So, what's your backup plan?

[JustinStacey.x]

Since late 2007 and increasingly since mid 2008 when my trainspotting hobby lifted off, I have been using a digital camera to store memories of my life as time progresses, places I travel, things I see, trains and buses etc through photographs and video. Already I have a pretty impressive stack of data on the computer some of which I would literally be devastated if it ever got lost - I consider photographs and videos to be probably the most important material possessions one can ever have.

Some people may not be aware, but at any given moment in time your computer could fail meaning you lose EVERYTHING. Not even the most talented IT technicians can revitalise the data from a hard disk that has physical damage to it. Me, being an IT technician has seen this and I am all the wiser to how fickle our computers can be; I've had a hard disk fail on me and leave the computer inoperable in the space of an hour... unfortunately many people are still oblivious to the fact that any data not backed up is at risk of being lost.

I always back up to a hard drive and manually to DVD-RAM disks anything that I consider important to me - but what's your backup plan? Do you backup at all?

I'd be really interested to hear some responses. The reason I have posted this on here is because I know that, to me, how precious my photograph collections particularly of trains/buses/places I've been is to me - and I presume I am not the only one who values said collections so highly?

 

[generalvegitable]

easiest method, http://www.getdropbox.com/ or rent a dedicated server

 

[Mojo]

Funnily enough I was only running a backup lastnight after my computer failed to start up properly! I backup all my documents and photographs to my iPod about twice per year and anything really important (like Coursework) I back up to a memory pen about once per week.

Was just thinking I'd be quite screwed if my iPod was stolen though given the personal information on there!

 

[JustinStacey.x]

That's a really good idea backing up to your iPod as taking backups 'offsite' is a very safe thing to do - if you have a fire in your house or robbery, those backups sitting in the cupboard next to the computer will probably be gone too!

I intend to start regular backups to DVD-ROM and take them to work to store
->I really am over paranoid but... memories are irreplaceable...

 

[Ilove165's]

I back up all my photos onto an external HDD, although I've started to use cd's because my neice thought it would be a good idea to drop the EHDD on the floor, meaning I thought it didn't work first time I plugged it back in...worked after a week or so, but after that, I thought 'one more drop like that', and it might not work again...'

 

[theblackwatch]

I have an external hard drive, and all my photos are stored on this and my laptop. Until they are on the external drive (which I tend to do about once a month), a copy remains on the memory card, ensuring I always have a second copy should my laptop expire.

 

[JustinStacey.x]

I back up all my photos onto an external HDD, although I've started to use cd's because my neice thought it would be a good idea to drop the EHDD on the floor, meaning I thought it didn't work first time I plugged it back in...worked after a week or so, but after that, I thought 'one more drop like that', and it might not work again...'

Be careful with that; after 5 or so years recordable CDs and DVDs start to decay noticeably and rapidly lose reliability. Though, after 5 years I'd expect them to have been replaced by newer backups :P

 

[Broken Viking]

Hail again!
When it comes to backups and data retention, I divide my data into two main categories:

• Volatile: Data created by myself, and thus irreplacable. Mainly photos, home videos, self-made graphics, program code, text and log files etc.
• Non-volatile: Data that could be downloaded from the Internet or a file-sharing service in the event of loss. Movies, TV shows, games and software mainly fit this category.

When backing up, priority (Naturally) goes to volatile data first - Especially when available space is less than the amount of data that I need to backup.

I have two external HDDs which I use for storing data off the HDD; 1x 512Gb (Main backup unit for all data) and 1x120Gb (Secondary; All volatile data, plus select non-volatile data) - The latter of which is used mainly as a "second chance" mirror on account of the fact that it's over five years old, is starting to show it's age mechanically, and originally came into my possession as a fruit of dumpster diving! hock:

In addition, I also have a 2Gb USB flash key which is used to store a compressed image of essential volatile data, with priority given to e-mail, text files and code, then the rest of the available space being used for photos, graphics, binaries and other files in that order. This key is used as a disaster-proof backup (I don't have the option to store data off-site) and is normally stored in various places.
The idea behind this one is that even if everything else was lost (Either to fire, or being robbed) I should still be able to retrieve the most essential elements of my data from the aftermath and not have lost everything.

