Today, at about 8:00 AM, a hard drive in our our work email server decided that life wasn't worth living, and it ended its life in a rather dramatic noisy fashion, with grinding and groaning.

At this point, many of you are expecting the story to be full of wailing and gnashing of teeth as our business ceased to function.

In fact, our IT director came in at the normal work time, pulled out the dead disk from the RAID array and popped in another. It took a few hours for the disk to synch up with the other disks in the RAID array, but aside from some slowness, nobody noticed.

That got me to thinking about how many times I've had people come to me, devastated that they lost data when a hard drive goes bad. All hard drives go bad.

So, if you don't have a solid and effective data backup plan, consider starting one - now.

Also, I've been saving useful web sites, in their entirety (for example, Wikipedia), for offline access.

A Terabyte drive is like $100 these days - there's no reason not to back up things that matter to you.

Good call. A good strategic back up plan for your data is essential. Also very good timing - I just picked up an external terabyte drive this afternoon!

Be careful since a good backup plan is to have data on some other media type. An external hard disk is nice for quick day to day copies but things like power surge, virus, etc can wipe it out as quick as your main drive. Make copies on dvd, tape, flash, whatever and store offsite. I couldn't tell you how many times I've seen people with a bunch of external drives hanging off their system mess up and corrupt them all. Its espically important is your running a closed source OS since you never know what can go wrong with it.

In my day job, we see all kinds of data loss due to hard drives failing....and people not having any backups in place. The financial losses for these people would floor you.

My mantra is RAID is for high availability. Backups (on and off site) are used for disaster recovery. Even though these are two completely different functions, both go hand in hand for business continuity.

There were many documented cases after 9/11 where businesses suffered huge financial losses due to data loss...and some never recovered at all. RAID is not much good when your server cannot be recovered. Whereas having remote off site backups and other business continuity plans in place, may have your business back and running in a few hours.

For a recent and very real case of data loss, see this Google cached page (start reading about 1/2 way down at "Tuesday" then read upwards) of a popular online journal/blog site that went down....all because simple backup procedures were not in place. The site is now back online with different owners and it is a shell of what it used to be...and they probably will never recover from the negative attention the original owners created.

For the average home user, there are a ton of websites that describe in detail all you ever wanted to know about backing up your home computers to any device such as external hard drives, USB drives, SD cards and online backup sites..which I don't recommend.

That's my plan too, though hopefully with cheerleaders rather than rare-earth magnets.

-Blast, who tried really hard not to go there...

Exactly what will happen when your wife finds out about those cheerleaders!!

I have all of our critical data saved on punch cards and magnetic tape!

If it is really critical information write it down somewhere.

As soon as I figure out how to write down 67 gigabytes of MP3 files, I'll let you know.

Let's see...

101101011010001101010110101101000110110101101010101101001101100010101100110

The external drive goes into the safe after the backup.
Since it's twice as big as the computer's HD, I have extra room for the daily grandfather backups as well. All my equipment is on a UPS. I used to use tape, dvd-r, dvd-rw, etc but they are cumbersome by comparison.

April 14 1999. My accountant calls me and says that my IRS extension request is ready. What????? This is the first year in the last 5 I have had all my ducks in a row on time!!!! What happened?

Seems the entire computer system in his firm (He owns the firm) crashed. But not to worry, because he has a company that just arranged all his back-up operations last night.
Last night???? Isn't this when the system crapped? Uh, yeah but the information was already backed up.

Turns out the back-up's were still going to the main storage device (different partition). Since it failed physically, HE LOST EVERYTHING!!!

The court case recently ended between CPA and IT firm. The IT firm called it quits and the owner gave himself Excedrin headache number .357.

Back-up your back-ups!!!

Yes, believe it or not this is a true story. I am also related to the CPA, otherwise I would have called bull.

Good reminder, thanks.

I learned the lesson the painful, expensive way (was desperate to have photos retrieved from the old hard drive).

Now have a 500gig Winbook and back up regularly. Have been backing up favorite pics on CDs to send to my sister 3000 miles away.

You might be surprised how little of those reams of data really matter.

Yes back up tapes, disks and drives are all good, but hard copy still has uses.

After data loss you are forced to learn

For our servers we use RAID (mirroring) and then off-server back-up onto another server that ALSO has RAID (mirroring).

I added mirroring to the backup server after one of the drives failed in that server... I thought if for some ODD reason during the repair/re-install on that box if something went down on the other I`d be screwed.

I also tend to randomly back-up locally on DVDs too

I back everything worth keeping to optical media.

Anything I might really, really NEED, backed up to paper.

Since I am on Win platform I use built in NT Backup for incremental backup to external HDD. But the .bkf file can get corrupted so I also "mirror" the same data without the history to the external HDD using open source sw called PathSync. All this is done manualy every evening.
Once a two weeks I save the image of the system partition to the external HDD (using Seagate utility DiskWizard - free if you have Seagate HDD) and take certain important data (but not personal), compress and encrypt them with 7-zip (open source) and upload them to the on-line storage.
Not perfect backup plan but better than nothing. I am also researching the DVD-RAM for backup since it should behave almost like HDD.


