Back Up different thoughts about making backups

[zenia 0]

there are different opinions about making a back up.there can be made a balance between being easy and being safe.there is almost no thing like being safe in the part of keeping your data safe.the possibility to loose files is very big.and there is almost no possibility to make it completely sure no files and no data and no bit will be lost.the possibilities to loose data are too big.the first mistake is to think that a back up can be made and stored in a computer. a back up in the same computer as like where the original file is stored is not a back up. it is a copy. because when the computer crashes and when the hard disk is not accessible anymore the second file is not accessible anymore either. this is the same when the second copied file is stored in a different partition than the original first file on the same hard disk.

[Ahsaniqbalkmc 0]

there are different opinions about making a back up.there can be made a balance between being easy and being safe.
there is almost no thing like being safe in the part of keeping your data safe.
the possibility to loose files is very big.

Nowadays there are lots of facilities to backup your data. Even you can compress your data to a small size and then you can store it any where. The most suitable place i can think for backing up important data is you email address server. I will here mention the example of Gmail which have a facility where your email address can turn into a sort of webdisk and you can store your information there. Now you can trust google more than any other server in the world and the possibilities of loosing data will become very small.
There are also many file sharing sites where you can upload you files. So if your file is not confidential and there is no problem if the data is seen or downloaded by others then this is also a great way to keep your data safe. In this way not only your data will be safe but also others might get benefit from it. I would like to mention the example of a driver. Some days ago I was looking for a driver for my Gen X Usb scanner. I was amazed to find that there is no driver for my hardware (or at least I could not find it). Then I bought a CD for my scanner's driver and then I uploaded the driver to a file sharing website. Now I hope that if anyone ever needed the driver, they can find an original, virus free, completely working version on the internet.

[Vistz 1]

I generally backup my important files on an external hard drive. I started doing this after I nearly lost 200 GB of data a few years ago. I know of some sites that offer their services to store your data online. But I don't want to do this since if you want to access it, you would have to download it. This would become a tedious task if you have large files that you want to back up.But for smaller files that you need to keep safe, an online storage site might be the right answer for you.

[Quatrux 4]

I also backup my data, the one which can be lost, I have one copy in my external hard drive and the original copy on my laptop hard drive, it's all the data for studies, web development and work and + personal stuff, once a year I usually burn a DVD, years ago I burned CDs and backup some of my data, to tell the truth I rarely use the backup from CD's/DVD's as they are just put to a drawer :DThe most of space used in DVD are pictures/images I made or somebody else made with a photo camera, as pictures take quite a lot of place with time Nevertheless, I don't backup all the photos, especially if several friends have the same pictures, I can always ask them for those pictures, it's not as if everyone will loose their data at the same time

[yordan 10]

I guess that you have to backup your own pictures, the one you took with your own camera. These ones are not on your friend's computer. And once you loose such a picture, you cannot take it again, because that smile is gone, and that flower disapeared.

[zenia 0]

This quote is taken from the topic about the update of Firefox.

 

This topic shows the need of making a back up of files that are considered to be precious.

 

Another example happened on a company near ours.

 

 

On the industrial zone where I work, every business complex maintains their own power generating building. One sunny day, we get a red alert that 2 50mega watts power generator machine is about to blow and they cannot stop it. The computer maintaining them are full loaded with antivirus and monitoring was down. These generators are overheating without any technician knowing it.

 

We are then forced to stop work and immediately pack our 600 barrels of 2-propanol (modified Isopropyl alcohol)

 

The defective generators won't affect us but the heat radiation it will cause if it blows will ignite our stock of 2-propanol (IPA).

 

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Another one happened on a user doing banking on his computer, his computer got infected by opening an email and letting it load an image that is binded with a virus (see "virus images on email"). His entire deposit got wiped out and transfered to a bogus bank account on the other side of the globe.

 

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A friend it Vietnam had his harddisk entirely useless as the virus he got from viewing a shaddy website issued a random disk write and low level format on random disk sectors. All his research files and work files got lost.

 

 

The list is still pretty long, infact you may be wasting at least a month knowing all the common possible damage it can cause you. And this all happen due to an absence of an antivirus and viewing or opening an email from shaddy website/persons.

The story of the friend is is an example of the need to make at least one back up. And it is preferred to make several backups on different media that are kept in different locations.

 

This story shows that there can be several reasons that cause a file to get destroyed and lost. And the reasons can occur unexpected. There might be an idea that something like this will not occur to the averadge computer user. That is a wrong idea. Probably all people who lost files and who didn't had a back up faced situations that they didn't expect.

This story is the almost the same like a lot of stories in other fora. There are a lot of fora that support technical and computer questions. And lots of questions are about ways to recover lost files and destroyed data. And all the people who ask these questions and who post for help didn't make a backup.

This is special, since making a backup is pretty easy. The main effort is to get different media to store the file. And internet file storage websites are for free too. To make a back up it is necessary to get a cd, dvd, hard disk, diskette, external hard disk, a second computer, a NAS device or a server amongst other possibilities to store a file. The next thing to do is to copy the file. The third thing to do is to store the thing on which the copy of the file is stored in a safe place. And it is recommended to use different storage means that are kept in different locations.