As for my backup cycle: Volatile is normally done once a month (Sometimes once a fortnight, if there's been over 256Mb of changes) with non-volatile being backed up to xHDD and DVD-R roughly every 2-4 months.
At the moment, I'm also working on a density compression system that - Assuming my research is correct - Will allow lost data to be recovered from a backup image about 1/1000th of the original size, meaning that I could carry a "last ditch" backup of my 160Gb HDD on a 255Mb USB key...Or ten whole 160Gb backup images on the 2Gb disaster recovery key, if need be! 8)

Although I won't trust online storage services for personal and private data due to the very nature of them, I also use Windows Live SkyDrive (25Gb free storage from Microsoft) for storing a web-accessible backup of my music collection.

Farewell...
>> Death <<

 

[90019]

and originally came into my possession as a fruit of dumpster diving! hock:

Tis a noble sport!

Have found all sorts of stuff around here

 

[Broken Viking]

Tis a noble sport!
Have found all sorts of stuff around here

Tell me about it...I managed to yank an old 386SX 1U blade server off of the dump only this afternoon! hock:

By todays standards it's a piece of crap and not worth diddly squat...But for what I've got in mind (Which just involves basic file service and no serverside processing) it's perfect! 8)

 

[90019]

Tell me about it...I managed to yank an old 386SX 1U blade server off of the dump only this afternoon! hock:

By todays standards it's a piece of crap and not worth diddly squat...But for what I've got in mind (Which just involves basic file service and no serverside processing) it's perfect! 8)

I currently have a set of four 13" alloys, off an 80s Honda I think, in the garage which were going to be chucked out.
Going to clean them and sell them.

 

[Broken Viking]

If ye are interested in a couple of old double-deck 8" floppy drives, there were two of those down at Farnborough tip earlier this afternoon as well. Dunno if they've been thrown back into the skip or not (I dug 'em out just to take a look) but if ye are interested it might be worth leaving a message on their answerphone - Search the Rushmoor BC site for the number! 8)

Ye'd need to collect 'em though; They're both very big, and very heavy... hock:

 

[Aussie_Rail]

I used to keep all my pictures on the computer in various folders, but the risk of something happening to the computer and loosing the pictures was a too much of a risk to take, plus I started to use up all the memory with everything else that was on the computer.

So I bought an external hard drive and I keep all my pictures on there, in the most categorized way imaginable. But then one day something happened to the hard drive and almost everything on it was lost.

This then caused me to buy another one and now I keep the memory cards from the camera and buy new ones when they fill up as a back up. I plan to put them all on to disks shortly.

Does anyone have any special way as to how they sort their pictures out?

 

[Geezertronic]

I backup all of my laptop data to my desktop computer and then robocopy to an external hard drive on a regular basis.

 

[JustinStacey.x]

I used to keep all my pictures on the computer in various folders, but the risk of something happening to the computer and loosing the pictures was a too much of a risk to take, plus I started to use up all the memory with everything else that was on the computer.

So I bought an external hard drive and I keep all my pictures on there, in the most categorized way imaginable. But then one day something happened to the hard drive and almost everything on it was lost.

This then caused me to buy another one and now I keep the memory cards from the camera and buy new ones when they fill up as a back up. I plan to put them all on to disks shortly.

Does anyone have any special way as to how they sort their pictures out?

To go into the ins and outs of my filing system would take too long to explain and bore you all, but basically, I first sort them by pictures and videos, and then for each I have: Train pictures, train cabs, train interiors, stations, infrastructure and signals, bus pictures, bus cabs, bus interiors, urban exploration pictures, and then seperate folders for other things for instance my trip to London, trips to Ardnamurchan, etc. I also have generic folders such as 'every other random picture' and 'pics of me' where things like Internet memes and pictures of me (respectively) get dumped. You can pretty much place a bet that if you can think of something, there's a photo of it somewhere, on my computer.