Is it your only backup? I wouldn´t trust optical media too much especially for long term archiving.

I run an ubuntu server in the basement and have a disk shared from there that our (wife and I) macbooks use to back up via time machine over the wireless network.
http://www.kremalicious.com/2008/06/ubuntu-as-mac-file-server-and-time-machine-volume/
We used to use usb hard drives but were never consistent; with the network backups its seamless. Next week I am going to replace the single disk with a mirrored array just to be extra safe.

In addition to on-site backups (RAID, tapes, external hard drives, etc.) I have been configuring off-site backups my clients. (Barracuda, Carbonite, etc.).

If the building/home burns, is blown away by a hurricane, or the equipment is stolen, you might be in trouble. On-line backup services solve this problem.

Carbonite is a good home solution, Barracuda is good for business.


The on-line backup services may not appeal to the security paranoid crowd, but I go over it. Barracuda is HIPAA compliant.

Online backup services do not appeal to me only because these companies come and go all the time. Yes there are some better reputed companies such as Barracuda and Mozy but in general bigger web companies have failed and I sleep better knowing that my personal or company information is not saved on one of these failed companies servers. This is regardless of HIPPA or PCI-DSS compliance...

The come and go is scary, but even then unless you pay a lot of $ there is no gaurentee or SLA. Years ago a paid for the upgraded hotmail account and was backing up all my mail there until one day it was all gone with a note from the admins stating there was an issue.
Also if your backing up data online consider restore time. Sending the only changed file or two up there isn't that big of a deal but what if your computer is destroyed and you then have to restore, how long is it going to take to pull all that data back? It would take days just to get my pictures.
I've been tempted to set up another server at my parnets house. I have small low power 500MHz fanless via board that runs headless for my backup server, I could easily set up one there and have it pull data down from my home. My parents are in a dial up only area unless you want satalite so having a pull type system where my server at their house dials into the internet then connects to me and pulls data back could work. I keep my offiste backups there on dvd already

This is a good point, but you guys are missing the bigger point. This is Plan B or Plan C. I am not suggesting this as an complete alternative to a local backup. This is the fail safe if a real catastrophe happens. Waiting a day or two for a full restore would definitely beat loosing everything.

Buildings burn, equipment gets stolen and hard drives fail. If you are in the business long enough, you will come across these situations and more. Nothing suck more than telling someone that they have lost everything, or their only potential recovery option is a "clean room recovery service" for $2,500 per hard drive (e.g http://www.drivesavers.com )

Regarding security, data is double encrypted before it is even transmitted. While it is possible, given enough time and resources, to decrypt your data and we are talking about a concerted NSA effort here, it is a safe bet that your data simply isn't worth the time for someone to try to steal.

For $50 a year, for unlimited storage, Carbonite is tough to beat. You can't even buy a decent external hard drive for this amount.

Granted, companies do fail. It would be worth a moment or two of your time every once in a while to test a restore of your files. I would say that local backup equipment fails far more often and has to be closely monitored.

Even if the on-line storage company goes belly up, I'm not worried. My data has little value to anyone but me. But for to me, it is priceless.

Also, if you have something truly sensitive, then you could exclude it from the on-line backup.

OK, here's my truly OCD plan that I've been using a while now:

[img]http://drop.io/vsycimv/asset/diskplan-jpg[/img]

It look smore complicated than it is. basically, every day, I pull a disk out of my backpack, put it into a drawer at work, and put the disk that was was in the drawer in the backpack.

When I get home, I pull out the disk in my backpack, hook it to my laptop, start a full backup, and when that starts, I take the disk on the desk in put that into my backpack.

This is just for incremental, day to day stuff. There's also a Deep-storage server which is a Snap server for now, but will soon be a NAS. I don't trust optical storage after my 2003 photos on CD developed oxidation. The magnetic media still read fine. Currently, I deep-store to a combination of flash drives and magnetic media, and about every 18 months, I push files onto newer hardware. I know it's obsessive, but it's simply the care level needed for data like family photos and videos, which as irreplaceable and too important for me to push into some online service that might vanish one day.

Automation is the key to successful backup strategies. People, no matter how well intentioned, are usually not disciplined enough to keep things seemless.

Here is my Plan A,B,C,D & E. Zero intervention by me, except to make sure it is working.

Our business is all on computers, so I am a little paranoid...

Plan A: Our server is RAID5. Spare drives are standing by.

Plan B: Every day, our main server backups up to a second RAID5 server that is enabled to run our business at a moments notice. We also have backup Internet service.

Plan C: Every day, our main server is backed up to a large portable HD that is strategically located near the exit where I would be leaving in case of an emergency....my GRAB-N-GO hard drive.

Plan D: Every day our main server is backed up to a third RAID5 server located in another building on our property about 500' away from the main building(house) where the BO-RV is stored. This server can be ready to go at a moments notice too and is permanently installed in our BO-RV. When we vacation, we run our business from this server on the road.

Plan E: We use an on-line service.

All of the systems are e-mail enabled to notify me of problems. Backup jobs run at different times throughout the day.

The online backup service is the belt worn with suspenders...

