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.
I was right. The disk was dead, and while I’d backed up certain things like photos very recently, I hadn’t done a thorough backup for about 3 weeks. Bugger.
So $600 later I’m back up. Why $600? That’s a lot of money. Partly it’s because the shop I used charge like a wounded bull. There’s $250 of labour in that. They charged me $75 just to clone all the contents of my second drive over to a new one (long story but I wanted the data to go on a 500Gb drive and leave 2 x 250GB for the system drive in a Raid Array.) Then there was the cost of a new drive and the cost of Vista, since I decided to upgrade at the same time.
After a day of restoring backups, I have discovered the full extent of the damage. 3 weeks of emails – gone. This is OK considering I have emails on my pc that go back to 1998. 3 weeks is bearable. I haven’t as far as I can see, lost a single image. But I did lose loads of assignments I’d spent almost a week on, and I almost lost a website I was working on (luckily I’d been uploading it to the server as I went).
The moral is this. Don’t be complacent about backups. Even when you are serious about it like me, it’s easy to get caught. For me, it’s mostly the financial burden of setting up the proper architecture. For good backups you need a foolproof, automatic system. Even after $600 I don’t have that, but I’m a step in the right direction.
[...] anything. So backup is a subject that has always been dear to me (click here for my earlier post on backup). But given that I’ve been a pc user for 15 years, I’m doing pretty well. Despite 4 [...]
I know what you mean about restoring your system – I made it sound a bit easier than it is. Thing is it can be done – data is gone forever
Yes, you are right of course. I need a Raid array for my data as well. But I have a 500GB drive for data and a 320GB external as backup for that data, and now have 2 x 250GB for the system in a Raid array. The way I see it is that I make so many installations and changes to my system that if it goes down, it takes me at least two days just to get it anywhere near back to where it was, and I’ve lost fonts and codecs and all sorts of things I don’t even remember. It’s the down time with having an unprotected system that I fear the most. I still want a better backup for my data, and I will buy another 500GB soon and put that in a RAID Array as well. Then, as you say I’d just need a 1 or 2TB NAS device….
Also, some of my data lives on the system drive anyway. Emails and documents for example. I keep the other drive for pics, music and whatever.
Don’t you want the RAID array for your data? Although it’s annoying, if the system disk crashes it’s just a case of reinstalling everything. For a while I’ve run with three disks, system disk and 2 300gb SATA drives with data – one is just a copy of the other, done every night. As data explodes (bloody digital) I’m thinking of 2TB NAS device – prices coming down all the time. Then of course you need to think about offsite backup for when the meteor hits the house