The system is growing so large to a point where I'm actually having to use Windows search occasionally to find something, and that's really only after a year and a half (or so) of actually collecting digital photos and sorting them by place/date! I'm gonna need a bigger HD soon :P

 

[Aussie_Rail]

Interesting. My pictures are foldered into:

'pictures', then I have all the other folders like (to name a few):

'Buildings & Architecture' which are then foldered into particular buildings land marks etc.
'cars'
'garden pics', pictures I have taken at home.
'signs', divided up into all the types of signs, train, tram, bus, road etc.
'towns and cities', various towns and cities in Victoria.
'Rovers pics', all my pictures i have taken at Rover events.
'Transport', which are all transport type folders.

In transport there are (to name a few):

'Stations', then subdivided into 'Adelaide Stations', 'Closed Stations', 'Regional Stations' and 'Suburban stations'. Then each folder is then subfoldered into specific stations in alphabetical order.

'Trains', which is subfoldered into 'Comeng trains', 'Hitachi trains', 'Siemens trains', 'Xtrapolis trains', 'Vline' trains' (subfoldered into the different types of Vline trains), 'The Ghan', 'The Overland', 'NSW trains', 'Freight trains AND locos' (subfoldered into all the class of locos), 'Steam trains' and 'Heritage trains'.

'Trams', which is subfoldered into 'Class of trams' (subfoldered into all the different class of trams, then foldered into the tram number of each tram), 'tram stops' and 'service vehicles'.

'Buses' which are just subfoldered into the different bus companies.


Its all very organized and any pictures taken are easily filed away.

 

[90019]

Mine are just ordered by date.
The two main foders are just 2008 and 2009, in 2008, they're just numbered, except a few named folders (ie. Iceland '08 and Selkirk '08.), the 2009 folder is slightly better, because they're numbered, have the date and a brief note of what's in them (ie. 26. - 27th - 30th May - Rail). It's a better system, but still not great, because I don't know when I took certain photos
Works well enough, though.

 

[JustinStacey.x]

My file system is flawed in that I am naturally a disorganised person.

For one, I have a yearly folder for videos that I make of trains and buses and yet do not lump pictures by year. I know where everything is, but no one else could make heads nor tails of it... much like my desk at work, and my house.

 

[43021HST]

Since late 2007 and increasingly since mid 2008 when my trainspotting hobby lifted off, I have been using a digital camera to store memories of my life as time progresses, places I travel, things I see, trains and buses etc through photographs and video. Already I have a pretty impressive stack of data on the computer some of which I would literally be devastated if it ever got lost - I consider photographs and videos to be probably the most important material possessions one can ever have.

Some people may not be aware, but at any given moment in time your computer could fail meaning you lose EVERYTHING. Not even the most talented IT technicians can revitalise the data from a hard disk that has physical damage to it. Me, being an IT technician has seen this and I am all the wiser to how fickle our computers can be; I've had a hard disk fail on me and leave the computer inoperable in the space of an hour... unfortunately many people are still oblivious to the fact that any data not backed up is at risk of being lost.

I always back up to a hard drive and manually to DVD-RAM disks anything that I consider important to me - but what's your backup plan? Do you backup at all?

I'd be really interested to hear some responses. The reason I have posted this on here is because I know that, to me, how precious my photograph collections particularly of trains/buses/places I've been is to me - and I presume I am not the only one who values said collections so highly?

I tend not to think about such things and hope for the best

 

[JustinStacey.x]

Ahh.. you're a 'if you can't see it, it's not there' kind o' guy. Ignorance is bliss...

 

[ed1971]

I have found that some brands of CDR and DVDR retain their data longer than others. I have been told that rewritable discs are a safer bet than write once ones for some reason. I have some BASF and TDK discs recorded on 11 years ago that still work fine. Some other brands have lost their data in a very short period of time.

I have found too that laptop hardrives seem prone to earlier failure than ones in desktop PCs. This could be due to being carried around or the heat build up inside the case. Heat is a big enemy to electronic equipment.

