75ZT Community

With the advent of an ever-increasing reliance on a digital way of life and storing all our precious memories and information in binary bits the importance of keeping your data safe has never been more prudent.

Today the final piece of my backup plan arrived courtesy of Mr. Postie - a LaCie external rugged hard drive:- http://www.amazon.co.uk/LaCie-Rugged-Tr ... 453&sr=8-2
This little box is built to be shock resistant so I can carry it around with me. You'll see why later on.


So then, what's my backup plan?
First wave of attack: As some of you know I run a Mac system and have Time Machine software built right into the operating system, basically it performs hourly incremental backups of my entire hard drive to an external wireless hard drive. This allows me to not only perform a full-system restore from the external wireless device but also search back in time to find a file or even complete folder I may have accidentally erased last weekend whilst being all trigger-happy with the trash can.

Secondary tactics: A good solid backup plan like above is good. Everything's backed up and I know where it all is should something go wrong and it's all simple and effortless to restore. However, why settle for one? As a secondary precaution protecting me against failure of my Time Machine hard drive I also have a second wireless hard drive that takes weekly incremental back ups of the entire of my own files ('Home' folder for Mac users). This gives me an extra "piece of mind" incase something bad should happen.
Now whilst both these drives are in two separate rooms from my main computer even this level of paranoia isn't sufficient to cover against something happening to all three devices (fire, flood, etc). I have a reasonable amount of online storage with my MobileMe account and with that I backup all important login details, passwords, documents and the all system preferences along with archived copies of a few of my applications. This backup is again automated on a daily basis. Although this method is more tedious to restore it does afford an extra level of off-site backup.

Be extra paranoid: As I mentioned above - the final piece of the jigsaw arrived today. Whilst the above steps have been performing admirably in the background for over a year now, there is always the case where you might need to get back up and running quickly and easily. That's where a clone of your hard drive comes into things. The new LaCie rugged hard disk is exactly that. It will contain an exact clone of my entire hard drive that will be at least weekly renewed. If my current system should fail I can choose to boot from this external drive and get back to work straight away - with every file in its right place. Being an external hard drive I can simply unplug it and take it with me out of the house when I go to work to safeguard the data from any unfortunates that may befall my household equipment.


I'm hoping that I never have to use any of these devices in anger as it were, but I feel a little securer now that I know my data is a little safer and sound.

Not being paranoid I use a 1TB external drive USB2 and Time Machine as described above. If the worst should happen i.e. both internal and external drives fail at the same time I would be a little upset but it's only data. Important stuff like address book, Keychains, Mail accounts is sync-ed on MobileMe. Forum is backed up from server to my Mac and subsequently backed up to external drive on a daily basis. There is also backup on the server.

Now then to serious stuff. COD forbid a burglary occurred. I really wouldn't give a damn if they emptied my house as long as they left my acoustic guitar which is irreplaceable.

Almost forgot, 60Gigs of music backed up on a 160 2.5 External Drive Firewire 400 or USB2

OK

Each of my PCs carries out continuous incremental backup to one of the other PCs on the network. My main PC does this but also has continuous incremental backup to my NAS which has fail-safe hot swappable RAID 1, which itself has scheduled backups to an external HDD which is stored in a fireproof cabinet.

The NAS and external HDD are powered by an UPS.

REALLY important data is backed up on-line via Bullguard and also to my data storage at the college

Blooming ek! Guys what! do you work for NASA

Simon! I read your thread with enjoyment and with a big smile upon my face, simply excellent with your way of thinking......................... can I nickname you 'Adrian Monk'

My backup at home is quite modest in comparison to above.
Just a Raid 1 system with 1.5TB drives using a program for two hourly backups, nightly online backup to secure server storage services company, a portable wireless 1TB hard drive and all photos and videos are stored in secure server elsewhere, as slightly paranoid about several thousand photos and video recordings.

My data is stored on a raid mirrored NAS, not running windows which helps prevent some nasties.

I then do ocassional (not regular enough really) backups onto an external drive which lives in a water and fireproof safe. If I get anything really precious I make sure I do the external backup right away.

In the past I've also copied the files onto my desktop, but a recent upgrade means thos files are not present at the moment. Must get round to doing that too.