No love for Windows Complete PC Backup and Restore? ;)

What's that quote? "There are two kinds of people in the world: Those who have experienced catastrophic hard drive failure, and those who *will* experience catastrophic hard drive failure."

I have been using acronis for several years now, but with a simpler strategy than outlined in the article. I simply backup everything to an external usb drive every afternoon using an Acronis scheduled job (Acronis Workstation). Acronis' ability to mount a backup image as a disk has bailed me out a few times too. Like when I've changed some source code I really didn't want to change either inadvertently or with extreme stupidity. Just mount yesterday's backup and replace the damaged files.

Honestly, I had no idea that Windows Complete PC Backup and Restore even existed:

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tutorials/tutorial145.html

Vista Business, Ultimate, Enterprise, and Smoky Bacon Edition have the full feature evidently.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/features/details/backup.mspx

My backup strategy? I post my important data in base64-encoded little chunks in the comments on the blogs of people who actually take the necessary steps to backup their data.

U3VpdGNhc2UgY29tYmluYXRpb246IDEgMiAzIDQgNQ==
RS1tYWlsIHBhc3N3b3JkOiBwYXNzd29yZDE=

I know it's usually described as NOT to be used for backups but RAID does the trick pretty well.
No hassle nor cron job to launch rsync / rdiff-backup scripts, data always in sync.
With 3 drives if you're really concerned you can for instance get a 2 HDD raid 1 array with 1 spare that would go online if one of the main drives were to fail.
Don't know about windows or mac but on linux it's fairly easy to set up using mdadm.

Mine is pretty simple. I commit everything to my LOCAL SVN repository, which is on a different disk. Periodically I back up the repository. If the repository dies, I have my working copy on a different disk -- all I lose is the history of my directory reorganizations and deletions. If my working copy dies, I get a new version from the repo. I periodically move my repository directory to a portable drive which I give to my father, and he stores it at his place. Offsite backups.

Why, oh why, didn't MS include the image tool for Home users? It really would be nice.

I have the OS on a different drive than my data, and I only backup the data drive. First to another internal drive with SyncToy, then online with Mozy, and I feel safe. (That is, after the initial 2 week upload.) If my Raptor with the OS fails, I'm looking at reinstalling my apps which is a pain, but I can deal with it.

A RAID might die if the PSU messes up, or the controller dies spectacularly. That's probably the main reason people recommend not to use it - it isn't very safe for any purpose other than protecting against mechanical failure.

My backup strategy? I have this dongle called a MacBook Pro, it runs Leopard, which in turn includes Time Machine, which in turn backs my drive up to an external drive once an hour.

Wow. It's like putting the contents of your hard drive in a CVS repository, except easier.

I use Mozy with great success for my wife's computers. I've even tested the restore! Although time consuming, it works. I'm a Mac user, so Time Machine is a great tool for me. I can't boot off the Time Machine disk, but I have history, which is nice, and I can restore my machine almost completely from a fresh install using a Time Machine backup. I've done it from bare drive to fully functioning machine in just about 3 hours.

I have used rsync to do a remote copy. Machine A running Windows 2000, cygwin, and rsyncd; machine B running Windows XP, cygwin, and rsync. I copied data from A into B before getting rid of A (and buying C :D).

So there, rsync works on Windows, and if it worked remotely with a rsync *server* both sides being Windows, it definitely works locally.

Isn't this basically the same thing as RAID-1, but allowing up to 24 hours of data to be lost, since the drive is only mirrored once per day?

I do think the advice to keep a copy in a physically separate location is very sound.

I use PathSync (http://www.cockos.com/pathsync/) to backup the important bits of 3 different computers to a little western digital USB powered drive. I do this regularly and once a week I go to my safety deposit box and swap with the other WD.

It's manual (which sucks) but it puts all the files I care about on something I know is safe.

Only problem I ever have is that PathSync doesn't play nice with certain non-ascii filenames.

Gonna have to look at Mozy, though.

I have a two-tier backup system. I do a daily backup to a NAS, with weekly backups to an offsite location with Mozy. It works like a charm, the few times I've needed to replace/reformat my hard drive, I've been able to quickly get back on my feet.

A local archive, while a good first step, is not a complete Backup Strategy. The data you care about needs to be moved off-site.

Get yourself a friend that has some space to share and buy a copy of CrashPlan (http://www.crashplan.com). It's multi-platform and will do compressed, encrypted, versioned, incremental backups over the wire to multiple destinations.

Disclaimer: I work on the product. Let that dissuade you if you will. Better to try it for free yourself.

my favorite backup related website:

http://www.taobackup.com

It makes some good points about backup strategies and is humorous as well.

The 7 heads of the Tao of Backup:
1. Coverage: back up ALL your data
2. Frequency: back up Frequently
3. Separation: Take some backups offsite
4. History: Keep some old backups
5. Testing: Periodically test your backups
6. Security: Secure your backups
7. Integrity: Make sure the data you are backing up is correct!

"But let's face it. I'm a Windows user. When I have a problem, I buy software."

True that - if you Windows users have a problem, you just chuck some $$$ at it :D

I used to be one of those people, but CLI rsync is so, so nice ;)

I typically back up to two other drives. My secret weapon? Unison - which can be found through Google or through my site. Unison is multi-platform, GUI based and it rocks. It too performs incremental backups - like a charm, letting you decide which changes to propagate. It uses multiple tools to make one application(including rsync).

I truly feel bad for those that feel that buying software is their only choice.. *cough* Jeff. :) Maybe not you... but folks, look before you pay! .. that is, unless you're growing a money tree in your backyard.

I've got software sitting in my system tray that copies any new files over to my linux home server (as a mapped network drive) every 30 minutes. Every night at 5 am, that machine uploads any new or changed files to a massive amount of FTP storage I got for cheap. Before it uploads the files, it compresses and encrypts them, for safe offsite storage. (It uses file hashes to check for changed copies).

It's nice having that setup because if I accidentally delete a file, it's right at my fingertips on my server, but yet if my house burns down I have a complete and safe offsite backup. At the same time, the FTP uploading, which is slow, is handled by my server so I can feel free to shutdown my power-guzzling desktop at night.

It's worked out really, really well. I needed a backup solution that would be complete, secure, do it's thing, and leave me alone. It's done exactly that.

An internet backup service such as Carbonite or Moxy is my preferred solution. I'm super-lazy, and these are pretty much install-and-forget type of programs. As long as I have an internet tube and the software is still installed, it's working.

That's unlike my previous solution, where...oh, did I forget to turn the external backup drive on? Did I temporarily unplug the backup drive to test my new camera? Etc.

And in case of a disaster (fire, hurricane, theft, etc.) my data is still safe.

The only downside is it costs money.

Windows Home Server has been working a treat for me, haven't encountered much that works as simply with so little effort for automatic backups.

"I'm a Windows user. When I have a problem, I buy software."

As linux user, I don't have this problem much. dd and/or rsync with a simple shell script executed as the last thing before shutdown. No fuss at all. However, I am not opposed to paying for software when needed. What I find funny is that Windows seems to lack( or have really shitty built-in versions ) basic, important stuff that you have to shell out extra for. For the license of Windows, it should include things like this.

That said, I see Vista finally has something, Windows Complete PC Backup and Restore, but of course it's in the tiered pricing lameness... Again, this kind of things should be core software across all Windows.

I have a box here with Vista Ultimate( thanks work! ) that I haven't bothered backing up( the important data is safe, yes ). I shall have to try Windows Backup and see how well it works.

Backing up my entire hard drive would be ridiculously stupid. 99.9% of my space (yes, really) is stuff I can replace with an internet connection and an hour or two to waste. A single DVD can handle all my backups for six months. Not that I would restrict myself to a single DVD, like you restrict yourself to a single HDD.

"I'm a Windows user. When I have a problem, I buy software."

Why? Ever heard of xcopy and task scheduler? Runs on my box at 3am daily. Works like a champ, even easy to restore from. Best of all, it has come with MS OS's since the glory days of DOS 5, if I recall correctly.

I haven't found an rsync port for Windows Vista that works reliably. All of them that I tried follow Junction Points and then rsync goes around and around and around in circles.

And the rsync ports that are out there are all re-packagings of the cygwin port that seem unhappy about every little thing. A native Win32 rsync would be welcome.

+1 for robocopy;

I've been using robocopy on Vista with a lot of success, although it isn't quite as awesome as rsync from the block level, it does a very good job of running every night for me.