I usually back up to discs. You can use a USB memory stick, but these can easily be broken. Maybe a better idea would be using a SD card inside a USB adaptor stick

 

[Broken Viking]

I have found that some brands of CDR and DVDR retain their data longer than others. I have been told that rewritable discs are a safer bet than write once ones for some reason. I have some BASF and TDK discs recorded on 11 years ago that still work fine. Some other brands have lost their data in a very short period of time.

I've got some Sony CD-Rs here that were burned to about seven years ago and they've still retained their data for the most part. However at this stage I've already got a few detereorated sectors and attempting to CRC them usually fails. To read such sectors though, I use the Linux dd (Disk duplicator) with error checking off. 8)

Incidentally...Can anyone comment on the quality/longevity of Tesco own-brand DVD-Rs? I'm using them to store long-term copies of my movie, TV show and adult content collections, but it'd be handy for me to know when I should be re-burning them so that I don't lose the data.

I have found too that laptop hardrives seem prone to earlier failure than ones in desktop PCs. This could be due to being carried around or the heat build up inside the case. Heat is a big enemy to electronic equipment.

Personally, I think it might be more to do with the smaller physical sizes, finer tolerances, and the rougher handling that 2.5" laptop HDDs experience as a result of being carried around a lot. I used to have an old laptop with a standard desktop 3.5" HDD (A virtually indestructable Connor 420Mb job) in it, and I never had troubles with drive failure!

It's the finer engineering tolerances and greater fragility of 2.5" drives though that mean I tend to stay well clear of them. If I had a standard laptop nowadays, Id've replaced the standard HDD with an SSD as soon as I could've afforded to!

I usually back up to discs. You can use a USB memory stick, but these can easily be broken. Maybe a better idea would be using a SD card inside a USB adaptor stick

USB Flash pens - Though sometimes fragile in one way or another - Are generally a very safe method for storage for up to nine years after writing. I saw a TV programme a while back which tested various media, and the flash chip - Though needing to be read using a disaster recovery rig (This was after it had received the full force of a blast from a 12-guage shotgun!) - Had still managed to retain about 96% of the data stored upon it! hock:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Anyway...As part of a different "back up" plan on account of the fact that I've been up all night and have to catch a VHF service later on today...

If anyone's working or travelling on VWC service 1H26 departing Euston at 13:00 today, please could they make sure that I'm awake just before arrival into Stoke? I'll be in Coach C, seat 2. Many thanks in advance! 8)

Farewell...
>> Death <<

 

[Aussie_Rail]

With pictures, would it be an idea to make prints of the ones that you like most, rather than printing thousands of pictures?

Surely a printed picture in an album will last longer than if it were on a disk etc? At least with a printed picture you can always scan it as well.

Which last longer if stored correctly, a VHS cassette or DVD disk?

 

[JustinStacey.x]

Not, necessarily, Aussie Rail. Digital data never decays no matter how much it's copied. As soon as you print something out into a tangible form the air around it starts eating away at it, hence the reason old pictures look a lot less bright and alive than newer ones. To some degree this is of course because cameras these days are much better, though. The idea is not to keep something on the same backup disk forever but to circulate it.

ed1971:
I have found too that laptop hardrives seem prone to earlier failure than ones in desktop PCs. This could be due to being carried around or the heat build up inside the case. Heat is a big enemy to electronic equipment.

It's not so much that heat is the enemy of electronic equipment, but varying quantities of it.Your observation about laptop hard drives is probably largely the fault of how they are configured to run. For around a decade now, Windows' default settings on laptops has been to stop the hard drive spinning after around 10 minutes of inactivity, and shut the machine off into standby after not much more after that. This causes hugely varying degrees in heat, and the stop/start of the hard disk platter, which causes enormous strain on the components. (Similar to the fact that city driving wears out engines more than steady driving). The aforementioned settings are the first things I disable; my computer never spins down, never switches off, and never goes into standby except during a powercut.

Ever heard of the centennial lightbulb and similar, long-burning bulbs? The main reason they have been going so long is for the simple reason they have just been left on. PC hard drives may be perceived to be last longer for this reason... they don't see as many switches off/switches on, presumeably, as laptop HD's.

