This is why you back up your data offsite

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#1468490 12-Jan-2016 15:07

BTR:
Stu: With BYOD of one sort of another commonplace in schools now, even at some primary schools, the importance of backups should be taught from that level. I'm sure in some schools it is, but it certainly isn't happening across the board.

Your joking right? Have you ever tried to explain the importance of a backup to a teenage girl? They are more interested in boys, hair, makeup and the latest boy band....

You would have more luck trying to read an ikea manual thats only in chinese.

Why bother sending teenage girls to school then? I think you dumb them down too much.

StevieT

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#1468596 12-Jan-2016 16:44

kiwifidget:
surfisup1000:

Backup should be taught at schools but maybe it is one of those things that you don't take seriously until you've experienced it.

A bit like sex education!

I think a lot of schools mention in course outlines (or other such documents) that assignments won't be accepted late (for NCEA Level 1 etc.) if computer problems occur. I would gather they mention to make regular back up of such work, in case computer problems occur.

But that doesn't cover Year 9 and 10's. Basic computer skills should be taught at Year 9, in my opinion.

networkn

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#1468598 12-Jan-2016 16:45

My 6 year old knows a lot about backup. Poor kid :)

MikeB4

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#1468601 12-Jan-2016 16:53

networkn: My 6 year old knows a lot about backup. Poor kid :)

give it 2 years and your 8 year old will be the teacher :P

Linuxluver

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#1468607 12-Jan-2016 17:09

Geektastic:
shk292: Two suggestions for this:
- back up to a portable HDD and keep this at work, or even in your car
- US Amazon has unlimited photo storage for quite a small fee ($30 per year I think). It's possible to create a US account to use this service, then automatically copy all your photos to the cloud

Out of interest, how many people backed up their negatives before digital cameras were invented?

I have been scanning my negatives gradually. Prior to that method, there was no practical way to do it for most people. But then the negs I'm scanning look great after 30-40 years.

I have also scanned my mother's slides of her trip to Europe in 1953. She also has colour slides of a birthday party in 1942 (her dad was a doctor and had the money to be doing a colour slide photos during WWII). Those 1942 slides still look great today....74 years later. But they are now scanned and backed up.

So it was more about physical security of the media then risk of data loss through device failure.

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michaelmurfy

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#1468622 12-Jan-2016 17:33

I lost all my data (family photos, unreplaceable music etc) with the February Christchurch earthquake and even had my data backed up to two physical locations (due to drive shock)... I now keep all my devices in a state where I can just not even think and reformat them and use ChromeOS. How I do it is simple:

1) I have a HP Microserver running XenServer with several virtual machines.
2) Each night, the virtual machines are snapshotted and sent to Amazon Glacier.
3) Everything is checked against MD5 sums to ensure data is backed up.
4) I run OwnCloud on a VM instance which backs up my phone, my PC's etc - this is backed up nightly.
5) I run a NAS distro on another VM - again, backed up nightly.
6) I run another NAS distro with "non-important" data - not backed up, not worried if data from that VM is lost.
7) OSX uses Time Machine to backup to one of my virtual NAS servers which is mirrored to Glacier.

Likely not the most cheapest solution anymore to use Glacier, however it works really well for me. If my house gets burned down or (touch wood) there is ever another damaging earthquake where I lose everything I can recover rather quickly with a fast internet connection.

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kiwifidget

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#1468643 12-Jan-2016 18:46

michaelmurfy: I lost all my data (family photos, unreplaceable music etc) with the February Christchurch earthquake and even had my data backed up to two physical locations (due to drive shock)... I now keep all my devices in a state where I can just not even think and reformat them and use ChromeOS. How I do it is simple:

1) I have a HP Microserver running XenServer with several virtual machines.
2) Each night, the virtual machines are snapshotted and sent to Amazon Glacier.
3) Everything is checked against MD5 sums to ensure data is backed up.
4) I run OwnCloud on a VM instance which backs up my phone, my PC's etc - this is backed up nightly.
5) I run a NAS distro on another VM - again, backed up nightly.
6) I run another NAS distro with "non-important" data - not backed up, not worried if data from that VM is lost.
7) OSX uses Time Machine to backup to one of my virtual NAS servers which is mirrored to Glacier.

Likely not the most cheapest solution anymore to use Glacier, however it works really well for me. If my house gets burned down or (touch wood) there is ever another damaging earthquake where I lose everything I can recover rather quickly with a fast internet connection.

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JaseNZ

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#1468656 12-Jan-2016 19:17

Did it not say they stole her drives as well so she may have at least been backing up to an external drive its just the wan*ers took everything.

