive + external 1TB USB mirror
External 2TB USB overflow + external 2TB USB overflow mirror
External 500GB USB Sandbox (for testing OS X updates, migration projects, etc.)

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by subego 

I'd still backup that RAID somewhere else in addition to the cloud. Just because you can swap out a drive doesn't mean your RAID controller is immune to total ****age.


Essentially, you're baking the safety of all your media on how well some company has their shit together.

Well, thanks, dude, seems like you jinxed me.

My Drobo f*cked up, I can't mount any shares anymore.
All drives are reported to be ok and healthy. After spending some time with TechSupport, they send me a new Drobo box, still no luck.
You can just swap all drives into the new box, and it should work right away. Should.
Dadgummit.

At this point, I only lost some ripped movies, it's not too dramatic, but I'm still pissed.
I'll probably return the Drobo, get a Synology or QNAP, and Crashplan.

-t

[And.reg]

Greetings. I am unable to delete my posts, and apparently you moderators are on some kind of a strike.

Therefore, I have removed the content of the original post by hand.

I am asking for this post to be deleted, since I don't seem to have the option to do that myself.

[OreoCookie]

@Pete
Just a few comments: of course, it is entirely possible that there is a simultaneous failure of your Time Machine backup and your computer. Just imagine a lightning strikes while your backup drive is plugged into your ocmputer. Then both, your computer and your backup drive may be fried. Or think of the problem of theft.

That's why you should have at least one offsite copy of your data.

I have three copies of my data: I have two Time Machine backup drives, and I use Crashplan. Unfortunately, Crashplan is quite slow (at least it was both slow, both from Germany and from Japan), but once it is done, it should complement hard drive-based backups nicely. Plus, I keep active projects on my Dropbox.