I used backup my data to DVD. Then one day, my DVD was unreadable, DOH!

I used USB hard drives for a while, but it was too unstable: USB kept disconnecting then reconnecting at the slower speed.

My Backup Plan:

I built 2 identical linux machines (NAS1,NAS2). Each with 1 TB of RAID 0 drives.

I use Samba on NAS1 to share files with my Windows machine. Acronis True Images backups my Windows machine to the NAS1 Samba Share. Then, daily I rsync NAS1 to NAS2.

So I have a complete backup of my backup NAS. I have spare drives on hand to replace a failed drive.

My data could be lost if 1 drive in NAS1 and NAS2 failed within 6hrs (time to rebuild 1 NAS) of each other.

I used to just stick with CD/DVD backups. Does the job, if a bit inelegantly (where'd the disc from last week go, in this pile of a thousand discs!). I've since moved on, largely because my work made it rather obvious what a bad backup system can do.

Find a spare computer. They're *cheap* these days; drop by a college during their annual garage sale, and you can probably pick one up for less than ten bucks, or you can use an older one that you don't need anymore. A PCI RAID controller is optional, but it'll cost you less than twenty bucks. Three hard drives, one with an external enclosure, depending on how much space you actually need, will put you back a hundred or two. Unless you do a [i]massive[/i] amount of imagery or video editing, eighty gigabytes a drive will be more than enough. You don't need to back up your operating system and game files every day; you should have one or two DVDs worth of BartPE or your local operating system's worth of DriveXML data, and leave that so you don't have a thousand corrupted backups when a virus takes your system out or a hard drive scratch means you don't own a Mac any more.

Combine with OpenSSH (through Cygwin, for Windows users), SVN (there's a Windows version), and your operating system's favorite shell scripting and automatic timed start system, and you've got all you need to have a network-accessible, versioned, highly secure system with several points of failure.

If you really want to go nuts, a decent high-watter power-conditioning UPS will put you back less than sixty bucks, add longevity to your monitors, and make things even more secure, and combine that with 9 bucks a month worth of web storage with your web host, but chances are good even that would be unnecessary.

OMG... I have not backed up for a while... let me do it fast.

For Macs, SuperDuper (http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html) is a great app that makes an exact, bootable copy of your HD to an external drive. The basic version is free, and if you like it you can pay a few bucks to upgrade to the full version (which does nice things like copy only changed files on subsequent backups so the job runs faster). It runs right in OS X so you don't need downtime to reboot.

I use Time Machine for automatic, local, versioned backups and rsync to my remote server for my offsite backup. I'm also using rsync+OSXCrypt for a USB thumb drive backup of document scans.

I've played with JungleDisk to S3, but it was flaky and now with so many GBs of data, S3 is not so cheap.

Oh, and for those who think RAID's useless :

The average lifespan of a hard drive is, depending on manufacturer and type, five years. This is an *average*. In practice, hard drives tend to follow a "bathtub curve" of failure; new drives have a higher risk of failure because there is a known potential for manufacturing errors to creep in and result in lost data. While this is fairly rare, it is not an unknown. Moreover, these early failures tend to be catastrophic, rather than minor; large scratches rather than single bad sectors.

Nothing says fun like losing days or weeks worth of backup data (if you have a secondary backup) or, worse, losing all of it, a few months after putting your system into place. RAID set-ups are cheap, and they're quite effective against hard drive death.

I was lucky to have made a snapshot of a large and critical code repository the day before a laid off employee deleted the entire source tree in vengeance. Backups were spotty and scarce, but I learned the lesson the easy way (and in my first week on the job right out of college!).

I've rarely had to restore from backup due to a hardware failure, but corruption of data, brain farts, and even malicious behavior have caused many a restore.

Now if I only had a backup of my 250GB external USB drive from two months ago, I wouldn't be reconstructing my data from the many smaller, dated backups on aged hard drives. :-(

Lesson learned.... again.

I use FolderShare to copy important stuff (actually, whole "My Documents") to 2 other computers, one of same location and another is on different contienent.

I don't really care too much on when the data is backed up, if they are important, they should have sit on my computer for long time. They should sit long enough that FolderShare should already kicked in and do the backup for me.

I agree with J.Stoever, most of the stuff I got on my PC can be installed from Internet (except Visual Studio). If my harddisk is down, I don't see that urgent to get my PC working again within 5 minutes. Rather, I could rebuild my PC with software over the Internet within 5 hours. And what I get is the miracle of reinstallation: your PC with its best performance!

"Acronis will allow you to create a new, hidden partition to store a complete backup image"

The point being? You can lose your real data _and_ your backup all at once when your drive fails, hooray! Backing up to the same drive is little more than Windows Restore Points, it's certainly not a backup plan.

Mike Rubel has a nice article on his site explaining how to do Apple Timemachine style snapshots using rsync.

http://www.mikerubel.org/computers/rsync_snapshots/

This is a timely discussion. A member of my extended family phoned on Sunday saying their windows xp machine won't boot, with an error message about a disk problem. The most recent backup was 1 year old. I was able to boot into knoppix and recover most of the files they cared about (I probably could have used WinPE if I was 3133t). Now that the files are backed up I'll probably try a boot-to-xp and "repair" (but I wanted to have the files before I tried this). Makes me want to re-visit my SVN-based backup strategy to make sure it is rock-solid.

"Did I mention that Jamie is a funny guy?"

From http://www.jwz.org/xscreensaver/download.html:

"Microsoft killed my company, and I hold a personal grudge."

I use second copy. I configure it to backup my documents directory every couple of hours. I have it configured to do a simple copy and it replaces new and changed files. It also supports more complex sync's like deleting files in the backup that are deleted in the source. I have a USB drive as my backup. My important files like Quicken I also backup into a second directory and then use Nero to do an incremental backup to a CDR.

http://www.secondcopy.com/, $30 for a single license.

I really need to get into the habit of maintaining a disciplined backup routine. It's never really been my strong point. Honestly, I think there's something to be said for actually going through a catestrophic loss of data; all my friends who have done that once in their lives now have a bullet-proof backup strategy. I haven't been burned yet, and thus it's tough for me to get serious about getting a backup plan in places, even though intellectually I know that odds are I'm due for a crash. As jamie says, "the universe trends towards maximum irony".

I'm shocked you don't use the standard Vista Imaging stuff, or Windows Home Server. There's lots of options.

Microsoft SyncToy (powertoy downloadable from their website) is also a snazzy GUI tool I use for weekly backups.

more like an advertisement of Acronis :D
On Winodws I don't backup at all...important files are already under version control...
It always feels nice (if necessary) to wipe out everything and do a fresh install.

XDelta is a CLI backup similar to rsync but with improved compression and speed, plus works across all platforms. Too bad it's not included natively in anything. ;_; That rsync gui is neat.

Mozy is my offsite. If my house burns down, I have more important things to worry about than having every single thing I ever downloaded, let alone all the ginormous working files. But a local drive does back that up, it's reasonably fast. Finally convinced myself after a few near-misses that it's insane not to.

Oh yeah, the trouble with user-mode windows backups (anything CLI especially) is that you won't get the registry while it's in use, as well as any other files exclusively opened or you don't have permission to see. Offline backups are way too much hassle, so make sure you get something that uses Volume Shadow Services.

"If you are using a Mac, the command you use to back up is this:

sudo rsync -vaxE --delete --ignore-errors / /Volumes/Backup/

If you're using Linux, it's something a lot like that. If you're using Windows, go f*ck yourself."

Haha! class :)

Funny thing is, even after several failures, I do not regularly back up my data.

Another Mozy user here... it works ok for me. I do not back up everything... just the data that cannot be replaced. Right now I have about 90GB of that and Mozy backs that up just fine. Just be patient when it does the initial backup.

Since Mozy will only back up one computer (technically local drives + USB connected drives on the local PC), something you can do is to sync all your files the PC that has Mozy (use Synctoy, SyncBackSE, etc.)

I'm in the process of storing everything I ever own (digitally, of course) on to Amazon S3, using S3 Backup for Windows. I believe there's a well written ruby script for it too if you're on *nix.

I dislike JungleDisk because it is a lock-in. JD has it own conventions for naming data on S3, so if the author ever pulls support, it'll be a hassle.

RAID-1 is actually the best insurance against hard drive failures. I'm currently running RAID-5 on an array of 4 250 GB drives right now and rather paranoid about the controller dying and not being able to find an exact replacement.