Personally, I think it might be more to do with the smaller physical sizes, finer tolerances, and
the rougher handling that 2.5" laptop HDDs experience as a result of being carried around a lot. I used to have an old laptop with a standard desktop 3.5" HDD (A virtually indestructable Connor 420Mb job) in it, and I never had troubles with drive failure!

I've an old Mac from 1993 with the original 120MB Hard Disk and even although it makes a horrible noise it still runs. I even got bored one day, dissassembled the machine and ran it in pieces, the HD never broke. I even tried unplugging the HD while it was powered, plugging it back in... AND IT STILL RAN. The older drives have such a low density that room for error is much lower. Unless it actually physically 'breaks' it may last for years to come...

 

[ed1971]

I have found Tesco CDRs and DVDRs fine up to now, but time will tell. The Tesco near me recently had Kodak CDRs which were very good quality. There used to be 'playgrade' CDRs manufactured by Nugen that had a black play side like a Playstation game CD. These could be scratched a lot but still work! Unfortunately they no longer seem too be produced.

Anyone with a old laptop with a failed hardrive, who wishes to use it mainly for web browsing, may wish to consider using Puppy Linux as it doesn't need a hardrive. It will boot from a CD and load into RAM. If you wish, you can save your session on a USB stick or CDR. Another advantage is that there are not many viruses out there that will attack it unlike Windows.

 

[JustinStacey.x]

Puppy Linux is godly!

 

[Aussie_Rail]

Not, necessarily, Aussie Rail. Digital data never decays no matter how much it's copied. As soon as you print something out into a tangible form the air around it starts eating away at it, hence the reason old pictures look a lot less bright and alive than newer ones. To some degree this is of course because cameras these days are much better, though. The idea is not to keep something on the same backup disk forever but to circulate it.

Ah righyo, well as I keep everything of mine on one external hard drive, so to keep it moving and to circulate it to another one every now and again, that would be a safe option then? How often should digital data be circulated?

 

[SouthEastern-465]

Download all the videos onto one disc and your pictures onto another disc.

If you do this I would highly recomend making double copys of each one that way if others get smashed and damaged you still got spares.

 

[Aussie_Rail]

Download all the videos onto one disc and your pictures onto another disc.

If you do this I would highly recomend making double copys of each one that way if others get smashed and damaged you still got spares.

I'll do that then, I have my pictures so well categorized that putting them on disk will be easy, all I need to do is find the instructions I wrote to do that! lol

Now we have all spoken well on the topic saving data and preventing the worst of nightmares, but can we now talk on the matter of data recovery?

I have a 'Maxtor' External Diskdrive, about 160GB or near abouts. Now something happened to it that I don't know or can explain, but a vast majority of its content was lost, but not all so some of it remains, but a lot has disappeared.

I tried it on my brothers laptop, and it wouldn't even accept it to open, but it does work on my PC.

This resulted in my buying another one and starting my picture collection from near scratch!

I have heared about data recovery places that can supposedly recover material like that, all the material lost were pictures filed many ways. Can anyone give advice on the matter?

Many thanks.
AR

 

[SouthEastern-465]

I'll do that then, I have my pictures so well categorized that putting them on disk will be easy, all I need to do is find the instructions I wrote to do that! lol

Now we have all spoken well on the topic saving data and preventing the worst of nightmares, but can we now talk on the matter of data recovery?

I have a 'Maxtor' External Diskdrive, about 160GB or near abouts. Now something happened to it that I don't know or can explain, but a vast majority of its content was lost, but not all so some of it remains, but a lot has disappeared.

I tried it on my brothers laptop, and it wouldn't even accept it to open, but it does work on my PC.

This resulted in my buying another one and starting my picture collection from near scratch!

I have heared about data recovery places that can supposedly recover material like that, all the material lost were pictures filed many ways. Can anyone give advice on the matter?

Many thanks.
AR

I dont know if there is a data recovery system for stuff like pictures and videos loaded on the computer because it happened to me lost all my Class 465 pics and had to start from scratch very annoying!! but when I asked the computer engineer if he could fix it he said "Sorry Mate no can do its impossible" but thats over here maybe over in aussie they maybe how to do it go in your local PC store and enquire.