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I've just spent the past week rebuilding a server, installing server software and dealing with application data issues, all because there was a water leak causing a failure for which the people were entirely unprepared. Data backups? Sure. No problem. Documentation on the server setup and file/folder structure? Would have been priceless had it existed.
Bottom line is you need backups. The more important the data, the more backups you need. Duplicate your data. Verify that the copies are good. Get some of the copies out and stored in other locations. Make more copies. Verify again. The only thing you can be sure of it that something unexpected will fail someday. Be ready for it.
I never accidentally delete stuff, so I'm not worried about human error. ALL of my data loss occurred because of hardware failure or loss.
The only person on the planet that has never said "oops"
Actually all of the data you have lost is directly attributable to human error. You didn't back it up dude, and that my friend is solely YOUR responsibility, an error on your part, i.e. a human error
FACT: Disk drives will fail.
FACT: The failure to back up your important data is an error made by a human.
I've just spent the past week rebuilding a server, installing server software and dealing with application data issues, all because there was a water leak causing a failure for which the people were entirely unprepared. Data backups? Sure. No problem. Documentation on the server setup and file/folder structure? Would have been priceless had it existed.
Bottom line is you need backups. The more important the data, the more backups you need. Duplicate your data. Verify that the copies are good. Get some of the copies out and stored in other locations. Make more copies. Verify again. The only thing you can be sure of it that something unexpected will fail someday. Be ready for it.
One thing you said is key, sure data backups are good but if they are kept onsite, and the aforementioned natural disasters strike then backup is useless. A copy, preferably a recent one, must be kept off site
One thing you said is key, sure data backups are good but if they are kept onsite, and the aforementioned natural disasters strike then backup is useless. A copy, preferably a recent one, must be kept off site
A backup scheme always includes off-site copies, it is a given, it is expected, it is a standard practice.
RE: RAID, try re-reading my post. Your opinion on Seagate is just that, opinion, I've used nothing but Seagate in my own systems and it's all we use in our custom builds at work and we've had very good results with them.
Actually up until recently (January or so) the issue was still going on. In a nutshell, there were a specific few models of drives that had a glitch in the firmware that caused the cache to not function properly and the drive could just go off line without notice. They released a firmware update that took care of it, but on the 500GB affected drive it ended up taking good drive's offline, no data accessable at all. They released a firmware to fix that which got the drive going again with all data intact.
Didn't do much for their reputation, but it's not the sole story of fiasco in the tech world, they fixed it, end of story.
I don't know if this is the BEST solution but it works for me. First of all, I always make a sub-folder of the "C" drive and name it "Doug's Stuff". That sub-directory has all the sub-sub-directories I need to keep everything neatly organized. Then, I went to Costco and bought TWO external hard-drives (160GB each) and every time I add something crucial to my computer's hard-drive under "Doug's Stuff", I make TWO backups of it on my external hard-drives. When I am done copying my folder, I go into the copy on the externals and name them something like "Doug's Stuff_'09-04-18" so I always know when I performed my backups. With TWO separate backups, I'm fairly certain I am covered. They say that something digital doesn't really exist unless there are THREE copies of it in existence.
That's how I do it. To the original poster, I sure feel your pain; perhaps a recovery specialist can recover some of your data from the failed hard-drive.
I don't know if this is the BEST solution but it works for me. First of all, I always make a sub-folder of the "C" drive and name it "Doug's Stuff". That sub-directory has all the sub-sub-directories I need to keep everything neatly organized. Then, I went to Costco and bought TWO external hard-drives (160GB each) and every time I add something crucial to my computer's hard-drive under "Doug's Stuff", I make TWO backups of it on my external hard-drives. When I am done copying my folder, I go into the copy on the externals and name them something like "Doug's Stuff_'09-04-18" so I always know when I performed my backups. With TWO separate backups, I'm fairly certain I am covered. They say that something digital doesn't really exist unless there are THREE copies of it in existence.
That's how I do it. To the original poster, I sure feel your pain; perhaps a recovery specialist can recover some of your data from the failed hard-drive.
Hope that helps a tiny bit,
Doug
I admire your dedication, that's a good bit of work. I just use Acronis True Image and make a full drive image once a week.
I don't know if this is the BEST solution but it works for me. First of all, I always make a sub-folder of the "C" drive and name it "Doug's Stuff". That sub-directory has all the sub-sub-directories I need to keep everything neatly organized. Then, I went to Costco and bought TWO external hard-drives (160GB each) and every time I add something crucial to my computer's hard-drive under "Doug's Stuff", I make TWO backups of it on my external hard-drives. When I am done copying my folder, I go into the copy on the externals and name them something like "Doug's Stuff_'09-04-18" so I always know when I performed my backups. With TWO separate backups, I'm fairly certain I am covered. They say that something digital doesn't really exist unless there are THREE copies of it in existence.
That's how I do it. To the original poster, I sure feel your pain; perhaps a recovery specialist can recover some of your data from the failed hard-drive.
Hope that helps a tiny bit,
Doug
Where do you keep your backups? Is one off-site? You could probably do away with one of the exterals and replace it with an Internet based backup. I use Jungledisk. You can have it automatically backup your folder and even keep old versions of files.
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