I use Windows XP. I backup anything I wook on daily to a second HD in each PC. Weekly I backup to 2nd HDs on other PCs and external drives. Every once in a while I do an image of my C drive (operating system and installed software, all data is on D or elsewhere).

Tools:
- Beyond Compare
- Ghost
- Various source control softwares, depending on the project and client, some local, some off site
- SQL Server built-in backup

I used to back up documents and even databases to source control, but it just seemed like an extra step for something that can't be usefully compared anyway. Now I just keep the folders backed up to other drives. The exception to this is project documentation, which I keep with the source, regardless of type, and which may have useful comments tied to the check-in.

Oh, once every couple of months (I hope -- I should really make a set schedule for this) I take a hard disk (and sometimes a DVD or 2) to a safety deposit box at my local bank for off-site backup.

1. Buy a Windows Home Server machine (mine's the HP MediaSmart Server).

2. Install client app on each PC.

3. Sleep soundly knowing each PC is backed up fully every night.

Seriously, the WHS machine is the best investment I've ever made because while I can go through setting up scheduled tasks and installing various software bits and configuring various things I'm too lazy (and my time is better spent on paying projects) and setting up WHS took all of 10 minutes, plus I have a full backup of all the machines in my house with a restore so easy my wife can do it even if I'm not around to help.

I can't get myself to use online data storage for backing up sensitive personal data, such as credit card info, accounts and passwords, etc. I read about breaches and leaks too often.

My backup strategy for my code at work (all automated I might add):

1. All projects are in Subversion repositories on a dedicated server.
2. The Subversion server locally makes zipped archives of all repositories daily, and keeps rolling weekly and monthly copies as well.
3. The Subversion server is backed up to tape.
4. My checkouts of those repositories on my development PC are backed up daily as zip archives.
5. Those zip archives are copied to a NAS, which is also backed up to tape.
6. Those zip archives are weekly uploaded to my home server.
7. The deployed code on the production application server is also backed up as zip archives and backed up to tape.

I never thought about it, but when I type it out, it seems paranoid... :-)

OS X Leopard users can just use Time Machine. Plug in an external drive, click the "Ok, use this drive for time machine button" and that's about it.

Although SuperDuper is still useful as a bootable backup (I have a 10.4.10 bootable partition, a partition for the Aperture library backup and a few other things like my completed video-projects and one for the bootcamp backup image)

Aside from the laptop OS backup, I generally just copy important files to several drives, and sometimes to DVDs

"5) If you're on a Mac, that backup drive will be bootable. That means that when (WHEN) your internal drive scorches itself, you can just take your backup drive and put it in your computer and go. This is nice."

Good quote. Thank you for quoting that.

"7) That third drive? Do a backup onto it the same way, then take that to your office and lock it in a desk. Every few months, bring it home, do a backup, and immediately take it away again. This is your "my house burned down" backup."

Good quote. Thank you for quoting that.

"You don't even technically need a second or third hard drive; if you have a large enough primary drive, Acronis will allow you to create a new, hidden partition to store a complete backup image."

Oh. Um. Out of curiosity, why did you quote those two previous bits of advice?

I keep disk images of a clean OS installs that can be restored onto my MacBook Pro in a few minutes. Every major OS X version except 10.0, one Vista and an XP I probably still have my 98SE image.

Also a bootable 500GB TimeMachine disk, another spare/unused 500GB disk that could be used for backups whenever I start needing it. Nothing offsite tho, if my house burns down I have more important stuff to care about than my data.

When my harddisk fails I'm can theoretically be up and running again in 15 to 30 minutes. I learned my lesson at the last harddrive that went suicidal on me.

> You don't even technically need a second or third hard drive; if you
> have a large enough primary drive, Acronis will allow you to create a
> new, hidden partition to store a complete backup image.

You must be crazy :)

Storing the backup on the same harddrive from where that backup is made? That's by far the worst backup-strategy ever and should not even be mentioned in any case (as someone might take it seriously).

Windows Home Server. No work necessary.

1) each night it does a incremental backup of all 4 computers
2) i can backup the backups to an external USB drive and take to work once a month
3) use Mozy/Carbonie for critical files (like my life would be ruined if I lost them)
4) use FolderShare to replicate C:\users\omars\documents to all my computers

I have several computers, my primary work computer is a Windows box; each weekend a script is executed, it uses a program called nnBackup (see nncron.ru):
- it retrieves files from certain directories (email, IM, etc)
- compresses them
- uploads them to another computer
- keeping a queue of last N backups (in my case N=3)

This tool is also able to do one-way and two-way synchronization, but in my case it doesn't really work, and I am not sure whether it is my not RTFM'ing or a known issue (if I added a single file to a dir with many files, instead of uploading just the new file, it uploads all of them).

The program has a tonn of command line parameters and is extremely flexible.

It is free for ex-USSR residents, otherwise you have to pay. It's one of the rare cases in which I can say I was born there :-)

rsync is easy enough to install as part of cygwin. I can't do without cygwin on a windows box anyway.

rsync is also very handy for syncing files between work and home - or to some ssh accessible storage location in the "cloud". yeah there are tools for that too but I haven't found any that I'm happy with and that are as simple as rsync.
I like acronis too but I find it more useful for things like taking images of a system drive in case you need to revert because some crappy app broke the registry or something like that.

plenty of piratebay searches on Acronis after an article like this.

I created a robocopy script that copied all my data to external drive. I do this full backup every month or so, then I take to work and keep it there, so it doesn't get lost when my home burnes or computer is stolen.

For intermittent hard drive problems, I have RAID 5 built from 4 400 GB SATA II drives, so I don't care if one of them blows up.

This seemed a little off to me:

"You don't even technically need a second or third hard drive; if you have a large enough primary drive, Acronis will allow you to create a new, hidden partition to store a complete backup image."

Backing up your disk on the same disk just protects you from user fuckups where you delete something you shouldn't have deleted.

If your disk fails, and your backup is on that disk too, well...

I'm using 2 external disks at home with some bat files :)

I just keep my fingers crossed.

unison and & cheap NAS also does the trick. unison runs with or without gui, so use it without gui and as scheduled task in windows.

i only backup data. with wpkg you can do automated installaion of the system again and again.

Backup strategy:

Windows Home Server + JungleDisk for WHS.

Set it and forget it.

The week before last, some undesireable got into my house and stole my laptop and my work laptop, much to my irritation and triggering a shortlived desire to kill everything within arm's reach.

Fortunately all the data on those machines is stored in the following places:

1. The computer upstairs that they didn't get
2. My server upstairs which they wouldn't be able to carry
3. rsync.net
4. Work

So when I get a new one I just have to copy the data back again and continue where I left off.

The offsite backup strategy is so important now we're all slightly obsessed with owning laptops. You can make mirror images of your HDD to hidden partitions and use the "undo" feature of your favourite OS's filesystem... but it's not much help if your laptop is in someone else's house being erased and re-installed or sold in the local pawn shop.

So the offiste backup isn't incase your house burns down, it's incase someone steals your computer, or you lose it.

Just watch that incremental backups don't cure against "user is a moron and deleted stuff without realising for a few days" disease. Your automated backup will faithfully propagate your error.

Christopeher Finke wrote: ...base64-encoded little chunks...

LOL! But where /is/ your suitcase...?

I thought it was:

"I am a Windows user, I get a cracked CD from a mate"
"I am a Mac user, I'd buy software if I could afford it after buying the dongle"
"I am a Linux user, I fork my own software from sourceforge"

As George Kostanza once said, "Flame on!"

Vista has "Backup and Restore" capability. Look in the control panel.

Huge issue in South Africa is that we pay-for-use with bandwidth. You pay for xGb per month with DSL. This pretty much does away with offsite backups over the net - simply way to expensive ito bandwidth.

At friend of mine lives not too far away. I've setup a $200 WLAN with directional antennas and Linksys WRTs. We each have a spare (old) workstation at each other's houses which are used as offsite backup. I don't have a pressing need for a drive mirror with OS and everything, so we both have scheduled jobs which FTP new and changed files repeatedly. As soon as the job is finished, it starts again.

Works like a dream.

