Making Backups

[jscott]

Ok, i've been having lots of computer problems lately and then i get the GG&J newsletter talking about backing up your harddrives and stuff, so i want to start doing this every single day.

i know nothing about how to do it, would somebody please give me some pointers as to what i need to do?

thank you very much. J

[Surfn]

Do you have a CDRW or DVDRW? Use that to copy your critical files. I use a RocketPod.

[jscott]

hi, yea i have a cdrw drive

[Extreme John]

Would be nice to mirror my drive completley once a day so if this one's toast I just unplug, fling (or stomp), and plug the other one in.

[Surfn]

RocketPod is a portable hard drive I use to back up my critical files. The one I have is 200G

[Cleo]

Originally posted by Extreme John
Would be nice to mirror my drive completley once a day so if this one's toast I just unplug, fling (or stomp), and plug the other one in.

I use Carbon Copy Cloner (http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html) to clone my boot drive to another drive like a FireWire drive. I can then boot from that drive, including a FireWire drive, and everything is just the way it was before the clone. Works great and is free, but only works with Mac OS X.

I have my system cloned onto my iPod and can boot from it.

I also have a crontab set up to run a backup every night to an ACOMData FireWire drive of my Mac's home folder.

I also archive my stuff to DVD disks and keep copies off site incase of disaster.

I also make a tarball of my web sites once a month and burn this to DVD disks.

You can never have too many backups.

[Alphawolf]

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,1230418,00.asp

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,1419904,00.asp

http://www.ghost.com/sabu/ghost/ghost_personal/

There's a lot of options out there these days. :)

[Extreme John]

Nice Alpha, appreciate the links Ill certainly check those out.

[SimonT]

I was lucky enough to have backups after having an IBM drive fail on me, but it's still a pain in the ass reinstalling software and getting everything just as it was.

So now I mirror two drives using the RAID controller on my new motherboard allowing me to atleast carry on working should a drive fail - I still backup to an external drive because as Cleo says 'You can never have too many backups' :)

[Greenguy]

I do have a raid card in here & this machine is supposed to be duplicating itself as I go, but for some damn reason the raid card fails about once a week & starts itself over.

I'm going to have to call one of my tech buddies pretty soon, as it's getting annoying - LOL

[urb]

Just to add, it's well worth keeping your back ups in a totally separate building to your computer, in case of fire etc. :(

Next time you visit your computer illiterate relatives, ask them to store some CDRs for you. :)

I got a lot of work to do today, so I'd better get on with it.

[MMemmer]

Excellent advice from Cleo, she seems to have covered the bases quite nicely!

[123Asian]

Also remember that having a drive mirrored is not the same as a back up. The RAID just protects against hardware failure, but doesnt protect against data corruption, accidental deletion, or virus damage.

Lots of people talk backup, but few have actually tried a full restore. If it is possible, you should try to do a full restore, before disaster strikes so you will have a clear head when you need it.