I thought I’d update my series of posts on backup. The first one can be found here and the second part here.
Of course, there is no perfect backup strategy. Just like there’s no Santa Claus (sorry to dissapoint kids).
But depending on several things, like the volume of data you need to back up and the frequency you need to do it, it’s possible to design a backup strategy that comes pretty close…
After several months (or is it years) of researching, thinking, trying and failing and retrying, I think I’ve come up with a strategy that works really well. I’ll nut it out here so you can see what you think. For my needs and budget, I’ve decided to forego several technologies that many would see as essential or at least very desirable to solid backup. Namely, NAS (Network Attached Storage) & online backup. The advantages of this is that is provides a good basis for most people at an affordable level. This is clearly not Enterprise backup we are talking here. This is for home and small, small business users.
Continue reading The Perfect Backup Strategy Part 3
In an earlier post, I spoke about back-up and the need to develop a system that does what it needs to do – save your data from all potential loss, and allow you to get back up and running in the quickest possible time.
Photographers have special requirements with regards backup. They generate huge volumes of data in a very short time. It would be in no way unusual that in one photo shoot, I might generate from up to 4GB of data. And this is data, that if lost, is totally irreplaceable. The sheer size of it as well precludes online backup strategies for most, as upload speeds are too slow, and adsl account limits are often 20GB or less (this is of course only an issue if your ISP includes uploads as part of your allowance).
Continue reading The Perfect Backup Strategy Part 2
Backup man!
I’ve been deliberating lately about data backup, and how to design a solid strategy for both OS and data. All on a tight budget of course… 
Being a photographer and avid net user, I can fill up hard disks with the best of ‘em. And having a ‘hoarder’ personality type also means that I don’t like to delete anything. So backup is a subject that has always been dear to me (see my earlier post on backup). But given that I’ve been a pc user for 15 years, I’m doing pretty well. Despite 4 hard disk deaths in that time, I’ve only ever really lost vital data once. And that just reinforced a lesson I already knew. So to me, backup means double or triple redundancy, with one set off site. But that’s in theory. In practice I have a more complicated and not quite complete set-up. Budgetary constraints shoulder most of the blame for that, but now I have decided that it’s time for no more excuses!
Continue reading The Perfect Backup Strategy
With computers, the bottom line is that you can’t have enough backup. I have learnt this many times over the last 14 years. But I still keep learning it…
On Saturday my daughter was allowed her half hour on my computer to look at kids websites / games. She was on the Danish Radio web site when she called out to me that horrible phrase “Daddy, your screen is all blue”
Upon rebooting, there was a distinct clicking noise coming from the box in the vicinity of the hard disks. “Uh oh” I thought as I tried to remember when I’d last done a thorough backup. I had a long computerless weekend as I waited until Monday for the computer shop to open. I took it in, already knowing deep down that my disk had crashed and that I’d lost whatever I hadn’t backed up. I was guessing about 3 weeks.
Continue reading A cautionary tale about backup
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