Backup strategy? What backup strategy? OH SHI-

I have become very paranoid about backups in the last year, having had lost so much data to disk errors or in some cases, stupidity. The problem for me is that I work with terabytes of image data. It's actually getting to a point now where it's cost-effective to use external disks for that volume of data, but in truth I have a system which is a hybrid of the above techniques. I mirror long term stuff to an external disk using synctoy everyday. I use jungledisk for smaller crucial stuff, like project files, and this also keeps six months worth of revisions. The CVS I use (which in itself is a backup system of sorts) is backed up to LTO3 tapes once a month. And finally I use time machine, but this is purely for the system disk.

This is all good, but the problems begin again once your valuable data exceeds the size of your drives. Say, you work with digital video, you will regularly run into this situation. Then you can either replace all of your drives with bigger drives, or you have this whole mess with special backup HDDs, piles of DVDs that might become unreadable over time, etc.

I'm using rsync with a nice (self-written) script that at first wakes up the destination computer via wol and then backups different dirs.

It's scheduled via crontab.

rsync is not like incremental backup.
It's more like efficient full backup.
I.E. after you do the rsync you only have the latest version.
Here is the rsync command I use to backup over the company LAN:
http://www.pixelbeat.org/docs/hard_disk_reliability/

One can do incremental backups with the rsync protocol using:
http://rdiff-backup.stanford.edu/duplicity.html
http://www.dirvish.org/

I find doing a full backup from my laptop to external disk
is more flexible using tools other than rsync:
http://www.pixelbeat.org/systems/usb_backup/

Regarding SuperDuper! for Macintosh, please bear in mind that it's still not Leopard Compatible (Dave is working hard to make sure it works). Alternatively you can try Carbon Copy Cloner (google for it) which will do the same (for free), yet with less features.

For Windows, I have been using SyncBack for ages and it just works. I use the freeware version: http://www.2brightsparks.com/freeware/freeware-hub.html but there's a more powerful version available.

It's funny that nobody mentioned the most basic backup tool available in Windows: "ntbackup". For all intent and purpose, ntbackup just works.

NTBackup can backup and restore Windows System State, Registry Clusters, Active Directory, Exchange Server Databases, it supports Volume Shadow Copy (VSS), ASR (Automated System Recovery) and can use tapes easily. It's also easy to schedule and script via the commandline and can perform Differential, Incrementals and Full backups. NTBackup is just like the UNIX dump(backup/fbackup/mksysb etc) commands. Powerful, always there and always ignored.

The good part about ntbackup is that most systems have it (and you can get the .msi for the others), so restoring shouldn't be an issue.

If you are using Windows Vista Windows (Business, Enterprise or Ultimate), Complete PC Backup and Restore will works similar to Norton Ghost along side Automatic Backup and System Restore.

I should also note that rsync (or ROBOCOPY) are NOT backup tools. rdiff/rsnapshot/rsync with snapshots or rsync-snapshot do come closer to that concept though. Just cloning files isn't enough. You need to archive and store them (or use a snapshot capable filesystem).

Also, you shouldn't rely on just one layer of backups. You don't need something like bare metal recovery (eg: Ghost) to restore just 1 deleted file. You don't want to wait 8 hours to restore a disk image just for a failed disk. It's a combination of high availability technology (RAID) with file backup features like VSS or System Restore , your backup server / media that will backup individual files and the bare metal recovery media (stuff like Acronis, Ghost, Windows Complete PC Backup, etc).

Just a word of caution though: backups aren't important. Restoring them is what counts :-). So it's generally a good idea to test your backups, see if they actually do what they're supposed to. Create a backup policy, test it then stick to it.

One thing that pushed me towards a bootable mirror of my main disk was the time it takes to restore my system from the install disks. It took me the best part of a day to wipe and reinstall my iMac, and that was without restoring my data. I have better things to do with my time than watch progress bars all day!

I settled on SuperDuper in the end. The longer story is here:

http://www.zx81.org.uk/computing/opinion/backup.html

Now with Leopard I like the look of Time Machine, but I'll probably still keep a mirror around, perhaps off-site.

jwz said: Option 1: Learn not to care about your data. Don't save any old email, use a film camera, and only listen to physical CDs and not MP3s. If you have no possessions, you have nothing to lose.

jeff said: This is obviously meant as satire

Actually, it's not satire, it's a concept in Buddhism. Losing stuff makes you suffer, and the goal's to eliminate suffering.

LOL @ Christopeher Finke

clever :)

Why do so many people think RAID mirroring etc provides even remotely suitable backup? Drive failure is only a relatively infrequent cause for me having to do restores for people. It's usually due to corruptions, deletions, viruses, stupidity, dangerous-users*, etc, and a RAID will cheerfully reproduce that across the whole array.

*for example, someone cataloging all their images in Picasa/Lightroom/etc and then deleting all the jpegs off their PC

http://www.aboutmyip.com/AboutMyXApp/DeltaCopy.jsp

> I'm a Windows user. When I have a problem, I buy software.

I’m a Mac user, and I often do the same thing. I’ll second the votes for SuperDuper. I had a go at making rsync do my back-up stuff for me, but I couldn’t figure it out enough to trust it.

SuperDuper saved my ass when my hard drive did go south.

I've used Acronis for years to keep 3 or 4 computers backed up. Images to an external hard drive are fast and reliable. It's a good idea to have a cloned HD handy too, because one day your external HD will also fail and you'll lose all of your backup images and data. (Of course, we all hope we just don't lose everything at once.)

Just last night, my most important software stopped loading. Reinstalling it didn't help, so I restored an Acronis image from about 6 weeks ago. Took about 15 minutes for the restoration and all updates.

Acronis True Image is without a doubt, Best In Class.

cwRsync is a handy packaging of rsync/rsyncd if you want to run rsync on Windows, but don't want to have any other cygwin applications.

Also, backing up to "another partition of a single drive" is only half a backup. It protects you from basic stupidity, but not mechanical failure. The important thing to remember is that a $100 external drive from your favorite computer store is a lot less than a $5000 data recovery attempt which comes with no guarantees. If your data is worth $100, then buy another drive and back up to it.

IMO, Mozy FTW. It's easy to install, cheap, capacious, and pretty close to foolproof. If you're paying for massive amounts of bandwidth, why not use a smidge of it to give you secure, managed offsite backups rather than rolling your own? If there's a house fire, the guy with two extra drives on his desk is screwed, while all I have to do is go to Mozy.com with my new PC and pull down all my critical files.

Daily backup copy of my current work folder on a thumbdrive, and an every Sunday evening backup of everything on a Western Digital My Book.

So far I have not found a good online backup system. Some people say Mozy is good but if you do some searching there are many horror stories of people having trouble restoring from it. Also, the client software sucks.

At the moment I use a script with SyncToy (free from Microsoft) and Truescrypt to back up to an encrypted external drive. I used to use DriveImage XML for imaging my system drive, but switched to Ghost. It's old but very reliable. It doesn't pollute your system like Acronis does either.

An ideal solution would be a wifi link to a neighbour, with whom you can exchange backups. Problem is I don't know anyone living close enough who I trust enough to do it with :(

I think a backup strategy (including off-site) should be used in combination with RAID 1 to protect against hard drive failures. Of course, I figured this out after my hard drive died. You can read more about my experience at
http://www.basilv.com/psd/blog/2006/digital-disaster-preparing-for-a-hard-drive-crash

Concerning RAID: You learn quickly how good a RAID (no matter which level) will serve for backup purposes when you discover that it will not only mirror your data in milliseconds, but also your deletions. So, after an accidental del /s *.* or rm -rf * in the wrong directory, you'll be crying for a _real_ backup, not a RAID.

I prefer TrueImage for a system drive image (always divide into at least 2 partitions - one for system & programs, one for data) every some weeks (beats dd by compression), unison to keep a copy on the fileserver up to date and rsync (cwrsync, only needs one cygwin dll to be operative) to backup incrementally to three external USB disks.

I'm using a handy script called rsyncbackup.vbs from a computer magazine which will - on NTFS formatted external disks - make rsync hardlink all files which are already present. So you get a full backup for the cost of an incremental one. Cool, but only commented in german: ftp://ftp.heise.de/pub/ct/listings/0609-126.zip

Backing up the windows registry:-

I was told the best way to do this is to install windows again on the machine and make it dual boot to a different windows home.

Then boot to this windows install and back everything up.

Restore becomes, create vanilla windows in the alternate home, restore backup, dual boot it back.

I've never done this but it's how a friend used to back his windows machines up.

