I was wondering what is the best backup solution?

[captaincranky]

Well for one, I passed the course.

Btw; I'll not bore you with my resume but just say I've been down this road for 37years.

You would never bore me by telling me of your accomplishments, only by bragging about a lack of them.

>>But, anything mechanical with little teensy tiny, little bits of magnetism holding all that you are, should not be taken all that seriously

Hum; I guess those folks at IBM have been wrong for over six decades now.
Backups have been on 2400 ft tapes and secondary HDs.

In these circumstances I'm guessing that we're talking about climate controlled environments in which nobody is likely to be running a circular saw next to a shelf of tapes, so fair enough.

The materials certainly have improved, polyester vs Nitrocellulose backings on film and tape. Since you mention longevity you'll probably be aware of how many wonderful old movies were lost due to the (almost) explosive Nitrocellulose film stock. Magnetic tape emulsion binders can fail also, and at the end of the day, there's no such thing a absolute permanence, just empires under the sands.

Let's agree to flame each other using Private Messages .. that way the original thread will still have some meaningful content.

I'm hoping you'll accept this reply as not even lukewarm.

There actually still is a fair amount of meaningful content in this thread, once you wipe the venom off. <JOKING.

 

[ravisunny2]

I don’t think the Captain was referring to hellokitty[hk] in his resolution. Rather, he was making a general statement about how a little common sense goes a long way.

Sorry if my endorsement of the ‘resolution’ was taken out of context.

BTW, there used to be very few dropouts from my classes.

 

[DelJo63]

Rather, he was making a general statement about how a little common sense goes a long way.

Yes that can be true -- seems to be pandemic today. Your comment however
is much more palatable than Cranky's, but then ... (oops; I'll just let your imagination fill in the blanks )

BTW, there used to be very few dropouts from my classes.

I believe! I'm sure you're aware that there are two philosophies of education;
"Teaching for student success vs teaching to weed out". Then there's the armchair quarter back problem ....

aw heck; I better withdraw --- time for dinner (or supper to the midwesterners )

 

[ravisunny2]

"Teaching for student success vs teaching to weed out"

I personally don’t believe in ‘weeding out’, though it is a harsh reality of life.
Isn’t the SAT a ‘weeding out’ tool, to some extent ?

All said and done, any weeding out should be done prior to commencement of the course.

After that, only counseling and motivation, and an extra effort should be used.
BTW, I don’t think I had to flunk more than a couple of students, in 7 years of teaching.

I hope you had a good meal.

 

[hellokitty[hk]]

um... sure........
anyway...i havn't failed either.
so...
Harddrives arn't reliable, so its basicly down to CD's and DVD's?

Well...how important do you think the data has to be to resort to all the effort of burning it on a DVD?. Seriously, i don't even know if i can burn DVD's!

EDIT: WOA IT SAYS TECHSPOT MEMBER UNDER MY NAME!!!

 

[captaincranky]

No strategy is reliable as long as the back-up is maintained in the same environment as The prime copy.

Back-up is strangely (at least in part) a social issue. How people value their data and posessions and how aggressively they protect it bears as much on the situation as the methodology.

You would put a Will in a safe deposit box, and not let the kids and dog play with it. Yet you frequently meet people that can't find their Windows disc, or it might be scratched beyond usability.

As Jobeard has told us, IBM uses tape and backup Hard drives and has been doing so for decades.
You must take into consideration is that this material is stored in a climate controlled environment, and is supported by IT experts with professional grade equipment. A tape drive is something that you won't be ordering from Newegg anytime soon. Keep in mind, the maintainence of older data requires the maintainence of machines designed to process it, even though they may be obsolete. Just as the film editing process has gone from cut, splice, and tape to all digital nonlinear editing, file systems themselves have changed from FAT16 to NTFS. If you simply must work with a movie negative, you can't have thrown the splicer away, and so it goes with older computer systems. Did you ever see a "Zip" drive?
So,pick any backup methodology you decide on, but keep in mind that you might want to keep an extra copy of the really important stuff with your parents or (not quite as good) BFF.

Except for backing up to a flash drive, I simply can't get my head around that.

I still think that you're relying too heavily on the people at Techspot for all your information and training, and might want to do some "homework" so that you're better prepared for when a real problem does arise. Studying up ahead of time can sometimes avoid trouble. If you know what could go wrong, just don't let it happen. The more you know when you begin a dialog, the more you just might take away from it.

