Backups are a very, very good thing.

[Brad Johnson]

One of Dad's buddies called me in a panic this morning.  His computer went pppffft with a complete hard drive failure.  He has no backups because it was something he was alwasy "going to get around to one of these days".

Five years of data. Five years.  With no electronic backup.  And no paper printouts.  And it's tax time.

He's, um... tense.

I told him he might be able to use a data recovery service, but that it would be horrendously expensive.  It's that or try and get copies of all his banking records so he can begin rebuilding his data.  He's a pretty big operator for one person (family farm/ranch) so it's going to be a long haul either way.  Multiple accounts, dozens of vendors, payroll, investments, etc.  Not good.

In other words, back up your data.  Often.  And keep both a copy of the data AND a paper printout somewhere offsite just in case the worst happens.  It may take a while to burn a DVD of your data, but it's nothing compared to the time, headache, and expense of trying to recover from a complete crash.

I keep all my data in one folder on my drive, including copies of my e-mail, address book, and internet Favorites.  I back that folder up at least once a week.  It saved my bacon a few years ago when I had a drive go down.  It took me a little over a day to get the machine back up and running, what with the drivers installs, updates, and little piddly crap associated with continuing to run Windows ME.  But once up and running it was less than 20 minutes to have every stitch of my data completely restored.

Brad

[Nick1911]

I keep everything important on a mirrored raid array.  I figure the probability of both disks dying at the same time is very close to zero.  I also irregularly burn everything off to DVD-R's.

[RevDisk]

I keep everything important on a mirrored raid array.  I figure the probability of both disks dying at the same time is very close to zero.  I also irregularly burn everything off to DVD-R's.

And you keep one set off site, right? 

[Nick1911]

And you keep one set off site, right? 

Try to.  Though I don't have a safe deposit box anymore.

This reminds me, I should find out the details of how APS is being backed up, and at what frequency.

[Brad Johnson]

I like the redundancy of a RAID, but they can also fail.  That, unfortunately, is relatively common around here what with all the electrical activity during spring thunderstorms.  Add in people's propensity to use cheapo power strips instead of a decent surge protector and the chance of a dual drive setup seeing catastrophic failure is uncomfortably high.  One direct strike and ... ZAP! ... it's all gone.

The most secure backup is on some kind of permanent media (tape, CD, DVD, Blu-Ray) or removeable drive, and stored off-site.  I see a lot of people backing up onto thumb drives and it makes me cringe, especially if they leave it plugged into the machine all the time.  One line surge or spark of static electricity and it can be history, too.  Nope, it's hard media for me.

Brad

[RevDisk]

Try to.  Though I don't have a safe deposit box anymore.

This reminds me, I should find out the details of how APS is being backed up, and at what frequency.

 :|

[Brad Johnson]

I like the redundancy of a RAID, but they can also fail.  That, unfortunately, is relatively common around here what with all the electrical activity during spring thunderstorms.  Add in people's propensity to use cheapo power strips instead of a decent surge protector and the chance of a dual drive setup seeing catastrophic failure is uncomfortably high.  One direct strike and ... ZAP! ... it's all gone.

The most secure backup is on some kind of permanent media (tape, CD, DVD, Blu-Ray) or removeable drive, and stored off-site.  I see a lot of people backing up onto thumb drives and it makes me cringe, especially if they leave it plugged into the machine all the time.  One line surge or spark of static electricity and it can be history, too.  Nope, it's hard media for me.  One copy at the office, one copy at home.  If one location floods, burns, or blows away, chances are the other will be okay.

Brad

[Nick1911]

I like the redundancy of a RAID, but they can also fail.  That, unfortunately, is relatively common around here what with all the electrical activity during spring thunderstorms.  Add in people's propensity to use cheapo power strips instead of a decent surge protector and the chance of a dual drive setup seeing catastrophic failure is uncomfortably high.  One direct strike and ... ZAP! ... it's all gone.

A fan of the old, 60lb+ ferromagnetic power conditioners?

:|

I know.  Looking into a few things...

[Brad Johnson]

A fan of the old, 60lb+ ferromagnetic power conditioners?

Hey, if it works...

Brad

[AZAndy]

This might be a good time to mention Steve Gibson's "Spinrite." It's saved a few dead computers for me.

[erictank]

I keep all my data in one folder on my drive, including copies of my e-mail, address book, and internet Favorites.  I back that folder up at least once a week.  It saved my bacon a few years ago when I had a drive go down.  It took me a little over a day to get the machine back up and running, what with the drivers installs, updates, and little piddly crap associated with continuing to run Windows ME.  But once up and running it was less than 20 minutes to have every stitch of my data completely restored.

Brad

One of those who's learning from experience, though not nearly so hard a lesson as your friend - our home PC just got zapped last week by something which came through the most-modern and -auto-updated Norton AV/Internet Security software installed on it, which oddly enough appeared to have corrupted the USB ports.  I had NO input control at home from ANY item connected to any USB port, including my 2 USB keyboards and 3 USB mice - I thought that the USB controller got nuked somehow, an opinion my wife's IT guy shared from a description of the symptoms observed to that point.  Thought I was going to have to replace the motherboard (which I can DO, I've built computers before.  Glad I didn't spend the money on it, though).  The Geek Squad guys (who actually have PS/2 mouse and keyboard handy) got a response from all 6 ports, but only USB 1.1 performance from their System Analyzer flash drive, again when plugged into any port.  The machine only has USB 2.0 ports, but wouldn't operate any of them at 2.0 speed, and Windows popped up notices that the flash drive could operate faster if it were plugged into a 2.0 port .  Supposed to get the system back... today, now that I think about it - they were supposed to call when it was ready, but no message was left by the time I left for work this afternoon, so I won't be able to get it until at least tomorrow afternoon.  If there's no message when I wake up, I guess I get to call and ask what's going on.

Anyway, long story short(er), now that the barn has burned down, I'll be investing the time to make sure the door's locked, and all that.  I'll be sitting down after getting the system back and making sure I've got all the things done that I'd been "meaning to do" prior to this incident, including backups of data/photos/music/etc. and making a system-restore disk, which did not appear to come with the system like I'd originally thought.  Feeling rather embarrassed over my lack of preparation for this possibility, as I'm - well, not a REAL computer guy, but at least a generally-smart and semi-skilled layman, anyways, and here I am as caught out by this as any of the sort of people who call tech support when they've forgotten to turn their computer's monitor on.

[lee n. field]

Five years of data. Five years.  With no electronic backup.  And no paper printouts.  And it's tax time.

He's, um... tense.

Ontrack, or one of the other data recovery services.  Suck up and pay the fee.  And let this be a lesson.....

[Physics]

A fan of the old, 60lb+ ferromagnetic power conditioners?

Am I that transparent?    

My last pc died of unknown electrical causes.  Was in the middle of a game of BF2, and all of a sudden, screen goes blank, speakers are silent, and the inside of my computer case is making that awesome electrical arcing sound.  The wall behind my pc is lit up with the shadow of my power supply fan, lit up by the sparks.  I managed to salvage the sound card.  One of the hard drives, and the cd burner still worked, for awhile.  Everything else was toast.  I then convinced my wife that I needed a gaming rig, and built this awesome setup. 

I don't backup, because I have nothing on here to care about losing.  I game on here, and surf the net, and that's about it.  Don't even have a word processor on this rig, I do word processing in the lab, it's free ink and paper.  If my hd fails, I buy another one, and depending on which one it was, re-install windows and games, or just games.  Yeah it's a pain, but not that bad.  Everything I NEED, I have saved to dvd's.