HTH

Hey Now Jeff,
This was a real good PSA. I also like to make data DVD's of personal media file (pix & flix) in addition to an extra drive. Some day everyone will have a home server.
Coding Horror Fan,
Catto

Anyone have any tips on how to make those backup drives encrypted, such that all normal operations (such as rsync) work as normal? If I was to keep a backup drive at work (or in my car, or any other place it could get lost or stolen), I'm going to want that encrypted.

Anyway, I've always just burned selected files that are truly important to CDs (which, if the surface is protected, are immune to magnetic and kinetic damage, though they will probably degrade over time). And I've never had a sudden catastrophic failure of a drive, it was always gradual or had warning signs [:knocks vigorously on wood:]. (RAID1+ helps here!)

Also, is it worth it to use external SATA connections to drives? I'd be inclined to just use USB even on a desktop. Even if it's slow, the backup write will be running in the background.

Instead of a complete hard drive backup (since most of the stuff on the hard drive is applications I can easily re-install) I just backup my important data every night to smaller media such as a DVD-R or USB thumb drive. I then place my backup in my fire/water proof lock box.

Might I humbly suggest HoboCopy? I wrote it to be a very simple version of Robocopy with the added benefit that it can copy files that are in use. Useful if, like me, you can never remember to close Outlook when you're done for the night.

http://www.pluralsight.com/wiki/default.aspx/Craig/HoboCopy.html

Encryption: TrueCrypt (www.truecrypt.org). Unfortunately, you don't have to throw money at it, nevertheless works like a charm.

Cylindric said: "for example, someone cataloging all their images in Picasa/Lightroom/etc and then deleting all the jpegs off their PC"

This is why I have to deinstall Picasa for my mother-in-law; the idea that those things only add, display and sort metadata is probably something most users can't get their minds around yet.

I use SyncBack from 2BrightSparks on my Windows machines. The free version I use at my various clients to backup code to a USB flashdrive. The paid for version I use at home to backup to an external USB HD.

I use this rsync method already on my file servers. Mirroring doesn't help prevent filesystem corruption or accidentally deleted files. Then for windows computers(win32 not x64) the powertoy from MS synctool works great and is able to be automated.

Time Machine. It's a beautiful thing.

I use to use tar with my Mac. I had it set with cron to do a backup three times per week with rotating sets of data. I could have used rsync, but this way, I could compress my data as it is tarred, so it didn't take up so much room on the drive.

However, I've switched to Time Machine which can't be beat. It's completely automatic, and it is extremely easy to restore a file after you delete it. I can even restore individual emails and address book entries. How cool is that? I have a 160 Gigabyte FireWire drive on my desk backing up a 80 Gigabyte hard drive. I am thinking of getting two more and see if I can rotate between them. That would allow me to take one drive "off site" in case of a meteor attack.

(A meteor attack is a term to explain what happens if the physical location where the computer is located is destroyed by a meteor crashing through the roof, fire, or flood. Off site backups allow you to recover in such an incident. Yes, of the three disasters, a meteor is probably the least likely, but it's the most colorful. Thus, helps people remember and think about it.)

For PCs, I recommend Mozy. I find that it doesn't work well with Macs, but it's great for PCs. And, the backup is off site, so you don't have to worry about a meteor attack.

Worth mentioning these freeware solutions for Windows.

Drive Image XML
http://www.runtime.org/dixml.htm

XXClone
http://www.pixelab.com/

>But let's face it. I'm a Windows user. When I have a problem, I buy software.

English translation: "I'm an idiot."

For instance, about 5 minutes of surfing brought me an easy to install Free Software version of rsync for Windows at http://www.itefix.no/phpws/index.php?module=pagemaster&PAGE_user_op=view_page&PAGE_id=6&MMN_position=23:23

Being Free Software, I do not have to worry about:
o purposely hidden security or privacy holes (malware, callhomes, etc) that no one knows about.
o *accidentally* hidden security or privacy holes that only highly-motivated sociopaths with hex editors and kernel debug tools can find.
o digging into the kid's college fund to purchase it.
o having to do so *again* every time Microsoft releases a new OS or Intel comes up with a new hard drive communcations standard.

Backup:
1.) Use Vista's native backup to image entire drive to a second HD periodically
2.) Use Vista's native backup to image entire drive to an external USB drive less frequency and store it offsite
3.) Use Vista's "media" backup solution for data files like mp3, docs, and pics (saves a version history like Time Machine or source control)
4.) Periodically store all media files offsite

I'll have to second foldershare. It's free and it just works. I have it installed on all of my home computers and one of my computers at work and it keeps copies of my photos and other personal files up to date and in sync with minimal fuss.

It has the added benefit that I can pull pics off my camera on any of my computers and they'll be available soon on the other ones.

For the technically inclined, a great, free utility that will make mirror copies of a drive (minus Registry/system files/meta files: you can use NTBackup for that) is XXCopy at www.XXCopy.com -- I've been using this one for the past year now and it's great. the /CLONE option uses incremental backup strategies.

If you combine rsync with copying to hard links, you can get the appearance of full backups for the storage price of incremental. Currently I have 6 months of daily backups online, and I can go back to any day using only about 3X the storage of the original data. Both the original data and the backups are full mirror RAID arrays. I can also adjust it to do it more than daily if I want, but that seems to be enough.

My favorite backup setup for off site was a system where we had fully mirrored drives with 3 drives instead of 2 in the mirror. Since they were hot swappable, we just yanked a drive, and stuck in a new one, then backups took place transparently.

As some one said a mile up higher, once you are burned you learn. I lost both my HDD's with in 6 hours, my wife lost her laptop HD 2 days later. Maximum irony, oh yeah. So I went out and bought 2 500G sata drives, as well as an external 500G drive. Raid 1 for the box and a weekly full back up. I may have to start doing a daily incremental as I am now using it for more than music and video storage. Thanks for all the info on other programs...

C

Three words Jeff: Windows Home Server.

Works like a dream and its hassle free.

I'm a Windows user. When I have a problem, I search like heck for freeware. If and only if I can't find any freeware that does what I want, I reluctantly, reluctantly pry open my pocketbook for software. This seldom happens.

One time that it did though, was when I paid for MirrorFolder (http://www.techsoftpl.com/backup/index.php). I have Acronis TI & I like it, but I think it's a bit bloated for an app I run every day. MirrorFolder is lean and mean, and a real Swiss-Army knife for backups. All my documents are RAID-style mirrored to an external drive, and also periodically backed up to a network drive, all without any intervention. I set it up, then just forgot about it, and it has yet to let me down. Well worth the $40.

So, uh, I might be late to the party but I just wanted to ask you why you changed your font to the completely unreadable mess it is today. Thanks :)

For an open source solution that is very worth looking at you might have a look at Restore http://restore-backup.com. Currently the # rated enterprise backup solution on Sourceforge.

I've spent my fair share of time dealing with "backup software" and the like and the that bothered me with a lot of them was that if my system crashed, I had to first get Windows up and running, and THEN use the restore client to bring back all my data. Then there was the whole hassle of registry key fudgery and the like.

That's why I fell in love with Acronis. It is a fast and powerful full image of the computer that can be restored in a disaster using a recovery CD. On top of that, I can always mount the image as a drive letter if I accidentally wipe out my music files and need to restore just that.

I peeked at that link to DriveImage XML and it seems to have a lot of the same benefits. I might have to try that out since my wife's laptop is now on Vista and our license is only for XP.

Or you could try Norton Save & Restore/Norton Ghost/Backup Exec System Recovery (Desktop Edition). P2V and restore anywhere in the Backup Exec edition are great for a moving to a new computer without losing your old system.

I'm giggling at all the "Buy WHS, problem solved" responses. It seems like half of the "I'm posting to say I'm protected" posts are quite comfortable with their data security despite the fact that they have no off-site backups. Unless WHS is fireproof, waterproof, and anything-else-extreme-proof, your data is gone when the house burns, floods, collapses, or anything else unspeakable happens.

That said, I don't do offsite backups either, but at least I know I'm unprepared.

As a Windows user, I don't spend a dime. I create a batch file like so:

xcopy [my directories] f:\backup /v /e /c /y

and use the windows task scheduler to make it happen at the decidedly non-peak hour of 3:00 am every morning.

Simple. Easy. Works.

If you want to get fancy, I suppose you could use vbscript or jscript. I never do.

"You don't even technically need a second or third hard drive; if you have a large enough primary drive, Acronis will allow you to create a new, hidden partition to store a complete backup image."

I would disagree with this since I had an old hard drive stop spinning last year.