Edited October 29, 2010 by zenia (see edit history)

[vhortex 1]

Since my reply was quoted and this is a backup topic:1. I maintain a backup of my files on a separate hard drive and on some DVDs. You can call it paranoid approach but it was not. I know a lot of people that maintain a nightly back up of things that changed on their computer and even big companies do this.2. The backup medium must be properly labeled specially when you already have hundreds of them. When I start my work as a system admin, the person who handles the backups never labeled what server got backups and what date the backups are. It was also funny that being on the office for 2 weeks, I instantly get a warning letter of loosing a backup tape. To clear my name (which in fact I have never performed any backup yet), I dig the piles of tapes and found a certain tape made 3 months before I got the job and viola, it was the missing tape which contain all the company's important records. If the tapes are labeled and the backup dates are recorded, none of this will happen.3. Consider also the climate and weather on the place where you are storing the backup. At home the temperature range from 15C to 25C (I am from a tropical country), the medium that is best for me is to store via hard disk on cooler time of the day. At work, the room temperature was maintained at 10C on the fiber optics section and 20C on the regular server area. It is best to not to use tapes on the 10C area specially if you are going to store it near the servers due to possibility of molds forming on the tape.

[yordan 10]

You are fully right concerning the tape labelling (or the DVD labelling). By the way, three things imperatively have to be written on the tape.1) oubviously the backup date.2) what it is (bootable operating system, user files, database files, etc...)3) The way to restore the backup (for instance "cd /home; mdir charles; cd charles; cpio -imBdv </dev/rmt0")The third part is really important. There are so many ways creating a backup, that writing the way to restore is a must. Because the restore must be symmetrix to the backup ("cpio -i" if created by "cpio -o", "tar xvf" if created by "tar cvf", and "restore" if created by "backup", and boot on it if created b by "smit mksysb".And of course do not simply write down the way you created the tape, I saw a guy distroying his data backup, after that he told me "but I did exactly what was written on the tape, I typed "tar cvf /dev/rmt3", which means that he created a fresh backup of his dead datafiles, erasing his tape backup with his saved data.And, of course, all experienced technical guys will tell you that you need to have several media for the same data : a DVD, a USB external storage and a NFS filer backup; do not forget the old principle stating "If something can go wrong, be sure that it will go wrong; and faster than expected".

[vhortex 1]

Yordan's reply is best suited if more than 1 person was doing the backup and there are more than 1 method of creating a backup and data logs (hard copy on paper was missing). I also seen someone formating the /usr partition on one of the company we are toured (our client) in hopes that he will restore the files from the backup media. The media was labeled "full backup use only on newly formated drive" . The poor guys was surprised that half of the companies clinic records got wiped out.

[zenia 0]

The art of making a back up is making a decision between the efforts that can be made to save files and data, the estimated possibility that a disaster can happen and the easiness that the user wants to behave with.The disasters can be described like fire, earthquake, water flood. terroristic bomb attacks, car accidents, theft and burglary, human fooliness and technical disabilities. This can be compared against the possible measurements that can be taken in order to save the files from being lost by one of these accidents.So the task is to decide against which possible accident the user wants to protect the files, taken in account the costs and the budget, the preciousness of the data and the efforts that the user wants to make to protect the files against possible lost.

[yordan 10]

The disasters can be described like fire, earthquake, water flood. terroristic bomb attacks, car accidents, theft and burglary, human fooliness and technical disabilities.

Ouch! My home backups are protected against barely none of the above mentionned cases.My USB external disk is connected to my PC, so it will suffer the same disasters as the PC. And my DVD's are on the shelf two meters apart, so they will probably survive to theft but they will survive to nothing else.
Maybe I should ask my cousin, who lives overseas, to store my flashisk?

[Quatrux 4]

You can store the most sensitive data in an archive file which have other several archive files with passwords, I man password protected archives with your most sensitive data, like your works and projects and etc. at a cousins computer and at some friends computer, if the file(s) is/are not bigger than 1-10 GB which you can send through Skype or some other program.And also, you can upload it to your server or account if you have hosting space with over 1 GB, I guess most of servers are protected against fires and earthquakes and especially earthquakes and etc. Don't know about bomb attacks :)Or if it's possible, to use Gmail drive? or as I remember it's not really legal? I never used gmail drive or GDrive, but I wonder how does it work, if the filesize limit for gmail emails is 25 MB or something similar. :)It would be a good way to backup some data and protect against disasters The only disaster could be if you forget the passwords to those archives

[yordan 10]

Or if it's possible, to use Gmail drive? or as I remember it's not really legal? I never used gmail drive or GDrive, but I wonder how does it work, if the filesize limit for gmail emails is 25 MB or something similar.

Albeit the fact that it's fully illegal (you signed the TOS stating that you use this for mail purposes) it works rather file. It splits your data inside several separated mails.

[yordan 10]

Or if it's possible, to use Gmail drive? or as I remember it's not really legal? I never used gmail drive or GDrive, but I wonder how does it work, if the filesize limit for gmail emails is 25 MB or something similar.

Albeit the fact that it's fully illegal (you signed the TOS stating that you use this for mail purposes) it works rather file. It splits your data inside several separated mails.However, you don't need to use gmail.
You can simply use file hosting servers. They don't keep the data quite a lot of time, but you don't need the files to be kept very long : your weekly backup needs to be hold two weeks at most, it becomes useless when the new weekly backup is available.

[zenia 0]

When considering the possibilities that are concerned around the back up of files it is possible to make a difference between the professional ICT worker and the user of the computer for the use of the computer at home.It is possible to think that the professional uses other standards and has other needs compared to the home user.The worth and the value of the files and the data of a company can be completely different compared to the home user.Also the budget and the means that can be used to save the data and the back up files can be very much higher than the budget of the home user.Nevertheless the ICT worker has to decide as well between the value of the files, the costs, means, devices and the possibilities of several back up methods, the budget and the time and effort that can be used for making back ups.The use of materialistic and non-digital and analogical conservation and storage of information in for instance printed means and in a material template and printed on paper can be an important part of the back up solution.

Edited November 3, 2010 by zenia (see edit history)