Comments on: Back up, back up, back up!

By: Lockergnome's Windows Fanatics

Lockergnome's Windows Fanatics — Tue, 26 Oct 2004 19:01:10 +0000

Backing up Personal Computers

As a result of the Back up, back up, back up! entry, several have asked what and how to back up stuff on a personal computer since the article focused on business computers. Backup on business computers is typically not...

By: Walter Meier

Walter Meier — Mon, 25 Oct 2004 18:42:59 +0000

Meryl,

With the price of flash drives getting ridiculously cheap, I'd invest in one or two (at about $80 for a GIG drive, it's cheap insurance!). Even if you pay for it yourself (if you can't expense it any other way) the price is well worth it considering the time and effort you'll need to get your data back.

Even if it saves you a couple of hours when you can restore an "oops" yourself instead of putting in a request to your IT department to restore a file from the backups, it's worth it.

By: Geek News Central

Geek News Central — Mon, 25 Oct 2004 03:48:12 +0000

Backup Nightmare Story

Imagine this if you will. Your employer tells you that you shall store all of your work on the network...

By: terry bernstein

terry bernstein — Sat, 23 Oct 2004 19:53:03 +0000

I am deputy principle for a school support team in special ed.
I manage the network that has all out reports and resources on.
We have a tape drive with 10 daily back-up tapes. Every school vacation I remove one tape off site.
(That’s also often when I replace a tape with a newer one).
Every time out central database is used a copy is saved on the user machine.
Once a month I copy all the key data items from the network to CDRW and remove it off site.

You can never be too paranoid!

By: Rusty Roestorf

Rusty Roestorf — Sat, 23 Oct 2004 16:14:34 +0000

I have just read all your comments after reading Meryl’s account of lost data and you guys scared the bejasus out of me.
I’m a geriatric old fart that lives in South Africa and can’t even spell tekkie, Tcehnie,geeknotek, whatever.
I run XP home (Pentium 4 with 2x40gb internal hard drives.)
I have Norton system works which includes Norton ghost.
My quezzie is what do I back up and how?
Do I back up downloaded programs as well as files and how do I go about it?
Please explain it to me like you would to a retarded two year old.
My email address is rustyonline@telkomsa.net

Thanks in anticipation,
Rusty

By: Drew

Drew — Sat, 23 Oct 2004 14:10:52 +0000

I’m sure that Mr’s Sarbanes and Oxley would be very interested to know why your company is only retaining 30 days worth of data…

I’d be demanding your data be recovered from the backup taken prior to the server being decomissioned, or whatever else happened to it.. They did take that backup right???

Good Luck!!

By: James Andrews

James Andrews — Fri, 22 Oct 2004 13:08:57 +0000

I didn’t want to push a particular product, but I use BackUpForAll ( http://www.backup4all.com/ )which automates the process, but costs a bit. TaskZip ( http://www.pb-sys.com/ ) was equally effective, but slower at compacting although a freeware alternative, so you can’t beat the price. Both support Full, Differential and Incremental style backups.

Even Karen Kenworthy’s Replicator ( http://www.karenware.com/powertools/ptreplicator.asp ) would serve (though it wouldn’t zip the resulting copies) so the enterprising geek would be able to write their own batch file to shove the results through a command line zipping program.

All of these alternatives can run in the background. If you insist on burning something, the first 2 mentioned will split the output into CD sized chunks. A batch file could start the burn, if your software supports a command line, but changing CDs is another matter.

Again, my original post related more to Data backups to external drives than a full System backup. In the case Meryl described, it would have saved a lot of grief. For most home users, even SOHO it would be practical, simple to set up and nearly maintenance free. Where it would be unsuited to business use lies in the physical security of the actual machine — not a problem usually unless you live in Florida, California or in the shadow of Mt St Helen’s.

By: Jay

Jay — Thu, 21 Oct 2004 18:46:25 +0000

I happen to be a backup admin for an international corporation. I have to backup approx. 40+ servers. I run daily cumulative and weekly full backups. I send the weekly full backup that immediately falls after End of Month “OFFSITE” !!!!! I back up to tape and do NOT have to worry about any server or pc dying. I hope that give you an idea of a very safe way to back your data up!

By: Bob Coleman

Bob Coleman — Thu, 21 Oct 2004 17:22:07 +0000

It seems strange that this company only has 30 days of data backups available. I have had situations where I have been required to look-up data that is 5-6 years old. Our company has readable backups dating from the first day of doing business (8 years).

By: Jim Andrews

Jim Andrews — Thu, 21 Oct 2004 17:18:02 +0000

What works for me is Daily, Weekly & Monthly data dumps to an external HD. The System itself is kept trim with most applications installed to a different external drive, so my System backup is less than critical. MyDocs also reside on that physical Disk in their own partition.

The beauty of it is USB allows me to plug the external drives into my Notebook, with a few System folder changes via TweakUI everything remains fully functional should the Desktop need to visit the shop (and there's virtually no personal information to worry about falling into the wrong hands.) While hardly a business solution or model of major security, it serves me well enough.