>I've spent my fair share of time dealing with "backup software" and
>the like and the that bothered me with a lot of them was that if my
>system crashed, I had to first get Windows up and running, and THEN
>use the restore client to bring back all my data.

If you are running Vista, that won't help. As soon as you change out the hard drive, you have to buy a new copy of the OS anyway.

First off, if I'm reading a nice article that half way through says windows users should go f--- themselves I will close the window and delete the link. Sorry, arrogance will only get you so far.

That being said, I've never lost my HD... yet. I do a full backup once a month via Robocopy which has a nice mirror feature. The backup is on an external HD which I keep in my desk and take with me when I travel, though I think I will add a second drive for an 'at work' backup.

One other thing you can do. Anything that is so important you can't risk even the time for a backup, keep it on a pendrive and keep it with you at all times. Get in the habit of checking your pocket for it every time you get your wallet, don't keep it on your key chain. You'll have to replace it once a year and you really have to be sure you have it, but you'll never lose your truly important stuff.

---If you are running Vista, that won't help. As soon as you change out the hard drive, you have to buy a new copy of the OS anyway.

Waaa?

You have to *reactivate it*, if you've had changed enough of the hardware at once. Just changing the hard drive alone, however, won't cause this : you have to change both the hard drive and your memory, or your motherboard, or otherwise make some pretty significant changes. Even if you make significant changes beyond this, you can legally reactivate the machine. With a normal license, you can do the first five activations over the internet, and I've yet to hear of anyone hitting the limit on phone activations even with OEM licenses.

Microsoft has an FAQ on this specifically because of the amount of misinformation out there.

Vista's antipiracy crap is a pain in the backside, irritating, and frustrating, but it's not going to require you to purchase a spare license *that* fast.

1. build a custom storage server for like less than 800$
2. install Windows Home Server on it
3. be happy :)

One major things almost everyone forgots.
If you cannot restore you have NO backup!

Do you know how to restore a single file or your whole system?
Do you have the needed bootable disks around to get the system in a state where you can use the backup?
Have you ever tested the backup and done periodic tests?

Answer no to any of those and you just slightly above those not doing backups of any kind.

BTW RAID is not backup it is a method to keep the system running.

I partition out a drive for data.

all my programs save to directories on the partition.
I move all of the silly windows directories over to the partition.
(my documents, desktop...) using tweakui

I have a maintenance account which is an administrator, and i sign into that, and copy the entire partition to a DVD once a month.

then I restore it on a scratch drive on another computer, so I'm sure i can later.

Just a reminder - if you live in New Orleans, don't put your off-site backup in your safety deposit box. They aren't waterproof.

Vista's Complete PC Backup and Restore works nicely for me. If you're going to go holier than thou on Windows (like Jamie Zawinski), you should probably know what you're talking about first.

I backup my data to compact discs every once in a while. I have spare computers so I'm not out of business if my primary PC dies. I keep some data on a thumb drive. My backup procedures are sporadic and inefficient. My main hard drive is a removable drive so I can swap it out easily but that is mostly for running different operating systems.

Acronis is indeed nice; too bad I can't schedule it to run an incremental backup at logoff...

So now Acronis backs up my system at logon...

And SyncBackSE (http://www.2brightsparks.com/syncback/syncback-hub.html) backs up all my music, email and documents at logoff, which of course is better because at log off you stopped using the computer, so the backup is out of your way.

But all in all it's worth it :)

>You have to *reactivate it*, if you've had changed enough of the
>hardware at once. Just changing the hard drive alone, however, won't
>cause this : you have to change both the hard drive and your memory,
...
>legally reactivate the machine. With a normal license, you can do
>the first five activations over the internet, and I've yet to hear
>of anyone hitting the limit on phone activations even with OEM
>licenses.

OK. I went and reread the Microsoft FAQ on this, and you are almost entirely correct. The thing is there is a lot of uncertianty in there (purposely). For instance, if you activate and then upgrade your video card, then your hard drive dies, is that enough to invalidate your activation? Microsoft won't say, so you'd have to try it.

Secondly, I kept my last OS (Win2K) for about 7 years. During that time it went through at least 4 or 5 motherboards (more if you count the faulty ones). In fact, its still in use on a secondary machine in my house. So will I burn through 5 Vista reactivations at some point? Almost certianly.

Thirdly, I, like most system upgraders and retail PC purchasers (read: "almost all Vista users"), got my copy as an OEM copy. Will I get the same extra free activations as a retail box purchaser is said to get? I suspect no. The FAQ isn't clear. I'm not real anxious to find out the answer first hand. (It gets even more complicated here, depending on whether your OEM preactivated for you or not).

Really the best option would be to hide my hard drive from Vista entirely by using a RAID.

Mozy rocks. Internet backup is the best backup solution in my opinion. Sure, you can backup to that special drive on the top of your desk. However, what are you going to do when your house burns down or floods? Can you say: "100 gig of family photos and ditigal music GONE". This would be a HUGE disaster for me. We all need to learn that "backing up" is not enough, we need to prepare ourselves for disaster by backing up to an offsite location.

There's this thing called RAID 1? Yeah. For a reasonable amount of money you can even get a Real RAID Card that does it in hardware instead of the junk that comes on motherboards these days, and it's even faster reading than a single drive.

I used to back stuff up on removable hard drives. Partly because I used to live in South Florida and between the heat and humidity, CD-Rs would basically anneal themselves and self erase over time (one music CD from a touring band ended up getting erased although a surfer band from AL isn't the most popular thing, they're gone, a replacement is unavailable at any cost, and my disc is a coaster). And partly because I used to also just take the HD out of retired computers.

Sadly, my house was broken into just over a year ago, and all of my removable hard drives were stolen (along with a PDA, all my DVDs {no CDs tho} and a fireproof box with birth certs and old photos). That collection of removable hard drives getting stolen represents the loss of the last decade of stuff I was working on at home as well as stuff that was downloaded and is no longer available anywhere. I know because more than one academic project that I was interested in has been sold to a commercial company and all "open" or "free" copies of the early works are now gone (and even from archive.org). One such example is LEDA.

I don't see Disk ARchive or DAR (http://dar.linux.free.fr/) on anyone's lists. Am I the only person that uses it for incremental backups?

Is there something wrong with it? You guys have got me worried!

That said I did manage to restore my configuration from it when I farked my Linux install, it can't be that bad...

I've been a MOZY user for about 6 months and I'm very happy with it.

It lacks the 'complete image' capability (though a simple RAID configuration can solve that for you), but for backing up raw data like pictures, music, etc, it's perfect.

$5 a month, unlimited. Can't beat that!

Hi Jeff,

We constantly get customers contacting our tech support because they've just lost everything. And I personally many people who have absolutely no backup plans. With years of pictures on a hard drive that can't have much life left...

In regards to plans, let me offer a few more suggestions.

- Have an external HD that you don't keep at home/office, for quick off-site restoring. Just in case you get robbed, etc.

- I recommend an online backup service so that you can store your files remotely. As a last precaution.

- Always always use mirrored raid drive systems. The risks are just too high. It's worth the money. All it takes is one time.

Great article Jeff. Hopefully it will save some people from the pain of losing their data.

Syncing data to a second hard disk (or partition) may be a good idea if you need to reconfigure or upgrade on your system and want to be able to restore your system fast. But it won't help much if your equipment is damaged in a fire or stolen, or if you need to restore a (several versions) older file. Burning disks and storing them off-site is one solution, but unless you accumulate gigabytes of data every day, an online backup service such as Mozy is the most convenient solution.

>Will I get the same extra free activations as a retail box purchaser is
>said to get? I suspect no. The FAQ isn't clear. I'm not real anxious to
>find out the answer first hand. (It gets even more complicated here,
>depending on whether your OEM preactivated for you or not).

Both activation by internet and telephone within the United States involve no special tolls, simply the cost of your existing telephone or internet access plan. There's actually no 'tolled' Activation hotline for the United States at this time.

You can't reactivate an already activated OEM license over the internet, but you can do so over the phone. You are limited to the OEM license agreement, which licenses Windows Vista (and, for that matter, XP) to the existing motherboard/CPU. I personally don't like said agreement, but it's been in place since 95 at least. Microsoft's actually nicer than that, though, as they'll let pretty close to infinite number of phone revamps for damaged motherboards or hard drives -- I've personally phone reactivated one OEM license more than ten times, if not more than fifteen, due to a workstation with particularly high use and problematic users.

