Follow up to PC losing time

Last Friday while replacing the CMOS battery I accidentally knocked one of my external HDD's on to the floor, it just so happened to be the one that contains ALL my documents, music, videos and photos. When I restarted my computer it was with fingers crossed that I tried to access drive E:, nothing, nada, zilch. All attempts to access the drive were in vain, it was dead. Off to Officeworks to buy a new 4Tb external HDD.

This is where I am so glad that I have a solid backup routine.
All my pictures get backed up to an external HDD (B) on even numbered days.
All my documents, music and videos get backed up to an external HDD (Z) on odd numbered days.
C drive gets backed up to (Z) twice a month.
For my docs, photos, music and vids I do a full backup followed by 9 differential backups, then a new full backup is done. All this happens automatically and is set to happen at either 1:00 AM, or 3:00 AM depending on which files are being backed up.

For by backup routine I use Acronis True Image (2106), and after this weekends adventure I cannot recommend it highly enough. The restoration of all my files went smoothly and finished at around 1:00 AM today (no I didn't stay up to celebrate). I had to do it in two steps, first I restored my photos, then I restored my documents, music and videos. This took a very long time as I have 571Gb/38,270 files in my pictures folder, and a total of 853Gb/47,103 files in my documents, music and videos folder.

Happy to say all my files are back on my new drive and can be accessed.

The point of my post is to make everyone aware of just how easy it is to lose your data and to have a good, reliable backup plan in place.

A good regime GJ.

My son used to administer servers for a 24/7 global IT company in Perth. Part of his job was to monitor auto backups for businesses like multinational who every night did an off site backup of data from Singapore to Perth. "Why go so far I asked?", and his reply was "Jesus saves but offsite backups are better". The monitoring process was more exacting than it sounds with a contractual response time of, " will act within 30s when there is a problem", probably because the business were paying big bucks for the bandwidth.

The other place they did major backups from was India and apparently this international backing up goes on all over the world because it's considered critical to have at least one back up in a politically stable country.

The business my son worked for also operated a help desk (password changes etc) for the employees of the Indian branches of a multinational bank. Again, "Why go so far - India is full of so called 'help desks' ". According to the bank it was a question of security - they felt they could not trust most help centres with this information. Interesting how our personal information is not treated with the same level of security.

I have two sets of backup drives and keep one at my sons place and changed them about every month so even if my house burns down I still have at least everything up to the last 4 weeks.

I've got a fairly simple regime, I never keep files on the C drive and they are all stored elsewhere in two different places. If my HDD crashes I shrug my shoulders and move on having lost nothing except a few hours. I was speaking to a business owner the other day who retails to this hobby of ours and he had finally matched an order of mine to my name from last year all because their computer crashed and it was not backed up.

Things could have been a lost worse. Imagine if I had also knocked over the external HDD that holds my backups and killed it, I don't even want to go there.:club::upset::angfire:

A good quality NAS and a good cloud storage backup would also work, then you have an on-site backup on the NAS and an off site backup in the cloud.

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Originally Posted by m.ellis

A good quality NAS and a good cloud storage backup would also work, then you have an on-site backup on the NAS and an off site backup in the cloud.

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Why NAS. I wouldn't trust my info to the "cloud" for all the tea in china.

Do a search for how successful people have been at suing cloud based storage for lost data. ie extremely difficult and expensive.
It's is very difficult to prove data has been lost let alone who was to blame for it.
Depending on what service you use the user agreement may even say, "all care but no responsibility taken"

Cloud stuff is good for convenience but that's about it.

:iagree:

Not even convenient if you get held to ransom. I know that was a couple of years ago, but it sticks in my mind. Have never, and will never trust my documents to a 3rd. party.

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Originally Posted by Grumpy John

:iagree:

Not even convenient if you get held to ransom. I know that was a couple of years ago, but it sticks in my mind. Have never, and will never trust my documents to a 3rd. party.

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Unfortunately that is the case for any back up if the drive is mounted, cloud, NAS, or anything in between. If you want absolute safety from external threats get the back up physically off the internet then back up via removeable media such as a USB or SD card. It all comes down to convenience and how much the data is worth to you. For me I will always have a back up in two places. If Mrs P. ever lost her embroidery files I would need a bodyguard.

My son, now working in IT security, suggests to people who have too many pass words that they have to write then down, that one of the safest places is inside a paperback on a bookshelf. Not on line.

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Originally Posted by Grumpy John

Why NAS. I wouldn't trust my info to the "cloud" for all the tea in china.

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NAS stands for Network Attached Storage, I have one in my data cabinet with 12 tb in a raid 6 array, meaning I can lose 2 drives and still rebuild the drives. Have a look at synology or qnap as a starting point. I have one with 6 drives.

I've done a bit of reading on NAS and have to admit it's a bit over my head. I'm quite happy to use external HDD's, they're relatively cheap and portable. The 4Tb one cost me under $200.

John,
are you using the standard, one off payment version of the yearly subscription version of Acronis.?

Cheers

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Originally Posted by Lappa

John,
are you using the standard, one off payment version of the yearly subscription version of Acronis.?

Cheers

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The last payment was 3 years ago to get the 2016 upgrade. Have not seen the need to get the later versions. I'm very happy with what I have at the moment. I even get online support as they helped me with the recovery, very happy with Acronis.