Text 3203, 99 rader
Skriven 2010-11-11 02:28:21 av Doug Bissett
Ärende: Re: Was AMD Phenom based hardware - backing up issues
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From: "Doug Bissett" <dougb007!SPAM@Use-Author-Supplied-Address.invalid>

On Wed, 10 Nov 2010 23:22:06 UTC, Victor Bien <me@privacy.net> wrote:

> ivan wrote:
> > On Wed, 10 Nov 2010 10:28:25 UTC, Victor Bien <me@privacy.net> wrote:
> > 
> 
> [cut...]
> > The simple way to get a RAID setup is to use something like the D-Link
> > 323 or 343 NAS.  With the 343 you have up to 4 disks and can have a 
> > pair in RAID and the others as JBOD.
> > 
> > Remember RAID is NOT for backup!!
> > 
> > 
> > ivan
> 
> I know RAID is no substitute for backup but it would save me from the bad
effects of a disk collapse!  Of course for example it can't save me from making
a wrong delete; or some chaos creeps into the ini files etc.
> 
> Backing up has become more and more a problem here basically because
everything is getting bigger and bigger.  I am thinking a variety of approaches
and strategies to try to avoid losing data.  One difficulty for me, that has
nothing to do with computing, is simply time.  As computing is getting more and
more powerful and bigger and bigger it is taking longer and longer to deal with
issues which are more likely to happen and which take longer to think and work
through when they do.  So what happened a few months back was that I was
heavily fixated handling an issue that I took my chances that the computer
would not fail on me but it did!  The HD was relatively new, Feb 2010
(re-certified repaired though)so I thought it was a safe bet and I lost what I
had in a "temporary" folder where I had my files for that issue (I got a lot of
it back from various ways but there was a hard core of painful loss).  Now if I
had a RAID 1 setup I would not have had all my eggs in one basket (
> disk).

Not entirely true. Even with RAID, you can lose it all. Think fire, or
theft.

> I'm stuck with using Back Again 2000.  The difficulty is that backing onto a
file on a HD (the only practical medium for me these days) one is limited to
2.1 GB.  If through lack of sufficient attention the backup exceeds that size
you get a hang sometimes requiring a restart, very disruptive... which takes up
even more time...  So I have to think carefully what and how to backup, more
time...  Well since I now have the old HD with the data I had up to a certain
day in May I now can and have specified backups to backup only files more
recent than that date which makes it a bit easier to manage.  However, I still
have to divvy up what to backup not to exceed the 2.1 GB.  I then use a mixture
of Full and Incremental backups but the management of the backups start to take
up too much time.  As the months roll by I get more and more increments so it
then becomes time to take another Full backup but then the volume of data has
built up and there is that 2.1 GB limit.

BackAgain/2000 is totally out of date, but it is still useful <more 
below>.

> I know that with tape BA2k would have no 2.1 GB limit but tape drives cost
more than what is in my pocket!
> 
> Any thoughts welcome!
> 
> Victor Bien

I use RSYNC to do a nightly backup to my USB disk drive (1 TB Samsung 
Story Station). I have many gigs of data backed up there, but the 
backup takes only a few minutes (done at 4 AM, using the chron feature
of DragText), after the initial backup, which does take quite a while.
 It is just a copy of what is on my disks, so recovery is as simple as
copying it back to where it came from. Of course, that isn't my only 
backup, I use RSYNC for my data and program disks. I still use BA/2K 
for my boot drives, because that works well even when I am booted from
the drive (and boot drives should be small - I use 1.5 GB). I put the 
BA/2K backups onto the hard disk, and that gets put onto the USB drive
when RSYNC does the rest. Then, weekly, I burn the boot drive backup 
to DVD+RW, along with another BA/2K backup of my really important 
stuff, alternating two DVDs. In addition to all of that, once per 
month, I burn another CD, with really really important stuff, and 
store that offsite.

I really should replace the DVD backups with another USB drive 
(actually, an eSata drive, or a NAS drive, would be better), but I 
haven't got around to doing it, yet. I find that DVDs are likely to be
physically damaged over time, even with careful handling. They can 
also be damaged if they are left where the sun can get at them. True, 
portable disk drives are also likely to be damaged, if not handled 
carefully. At least the media isn't sitting out in the open like it is
with CD, DVD, or tape, media.

Hope this gives you a few ideas...
-- 
From the eComStation of Doug Bissett
dougb007 at telus dot net
(Please make the obvious changes, to e-mail me)


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