If you [i]want[/i] to violate the EULA, but don't like telling nice Microsoft Indian college graduate that you lost your motherboard, it's a problem, but for the applications involved in this thread involving a dead motherboard or hard drive, the only issue with Vista reactivation is ten minutes of your time and a bit of frustration.

+1 robocopy

It should have said:
"If your on windows, type "robocopy /MIR C:\ F:\Backup" into a file called backup.bat and and put this in your schedule tasks"

Works great and it's free.

My MacBook+TimeMachine+external USB HDD
wonderful, easy, fast.

My personal backup strategy is "back up data files offsite when they change meaningfully, and locally much more often".

A live whole-drive backup is nice, but not worthy my effort.

Other people's mileage, of course varies.

(The only things I'd lose if I lost one of my machines by itself, would be game saves or recent email - and I don't care about my email nearly that much.

Now, a house fire, that would hurt more, but the important stuff, my music and longer-term files, would all be safe in off-site DVD piles.

Safe as optical media can be, at least, but there's no guarantee a hard drive will work in ten years, either, in terms both of raw function and having a computer that can physically connect to it and possibly even read the filesystem.

When was the last time you even SAW a computer with an MFM connector? Or, for the old-time Mac users, unless you have a Mac Pro, how're you going to connect an old SCSI drive to a modern machine?

Compromises all around, really. All flesh is grass, and all data is eventually toast.)

Windows Home Server makes a good in-house caching device for uploading to the Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3). Currently, I'm using the JungleDisk plug-in.

I have about 110 GB of data backed up remotely for about $15 a month.

Seem to work pretty well.

I like the irony in the fact that there is hatred for windows users in the original reference. Another spiteful mac expert (http://wilshipley.com/blog/2008/01/macbook-air-haters-suck-my-dick.html) excoriates those who don't like the fact that you can't crack open a macbook air.
Guess you can't backup that sumbitch, but you can still s*** his d***!

I agree with Samuli.

>> You must be crazy :)
Not using a secondary drive, you might just as well not backup at all.
Hardware will fail.

> I'm a Windows user. When I have a problem, I buy software.
I'm a Windows user too. If I have a problem, I find a freeware alternative (and if I'm feeling really generous, I donate a few bugs).

Jumping on the dog pile toward the end, it's always good to see data backup getting more air time. Few conversations are as awkward as when your less technically inclined friends lose data and expect you to fix it.

Paraphrasing an actual conversation I've had:

"Hey, I can't access my pictures any more, it just pauses for a while and then gives me some error. Can you help?"

"Sure, has your computer done anything else unusual lately? Started making odd sounds, or having other errors?"

"No, nothings changed, I just turned it one today and nothing works!"

*Examine the computer, notice loud and painful noises coming from the area of the hard disk.

"Sounds like your hard disk is dying"

"Ohh, that noise? It can't be that, it's been making that noise for months!"

The only thing more painful than the above is when they *still* won't consider a backup solution. Because "what are the odds of it happening again? I mean, it's never happened to me before."

1) If your running Linux, there is no reason not to use RAID1. None. Hard disks are inexpensive enough to make it affordable for your primary drive, and additionally, you will get improved performance in most common tasks.

For example, application startup is usually constrained by disk seek performance. The Kernel MD driver is smart enough to interleave requests between disks. So not only do you get improved data security and less hassle when your disk(s) fail, your day-today usage will be faster as well.

2) RAID1 is not a backup strategy. Here's a hypothetical, take two HDDs manufactured at the same time on the same production line. Put them in the same operating environment, and expose them to nearly identical usage patterns. How independent do you think their failures will be?

I've seen it happen many times, to myself and others. It's not an absolute of course, but it's a lot more probable than you'd expect simply considering independent failure.

3) Offsite backup services are plentiful, give serious consideration to it. Many offer the additional convenience of remote access to your files, which can be a plus if you ever need emergency access to your data.

There are dozens, if not hundreds, of ways to do offsite backup of your data. For example, my company (Zettabyte Storage) offers what is essentially a Linux based NAS device with offsite backup of all the data stored on it. It's extremely simple to use, ranges from ~$1.50 to $0.30 per GB per month, and has capacity between 30GB and 690GB. Use it like an external HDD, point your preferred backup application to it, and you've got offsite backup with essentially zero additional work.

Whatever your needs are for backup, there is almost certainly something out there that can satisfy you. Whether it's writing your own backup solution, using a software OTS solution, or using a hardware OTS solution like ours, there is pretty much no excuse for losing the data which is meaningful to you.

Unless you plan on taking the initial suggestion made in the article, do your self a favor and find a way to backup your data. Sure it generally costs a few dollars a month, but recovering data, or taking the time to recreate it all, isn't exactly free either.

>You have a computer. It came with a hard drive in it. Go buy two
>more drives of the same size or larger. If the drive in your
>computer is SATA2, get SATA2. If it's a 2.5" laptop drive, get
>two of those. Brand doesn't matter, but physical measurements
>and connectors should match.

Brand *does* matter. Get two completely different brands so that when the first one dies due to a design or manufacturing problem, the second one doesn't die of exactly the same thing at about the same time (IBM Deathstars anyone?). Increasing survivability through diversity costs very little, but can save your data in the long run.

Do you know of a software than can sync files, pictures etc on multiple hard drives.

So if I add or modify a file in one hard drive, it automatically updates it on other harddrives.

I wasn't up to date on the Windows Backup And Restore, looks like that would more than handle things. I've used Robocopy to clone a disk, which worked great:
ROBOCOPY E:\ C:\ /e /efsraw /copyall /dcopy:t /r:0

I did that prior to upgrading from XP to Vista, so I ran ran Robocopy from the boot console on the Vista DVD. Craig Andera's Hobocopy looks interesting, though, as it'd copy files that are in use.

And like others said, I thought the progression was:
Mac user: buy shiny stuff and tell everyone how it's revolutionary
Windows user: root around for freeware, then try to find a cracked copy
Linux user: recompile the kernel to include whatever feature you're looking for

For windows users, google 'unison' for an rsync FLOSS alternative. It has a GUI, but the CLI is nicer.

- Slap in a recent knoppix distro cd and watch it boot
into the shell and use the "ntfsclone" command to copy your whole partition sector wise onto an external usb2.0 mounted harddrive -> which can't be ntfs though
- There are rsync binaries on win32 but they are mostly flacky. running rsync with cygwin isn't fun, either.
- On windows you are fine using robocopy from microsoft. stuff like this (ignoring vstudio temp files).. Note /PURGE clears additional files on the dest side, take care

---------dumpscript.bat-------
SET DST=Z:\BACKUP
SET IGN=*.obj *.pch *.pdb *.ilk *.exp *.res *.trg *.idb *.tmp *.plg *.ncb *.aps *.bsc *.sbr
robocopy /E /FFT C:\work\ %DST%\work\ /XF %IGN% /PURGE
robocopy /E /FFT C:\devlibs\ %DST%\devlibs\ /XF %IGN% /PURGE
------------------------------

- Also the software syncback (freeware, adv version also shareware ) is very fast.

MY RAPTORS WILL ARRIVE TOMORROW :)

oops you mentioned robocopy already. think before posting.. :(

> You don't even technically need a second or third hard drive; if you have a large enough primary drive, Acronis will allow you to create a new, hidden partition to store a complete backup image.

You know that's a really stupid comment in an otherwise sensible article, right?

> Shut up. I know things. You will listen to me. Do it anyway.

Maybe not as much as you think. Knowing what you don't know is the path to enlightenment. This kind of arrogance always comes a croppper one day.

Jungle Disk w/ Jungle Disk Plus does it for me, nightly rsync-like backups to Amazon S3 from all of my computers (Windows XP desktop, OS X laptop & Linux servers).

No need to purchase the "Busness package" when my storage goes over some arbitrary limit, and I'm not paying for space I'm not using.

In addition I do nightly backups to an external firewire drive with SyncToy

I have a Maxtor USB external unit with two 750GB disks mirrored in it. I use Genie Backup Manager to perform an incremental backup every night and a full one every week or so. The beauty of it being that I can turn off the external HDD's when I'm not doing a backup making it less likely they'll be infected with a virus.

I didn't mind spending the money on GBM as the £30ish it cost would far out strip any catastrophic loss of data that might happen.

I'm in the Strategy 1 camp. Of the stuff on my hard disk, I value my porn collection the most, but even that I rarely look at.