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alasta

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#1468664 12-Jan-2016 20:06

surfisup1000:
timmmay:
The poor foolish girl. How can the university not at least once point out that backups are a good idea.

I wouldn't call her foolish, probably just unaware.

Most people are 'tech illiterates' and oblivious that data loss at some time is a high probability.

You don't need to have any computer skills to understand that if you put information on an electronic device and it fails or gets stolen then the information is gone. If you really are a complete technophobe to the point where you can't do backups then I would have thought that you would at least have the common sense to print out your most important documents and photos and put them in a safe or offsite.

alasta

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#1468665 12-Jan-2016 20:07

networkn:
alasta: I just keep mine at work. It leaves me a bit exposed for a few hours each week when I take the drive home to back up, but I'm usually at home throughout that time. If I ever have to leave my home due to a major earthquake then I will probably need to take my laptop with me in case my backup drive gets lost due to permanent inaccessibility of my office building.

Easily fixed. Get 1 more drive and have a 3 drive Rotation where 1 is at home, 1 is at the office, and 1 is in transit.

Thanks - that's actually a good idea. I don't have that much data, and I'd forgotten how cheap portable hard drives have become!

Hopefully Time Machine is capable of juggling multiple backup devices - I'm pretty sure it is.

jnimmo

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#1468745 12-Jan-2016 21:17

I'd been using ChronoSync to rotate an external drive offsite, but have been slack recently as aren't making many changes on that PC.
First thing I do when get UFB will be setup CrashPlan or similar

JimmyH

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#1468748 12-Jan-2016 21:22

I'm currently trying to sort my backup approach, which is not great at the moment.

I have circa 9TB of files - covering my music collection, my movie collection, my digital photos and video clips, images of 3 PCs, and a bunch of other miscellaneous stuff. Most of it (films and music) is static, once on the NAS they don't change. The data directory that changes frequently is probably circa 50GB in total. With all the things I do, I add 20-30GB of data a week - mostly media.

Currently, primary storage is on a NAS (in RAID 5), backed up to USB hard drives that are stored in a garage physically separate from the house.

What I am planning to do is burn all the media etc to DL Blu Ray disks (which cost about $8 locally for good ones, but can be imported in 100+ quantities for around $3.40 each incl shipping). Then store those offsite. I will burn a new disc every 7-10 days as material is added.

While burning around 180 discs will be a pain in the backside, I will spread it over 3-4 months, and the cost should only be around $600. Then ongoing cost of about $110 per annum to keep up with media additions. I will use re-writable discs to snapshot the changing data directory.

freitasm

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#1468749 12-Jan-2016 21:24

Burning discs is a problem. How do you know what's been stored or not? The amount of work to manage that, and store, and keep in order is enormous. And $600 is expensive for low quality storage that degrades very quickly.

surfisup1000

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#1468791 12-Jan-2016 22:15

alasta:
surfisup1000:
timmmay:
The poor foolish girl. How can the university not at least once point out that backups are a good idea.

I wouldn't call her foolish, probably just unaware.

Most people are 'tech illiterates' and oblivious that data loss at some time is a high probability.

You don't need to have any computer skills to understand that if you put information on an electronic device and it fails or gets stolen then the information is gone. If you really are a complete technophobe to the point where you can't do backups then I would have thought that you would at least have the common sense to print out your most important documents and photos and put them in a safe or offsite.

As I said, many people are oblivious that data loss is high probability as opposed to low.

When you think something is unlikely to occur you probably are less inclined to protect against that.

I think if these people knew that there is a really high chance of data loss at some point then they'd be more inclined to backup.

alasta

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#1468793 12-Jan-2016 22:24

surfisup1000:
alasta: You don't need to have any computer skills to understand that if you put information on an electronic device and it fails or gets stolen then the information is gone. If you really are a complete technophobe to the point where you can't do backups then I would have thought that you would at least have the common sense to print out your most important documents and photos and put them in a safe or offsite.

As I said, many people are oblivious that data loss is high probability as opposed to low.

When you think something is unlikely to occur you probably are less inclined to protect against that.

I think if these people knew that there is a really high chance of data loss at some point then they'd be more inclined to backup.

Most non technical people who have used computers for a while - particularly in the workplace - will have experienced a lot of computer problems over time which would have caused them a lot of frustration. I would have thought that would give them a feeling that they shouldn't put all their trust in one single computer.

Having said that I'm not sure I agree that data loss is a high probability. I have been using computers for about 25 years and I have never been in a position where I've had to restore a backup. To me backups are like the bottled water stored in my pantry or the airbags in my car - I'll probably never need them but they're essential in case I ever do.

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