 

[hellokitty[hk]]

ok IM NOT GOING TO STORE IT NEXT TO MY COMPUTER

Actually newegg does have tape drives and tapes too! but they cost HUGE amounts of money. Might as well duplicate your data over like, 20 hdds lol.

ok i know IM NOT PUTTING IT ON A FLASH DRIVE.
that would actually scare me. a tinny little thing in my hand contained all my precious data. It would seem so easy to lost or destroy!

anyway yeah this thread has gone on almost pointlessly.
Know that i don't have anything very valuble in my comp.
No family pictures or that kind of thing.

I think i will just duplicate data over 2 separate hdds making 3 hdds in total.
That should be safe enough for me.

 

[captaincranky]

Is There a Volume Discount on Those Tape Drives....?

Keep in mind I didn't say that Newegg didn't sell tape drives. I simply said you (or I, for that matter) won't be ordering one anytime soon.

A funny thing thing about data, it doesn't seem precious until you lose it.

 

[DelJo63]

My favorite was flopticals, which look like floppies, but are CD media.
Used many of these with our Macs, but the media lost out to higher capacity devices
and the product is now withdrawn.

ravisunny2:
Yes it's sad but true, at least here in the states and especially in the lower division work --
efforts are made to discourage and where necessary fail students to control
the student population size and 'quality'. The system can't keep it's elite image
by graduating 90% C students.

 

[DelJo63]

I think i will just duplicate data over 2 separate hdds making 3 hdds in total.
That should be safe enough for me.

good choice. btw: this is called replication, instead of backup, and for smallish data
volumns is a great alternative.

 

[captaincranky]

We're viewing the LCD monitor from a way different angle..

Jobeard, part of the problem with education in the US, is the regrettable fact that a lower class of parent, seems determined to populate the country with a even lower class of student. Crank 'em out, fatten 'em up with food stamps, then send them off to face the world with a few bags of crack to sell and a 9 millimeter pistol in their lunchbox. Conceptually, what comes to mind is the federally subsidized breeding of an entire class of people that the country would be better off without. Sometimes genetics works as predicted, when Mr. and Mrs. Sociopath fall in love for a half an hour and give society "the blessing" of little Sociopath Junior. The "gift that keeps on taking".

Intelligent people such as your self tend to view the all problems of the educational system as being brought on by the educational system. The desire to learn is (should be) instilled by the parents and still resides within the student's grasp and discretion.
So, when, (and I have) I look out my front door, and see 12 year olds marching off to school blowing a joint, "prepping" their psyches to face the "incompetent" educational system, I have to wonder what validity it has to discuss "educating to weed out" vs educating "weed in", they've already taken care of the "weeding", and the educators just need to worry if their bulletproof vest matches their tie.

All your ideas are sound, but they likely wouldn't work on the segment of the population I'm describing. So let's agree that there's a time,place, and workability for your ideals, and some very good reasons for my jaundice.

Peace.

BTW; That's how I back up my data, storing it on multiple drives across multiple (non-interconnected) machines. I feel better now that I know there's a name for it, and it wasn't just the product of a twisted mind. He said, while thinking of himself in the third person

 

[DelJo63]

actually we entirely agree -- there's a cause and effect relationship here

peace unto you too.

 

[windmill007]

Ya I would say either internal or external (esata) hard drive. For internal I will leave my drive in the system and just connect it when I want to ghost to it then disconenct the sata and power cable when done. That way it is isolated. For external you will want esata unless you want to wait forever. Again disconect it after the ghost. Ghosting is the best option because in failure you just replace the bad drive and reghost everything back to it. Or you could actually run off your backup drive till you get another good drive.

 

[hellokitty[hk]]

Ghosting? whats that?

Anyway yeah thanks everyone!

 

[DelJo63]

Ghosting: to create an image of a HD using the Norton GHOST program

 

[Tedster]

personally, I think the easiest way is to back up to a second hard drive regularly. Either through a scheduled windows back up, cloning, ghosting or imaging.

The last 3 are almost the same.

Of course a program like GOBACK also has saved me numerous times from disasters.

 

[ravisunny2]

This link might be useful:

http://www.data-backup-and-storage.com/

 

[hellokitty[hk]]

Just wondering what is the most complete backup program?

or at least one that uses Disk imaging or whatever.

Ive used norton ghost, it was ok, but it was always running with norton update and a bunch of other crap.

I used Acronis 9, that was pretty good.
BTW has anyone used Acronis OS selector?

EDIT

scheduled windows back up, cloning, ghosting or imaging.

The last 3 are almost the same.

Of course a program like GOBACK also has saved me numerous times from disasters.

Wait, what about incremental backuping?
I think that it would be really usefull to me, what type of backup supports it?
Almost?
whats GOBACK? Ive never heard of it.