I've been running with no backups for almost 20 years now, and have always managed to move to newer PCs before the old disks gave up the ghost. However, when I migrate stuff I usually find myself throwing out the "Contents of old Drive C" a little while after the migration.

It may seem ironic, but it often turns out that what you amassed or created on your PC loses value about as quickly as the PC itself. A few years and you find yourself wondering, "what was THAT all about?"

Don't worry about backup!

Backup is easy and a complete waste of time.

The important thing is RESTORING or RECOVERY.

Think about what information you could not live without, imagine how that information could be lost to you and practice regularly testing the recovery of that data under potentially disastrous conditions.

Don't recommend backup on internet, specially if you don't have fast wide bandwidth in your area. Besides, what the heck is doing my data on the internet.

I'll rather get a second drive.

Sometimes a nice drive failure is just the thing to cleanup years worth of junk that you just can't bring yourself to delete/organize. =)

> Don't recommend backup on internet, specially if you don't have fast wide bandwidth in your area. Besides, what the heck is doing my data on the internet.

The first upload is a bit daunting, it took me two weeks to upload my data onto S3. The amount of data that changes daily is pretty minimal for most people, a few digital images now and then, some new music and a few documents, not more than a few hundred megabytes per day on average.

I'll trust Amazon to keep my data more than I trust myself to swap external drives regularly. And as for security, all my data is encrypted with AES256 by JungleDisk.

> I'll rather get a second drive.

You need three drives, one offsite, to protect your data from being stolen (someone physically breaks in to your house) or destroyed in a fire/flood/hurricane.

Last time I tested it Acronis True Image 11 wouldn't backup/image a drive that has BitLocker drive encryption enabled. The full Vista 'Backup your computer' worked fine for the OS volume. And I use Robocopy for my data volumes - very handy for re-syncing after traveling.

My method works for me:

I have my C: drive, just 40GB, which contains exclusively the OS and any other software which must be installed on it. After installing Windows and its endless updates, I take an image of it (with Ghost). I then install the software that must be put on the C: drive. I take another image of it.

I then have my "software" hard drive, where I install the applications I want to use (Word, iTunes, Visual Studio, etc.) on the computer. I take an image of it. I then take an image once or twice a month. I've never really done the incremental thing; I just do one big image every time. Seems to work for me.

Then I have my data server on my LAN, which contains all my music, movies, documents, backups (including images), on two 500GB hard drives in a mirror configuration. So far I've never had to "use" any of it, but I know it's there and that's always comforting.

I've had several friends complain to me that their "computer crashed" and they can't get their stuff. I always ask, "Did you back it up?" and 99% of the time I get the response, "........no." I just shrug and say, "That's what you get."

I've been a fan of Acronis TrueImage. I used that on my desktop with nightly backups to a network drive for a long time. I'd also take semi-regular backups of my laptop, primarily before traveling. Recently, I've actually moved to using WHS for doing my backups. I recently used it for performing a restore on my laptop and it worked pretty good (though a little slow).

On my Mac, I primarily use Time Machine now, though am thinking about SuperDuper to keep a nice copy of my drive, since I'm not sure about the full system restore process with Time Machine.

Overall, drives are cheap when compared with the value of your data and downtime.

I'm surprised nobody has said it.

Gmail.

I just back up stuff on CDRs (or DVDs). It's cheap and easy.

Amazon S3 sounds good though... but I imagine uploading my data would take far longer than simply burning it.

> Amazon S3 sounds good though... but I imagine uploading my data would take far longer than simply burning it.

Again, burning disks is something you need to remember to do every day/week/month.

Automated network uploads work in the background without any intervention on your part.

Briefly, the -E flag in the post is redundent to the -a flag. Rsync will likely fail to get crucial operating system files backed up and restored, especially while the OS is live.
Jeff, you intuitively went for a much wiser strategy. There are linux equivalents, but the method given is not one of them.

burning disks is no backup. they can fail after 1-5 years.

"burning disks is no backup. they can fail after 1-5 years."

All the documents I want to keep (and can't replace) easily fits onto a single DVD, so when I do a backup, I re-backup everything. I typically do this every few months, but I also have a flash drive to temporarily backup whatever documents I create between that time.

I use a combination of encrypted volumes (thank you very much TrueCrypt), and online storage. Unfortunately most online storage providers (like Mozy, Carbonite, and JungleDisk) suffer from the same issues, namely:

1) the delay in access to your data (my restores should be immediate and always available);
2) I don’t really know where the data lives, so who knows where and how long my data will be available (JungleDisk is the exception – it’s on S3);
3) I don’t always own my decryption keys (which I, and only I, want);
4) the initial upload can be horrifically painful 80GB (big B) of data divided by 768kbps (little b) makes me shudder (1 day per 8GB +/- a bit).

Ultimately after using everything I could get my hands on, I still end up using ElephantDrive for everything.

1) Immediate access to my data via a backup client, the website, or WebDAV.;
2) My data all lives on S3 (yay!);
3) I pick and own my decryption keys;
4) The initial upload is reduced as they do global file de-duplication (which gives me much faster upload times after I got my first set of data uploaded).

I used their free service for awhile, which gave me plenty of storage for free (1GB) for everything that wasn’t video, audio, or pix. After I got used to it, I started using it for everything. Sometimes their tech support can be a bit slow to respond, but they do respond so I’m not going to piss and moan too much – after all they have all my data.

I’m surprised you missed them in your review Jeff. Mozy, Carbonite, and JungleDisk are so 2007. :-p

http://www.elephantdrive.com

I think (based on some horrendous recent experience) that it's important to consider different aspects of backup - especially for Windows users.

Is your objective to:

1. Back up data only
2. Back up the entire disk so that you can restore your *existing* hardware if a disk goes down
3. Back up the entire system so you can restore to new, replacement hardware when something besides the disk goes down (or the building goes up in flames, etc...)

If all you care about is data, then almost any of the options described here will work (as long as the 'data' isn't in files that are opened in exclusive mode by applications - i.e. MS SQL Server, Exchange, etc...).

If option 2 is what you are going for, then a combo of option 1 and RAID is a workable solution.

But here's the kicker: Option 3 is really what most folks want. If my computer goes out the window, I want to be able to grab new hardware (or heck, even take the drive out of existing hardware and put in a blank drive), and know that I can get my entire system up and running with minimal fuss.

Minimal fuss means not having to install and configure an operating system, apply a million updates, etc... This means not having to re-install and re-configure all of the applications that I use (this implies being able to successfully back up AND restore the registry - more on this in a second).

In my case, the system I care the most about is a server, so bringing the active directory back up is also absolutely critical.

So how do you do such a backup? As mentioned in several posts, the built in ntbackup will back up all of the above (usually - there are still problems with VSS, but that's a different story).

So we go about using ntbackup to get all these great backups - but it turns out that actually *restoring* from these backups is a total crapshoot. And it's not because ntbackup is doing anything wrong, in particular - it is b/c it is almost impossible to reliably get Windows running on hardware X when it was originally installed on hardware Y. And the great news? There is almost *no* way that hardware X will even be available when you need to actually do your restore.

I have probably attempted about 25 system restores using ntbackup, restoring onto alternate hardware. Of those, I was able to bring Windows up about 5 times. It turns out that there are a number of (undocumented) areas in the registry that really, really care about what hardware you are running on. When ntbackup restores those areas of the registry, you are basically dead. Sometimes doing a 'repair' install from the Windows CD will fix these problem areas - but most times it just results in an endless sequence of reboots.

So, my word of caution here is: If you care about full system backups, you had absolutely better make sure you test restoring onto a different hardware setup than you actually run on. Performing test restores to the same hardware is almost useless, because that is not going to be what you are doing in a disaster scenario.

These comments refer specifically to ntbackup - but they go for *any* backup app that is capturing system state.

This is the number one issue that I have with disk image based systems for Windows. Unless they have some serious magic going on under the hood at restore time to make sure that the restored image will actually work on alternate hardware, all you'll get is a data backup (and a lot of wasted hours trying to get a machine to boot).

EMC has a product called Retrospect that revolves around the concept of "point in time" backups.

You run a backup whenever you like, and you can then restore your system (or the files you backed up) to a list of points in time and it will restore (entirely, or selectively) what you backed up as it was at that point. It also takes a snapshot of the system at each point-in-time, so you can inspect the state of other files, even if you didn't back them up...

It sounds like incremental backup, but it also takes into account files that have been deleted