Don't forget to backup your computer.

[TravelingJ]

Just lost 2 hard drives yesterday. I'm assuming this RV park had a power surge, because I came back from work and the laptop I use for Apple TV was at a weird error screen. After a reboot-the external HDD hooked into it (with all the movies, all the music, and the backups from all our other laptops) was clicking and refused to load up. Then the laptop gave me a message that it's hard drive was failing.

I backup most files in two places, and some in triplicate. So nothing is really lost-just a bit of time. I honestly never planned on the backup driving tanking when the laptop did, but that's why I backup to a cloud as well (for all I know, shit will burn down while I'm at work, and all drives would be gone) so...just wanted to remind people to have some sort of a plan, or realize they risk losing EVERYTHING on their computers.

 

[Craig Mac]

Always good to have a backup plan, never know.

Aloha Style approves of this message

 

[Jfire]

He's not the only one as well Mac! I still have two drives from years past hoping the recovery prices go down enough to pull off family vacation pics and such. Now I back up online after losing two seperate ones.

 

[JDog]

Hey J thank you for sober reminder... I'm sorry to hear about your problems. I just wrapped up rebuilding/backing up my computer! A fun Labor Day activity...

 

[TravelingJ]

I hear ya, it's not fun. I've spent the past 2 days working on getting the drive with errors, to clone itself to a clean drive. I'd prefer not to download all that crap from the cloud, but it is good to know that if this cloning fails-I can still get all my data. 100gb of family pictures on that computer and that external. Would have been a bitch to lose all of that.

But hey, at least I can smoke cigars while that crap does its magic.

 

[AlohaStyle]

Aloha Style approves of this message

Funny guy Craig... :crytears:

And J, you do a 100GB of cloud backup? What service do you use?

 

[TravelingJ]

163gb last time I checked. Crashplan. I went with Carbonite for a while, but I was told their security is a little fishy. We put the free version of crashplan on all the computers, and they all backed up to the external on one laptop. Then that laptop had the subscription, and I used it to upload all the backups.

I take it you had a crash?

 

[YodisMatt]

Almost had a "crash" of external HD with a bunch of client work on it as a 1 year old at our labor day party started running around with it! It was brought to safety fairly fast.

 

[Chrisso]

Crashplan is the way to go.

Carbonite will not backup certain files, like *.QBW, and *.EXE files, because their backup services are not encrypted. There for, the files sit in the original format on their servers. They don't want to risk getting infections if for whatever reason an Script triggered something, and jacked up their stuff. I believe they changed a lot of this, but it was enough for us to not consider them again. They offer a service for most grandparents out there, and that's the way I look at it. Personally, I need a little more, which is why I use CrashPlan.

Additional you can backup to local machines in house, or even setup a computer at a friends, or relatives and back up to it (Free of charge minus bandwidth usage).

Don't let TJ fool you guys. His 100Gb of "Pictures" is actually his porn stash.

Just sayin....

 

[Chrisso]

Oh, and I forgot to mention the fact that CrashPlan retains multiple copies of your backups!

If your in IT, then you know that just 1 backup doesn't mean your data will recover if its corrupted. So, having multiple revisions is the key to a successful restoration.

-Chrisso

 

[derwood]

If your in IT, then you know that just 1 backup doesn't mean your data will recover if its corrupted. So, having multiple revisions is the key to a successful restoration.

Unfortunately.....I know this all too well! Definitely worth some peace of mind there.

 

[Walter]

Don't let TJ fool you guys. His 100Gb of "Pictures" is actually his porn stash.

Just sayin....

That's a lot of midget porn!!

 

[Chrisso]

That's a lot of midget porn!!

Or, not enough........

 

[mthhurley]

I lost a bunch of data once.....once...Never again.
All pics and docs stored on my iMac's internal drive, which backs up to a Time Machine image hourly. Then the main HD is copied to an external drive every night. Then that drive backs up to a second external drive on a different power outlet. And lastly my pics,music, movies, docs etc back up to the cloud every night (Backblaze). So if the house burns down, I always have the cloud. Every once and a while when I think about it, I back that drive up to a spare hard drive I have laying around and physically put the drive somewhere else in the house, not connected to anything. (note to self, start putting that drive in the fireproof safe).

 

[Chrisso]

We had a navy seal customer who's house burned down. He put a drive in the fireproof safe. The safes internal temp reached a crazy high number, and basically melted the drive. obviously the wafers were recoverable, and he was able to send the melted drive to a forensics lab where they were able to recover the data, but at a high price.

So, be warned, house fireproof safes aren't always the best place to put that spare drive.

However, you seem to have most every other aspect covered for a recovery, mthhurley. Good job!

 

[mthhurley]

We had a navy seal customer who's house burned down. He put a drive in the fireproof safe. The safes internal temp reached a crazy high number, and basically melted the drive. obviously the wafers were recoverable, and he was able to send the melted drive to a forensics lab where they were able to recover the data, but at a high price.

So, be warned, house fireproof safes aren't always the best place to put that spare drive.

However, you seem to have most every other aspect covered for a recovery, mthhurley. Good job!

I figured they got hot, but not that hot. Guess I'll put the drive at a family members house. Thanks for the feedback.

 

[equetefue]

I built a home server and backs up my files for all stations in my house automatically every night.. Very cheap to make and well worth it. Has saved my a$$ a few times already

 

[MoJo]

We had a navy seal customer who's house burned down. He put a drive in the fireproof safe. The safes internal temp reached a crazy high number, and basically melted the drive. obviously the wafers were recoverable, and he was able to send the melted drive to a forensics lab where they were able to recover the data, but at a high price.

So, be warned, house fireproof safes aren't always the best place to put that spare drive.

However, you seem to have most every other aspect covered for a recovery, mthhurley. Good job!

I figured they got hot, but not that hot. Guess I'll put the drive at a family members house. Thanks for the feedback.

fyi, even if they don't get hot enough to melt, high temperatures increases the rate of drive failures

 

[Jfire]

We had a navy seal customer who's house burned down. He put a drive in the fireproof safe. The safes internal temp reached a crazy high number, and basically melted the drive. obviously the wafers were recoverable, and he was able to send the melted drive to a forensics lab where they were able to recover the data, but at a high price.

So, be warned, house fireproof safes aren't always the best place to put that spare drive.

However, you seem to have most every other aspect covered for a recovery, mthhurley. Good job!

I figured they got hot, but not that hot. Guess I'll put the drive at a family members house. Thanks for the feedback.

Plainfield/Naperville have good response times and know how to put out a house fire. Keep the back up in your house if you wish Mike. It may get some smoke damage (the safe). Just keep the thing low to the floor. If you have a bookcase/shelf in the basement that would keep the safe several feet off the basement floor, even better. That's why u pay good tax money. For quick, well equipped FDs.

 

[cvm4]

I really need to do this, but the way you guys talk is like jibberish sometimes :rofl: Really only concerned about music/photos so I keep a small one for that.