Even so. What happens if there are several other people trying to do a restore at the same time, i.e. a hurricane hit the area, or enough phone lines are down.

Loosing a hard drive or cd can be worked around by having more than one.

Remember also those $50 a year backup services are a limited amoutn of data, it would cost me a lot more to back up all mine.

No. Carbonite is unlimited data $50 per year.

Again, this is plan E for me. Having a local backup or four is a good idea too.

A reliable, up-to-date, OFF-SITE backup is the part most people skip.

Also, if a hurricane turns your house into toothpicks, I would rather bet on the off-site, on-line storage than anything on-site.

The Carbonite service sounds quite good. Also the price is reasonable.
The service I am also interested in is Amazon S3. Unlimited storage, you pay only for the space and tranfer you use, the price is low. Amazon is big and stable company - yes, it can disappear from the business but it´s not very likely.
Another big and stable company (HP) started to offer unlimited storage services - HP Upline .

Another thing I thought could be worth the money is buying some disaster proof storage. I don´t know much about it - this is just one of the examples that came out of the search engine: http://www.iosafe.com/ . Maybe it could be hidden well enough in order for possible thievs not to find it.

The important thing is to test the recovery procedure from your backup systems/archives to see if it works at all. Some backup files/archives can be corrupted, some backup software might backup with errors etc. I have read about one company that had purchased complete backup solution (I believe it was backup to tapes), they had turned it on and had not care anymore. When their primary storage hardware failed they wanted to recover the data from the backups. Only to find out that the software had been running in some sort of preview/test mode all the time and had not backed up any real data.

I have to look into the iosafe. Cool idea! Thanks

No problem, GarlyDog. I am looking into it right now too. Here are some videos from the tests:
http://www.hddfiresafe.com/data_recovery/fire-disaster-data-loss.htm

And here are some pictures with description how the protection against a fire works: http://www.klsecurity.com/disaster_ready_drive_iosafe.htm (bottom of the page)

I saw a while back that Sentry makes a waterproof and fire protected HDD.
Sentry hard disk products

I don't know anything about these other than seeing them referenced in an article a while back. Just wanted to point the group to another possible tool.

I had not seen the iosafe before. The price on iosafe seems much better (500GB for about $150 currently) where sentry seems very pricey (250GB for $400 MSRP).

I use a external HD to back up My Docs, pictures, music all that stuff. Programs can be replaced, personal stuff not so much. I actually just started exporting my emails for backup too. I can't believe it took me so long to do that.

I also started backing up my online Bookmarks.

I have copies of my passport, DL, CC's and contact numbers on a thumb drive in case I lose any of that.

Its also good to back up your cell phone using your sim card or some of the new phones can be downloaded at the store.

I don't know about other services, but Verizon offers on-line dynamic backup of contacts from cell phones. I'm using their "Backup Assistant" app. Supposedly if I get a new (verizon) cell it will enable me to transfer all my contacts. At a minimum I can go on-line and print all my contacts.

Why/how would you back up the sim card? I don't understand cell technology, so just wondering what the point would be.

A Sim card is just a micro SD card, isn't it? Unless there's some kind of DRM on there it would be simple to image it.

Not all hard drives are created equal. Newer Solid State drives are now offering 128Gbyte drives with MTBFs of 1.5 million hour such as the 2.5 inch OCZ 128GB SS HDD or a similar MTBF of the excellent Western Digital Veloci-Raptor Hard Disk Drives. The Solid State drives have no moving parts so do not suffer from electromechanical failure. They consume much less power and are considerable faster than conventional hard disk drives. A RAID 5 set using SS HDDs within a NAS barebones box configuration with Gigbit LAN using a UPS protect power supply should be pretty reliable.

For long term backup then magnetic tape (DV or DAT) or Magneto Optical (i.e Fujitsu 2.3GB MO Disk) Drive storage is probably the most secure stable method of storage and archival. I recently came across some old audio tapes in a box in the loft (nearly 25 years old) with some old ORIC programs and they loaded into the ORIC when it was fired up.

If anyone has an old DV video camera there is software available that will convert the DV video camera into a tape storage device via the IEEE 1394 port on the PC saving data blocks of approx 8 GBytes on to DV tape.

4.7Gbyte DVD-R/W disks are generally regarded as being more stable than normal stardard CD-R although for data archival although I seem to remember some companies such as Kodak used to manufacture archival CD-Rs (KODAK CD-R Gold Ultima) with a stated lifetime of 100 years. Highly doubtful but could still be useful even if the actual lifetime of the CD-R was 1/10 of this stated lifetime. There are not really any cheap shortcuts for long term archival data storage

Does anyone know the archival lifetime for Flash media such as SDHC?

Wow. Solid state drives have really come down in price. 128GB for about $430. That's pretty good.

Use a combination of backup ideas; Disks, ext. hard drive, on-line backup services

At home, I keep all my important stuff on an external hard drive as well as a flash drive.

At work, I am the network admin and all my 12 servers' OS drives are mirrored, and all data drives are running RAID5. I also have 2 backup servers in different locations for backups of my backups. All servers are running on their own UPS. If a hard drive or UPS battery fails, I get an email from the offending device and can generally fix it without having to power down.