FACT no one besides US considers Linux to be mainstream .. let alone OSX ......
I geht the mac 10% hate all the time .what chance does a .1% OS like linux have .
perhaps this is a US and UK think . but the masses here in the USA will never consider linux to be a real OS .
Simple if you cant get it at a big box store . its not consumer easy to use mainstream . its to the masses a constiant joke that has way to many hurdles to jump just to watch a DVD .
I moved to OR and my main stock HDD was gettng old and pokey and kinda hot * the spindle was at +120*F*. so I went to frys and got me a 750GB and use time machine to dupe back what I had from when I moved ( remember I do masive backups when I move states or any huge point in time in my life .
so I used TM to dupe back and I only lost internet history I had the last week I was in IA .......... less then 100 MB ....
all my icons were there Prefs all the same .... It's like it never happend .
I was off line for less then a few hours.
I guess value my time more then my cash ..... Meh this is why I own a toughbook for college
one thing to keep in mind with me and computer failures ......
I am fully legalty handicapped .... I am unable to write at all . ever ..... so If dont have a way to type ,
simply put I am not able to function in life. just as if a person in a wheelchair cant move I cant go to class I cant bank . I cant do much besides my personal life . so I cant afford * down time *
By me doing all my backups as unplugged HDDs I have to only visit the bank in town to get a spare backup and volla I have off site secure storeage for less then a bandwidth limited internet cloud. I pay 33 a year for a box that holds a dozen 2.5 inch USB HDDs and a few full drives in esd cases .
bank closed on sundays . not a problem
I only keep the latest backup there ( along with my Long term backups from my moves) .....
but for my month to month backups I have the one that is one cycle older in my house .
reliability is as high as a net based system but also much faster to recover from and has less security issues .
the day the N$A is gone and get gigbit fiber in my house Ill only then consider a cloud for off site . .
My main issue why I got a bank box is fire ......
A TRUE media rated HDD safe that would fit my suff was gonna cost $1400
The bank box is a good deal and its truely off site .......
Unison is the same as TM( time machine ) ........... I can use ANY HDD IP or as a USB or Firewire as my target .
TM in auto mode is just as dangerous as Rsync or unison ..... auto backups can save bad data .
and TM DOES do checksums ..... there goes the issues with a backup not being valid .
Linux IS mainstream in the server world. The company I work for has over 40,000 deployed servers in our enterprise environment. Last year we started a major effort to convert all non-linux unix servers to Linux. Windows servers are being virtualized on large fsrms running Linux. Our 200,000 Windows desktop images are being moved to virtual desktops on large Linux farms. Hopefully, engineering and development platforms will be moving to Linux.
In the consumer arena, for desktop and laptops, you are correct, the current "mainstream" is Windows but overall, consumer devices (especially new ones) are Linux, Android (runs on Linux) or IOS, this includes tablets, smart phones, set top boxes and most other intelligent consumer devices.
You need to better define "mainstream" before you start throwing it around.
You are correct about consumer desktops and laptops/notebooks and big box store sales.
In the consumer arena, for desktop and laptops, you are correct, the current "mainstream" is Windows but overall, consumer devices (especially new ones) are Linux, Android (runs on Linux) or IOS, this includes tablets, smart phones, set top boxes and most other intelligent consumer devices.
You need to better define "mainstream" before you start throwing it around.
You are correct about consumer desktops and laptops/notebooks and big box store sales.
Please read back to my posts and you can see I was at all times refering my backup issues with respect to a mac mini and its issues with backing up a very costly AV editing system ( workstation / desktop)
simply put a normal Consumer computer .
not my Linux running debian server at my feet .
I don't see any ambiguity here at all!
no one besides US considers Linux to be mainstream
US was not a short hand for the USA it was referring to US the geeks and the like AKA non brain washed consumers )
every person whom is not a geek is unlikely to consider Linux to be a mainstream OS
I use http://www.kanguru.com/ drives, I just got one of their USB 3.0 32GB from NewEgg. They're great! I get a few virus infected computers every once in awhile and don't have to worry about some rootkit or autoplay nonsense on my USB drive.
I'm not sure swapping drives and running to the bank would suit me. Although I have worked for a company years ago that did exactly that. It was OK because I did not have to do it:)
I suppose in Windows you have to buy an application to do this, but it can be done at no cost in Linux. Early warning of harddisk failure really makes backups less of a hassle.
I have a 2Tbyte SATA for my backup images in a desktop. That certainly need S.M.A.R.T. to avoid the dismal situation where you loose all your backups when you acutally need something.
Linux is much saner that Apple or MS as you can just rsync your /home directory for personal data over your local LAN and don't have to use disk imaging to store the whole software image inclusive of all your proprietary licensed software. I use rsync quite a bit to safe time... nothing is more boring on a computer than having to wait hours while it makes a complete image.
I always thought keeping an eye on SMART was a good idea.
But reading the Google report on hard drive failures linked to above it seems that almost 50 percent of drives that fail have never reported any SMART errors. Which inclines me to believe that watching SMART is of no help whatsoever. Unless I'm interpreting their report incorrectly.
On the other hand if you get hold of a drive with even one SMART error then Google's report indicates it has a good chance of failing very soon and should be binned immediately.
Keeping all you back up images on a huge single disk does seem like putting all your eggs in one basket.
Does rsync blindly sync corrupted files onto your remote image?
SMART is great, I'm a big WD fan too. I like having the ability to see if a drive has been dropped or couldn't spin up etc. I think all drives should have it.
SMART is great for RAID controllers and predictive failure mode. I've had a lot of degraded arrays due to SMART failure rebuild onto the hot spare long before the failing drive failed entirely.
SMART is great for RAID controllers and predictive failure mode. I've had a lot of degraded arrays due to SMART failure rebuild onto the hot spare long before the failing drive failed entirely.
Do read that Google report on HD failures linked to above. The way I interpret their findings is that a drive is just about as likely to fail spontaneously with no SMART errors as warnings as it is to give you a SMART error. Ergo if you put a bunch of drives, that have no SMART errors, in a RAID array then SMART is not going to help you predictively.
Which is not to say that SMART isn't a great way to reject any potentially faulty drives before you take them into use. As you point out.
Back in the 1990s, before SMART I have hard disk failures that were just dismal catastropes.
And then I had one SMART failure under XP that saved me a lot of difficulties. I don't see how a 50% reliablity in the Google report can be considered 'no good whatsoever'.
Any report that averts trouble is helpful... just as long as you are not getting false failure reports. So now, I am more than happy to deploy SMART if possible and having it send me an email so I don't ignore a screen that might fly by on boot up.
Thailand had a huge flood some years ago and suddenly there was a glut of defective hard disks on the market due to damaged goods being sold from flooded factories of some very major hard disk manufacturers With this kind of business ethic, every safety net you can impliment for yourself is helpful.
Absolutely, SMART rarely does indicate failures and pumps out errors that don't matter. I read the report a little bit, I have a lot of experience in this area and utilize that more than anything. SMART isn't something I rely on, in the few instances where it does work it is worth its weight in gold. Most of the drive failures I have seen the drive doesn't seem to even power up, followed by it powering up but not being seen by the controller.
If data security management wasn't enough reason for a good backup regimen, what I just read on the net may tip the balance. Ransomware ver 2 is now making its presence felt. This one, unlike the FBI virus, will encrypt most of your files and keep the key for 72 hours during which the criminals demand up to $300 for the key. Once the time is expired there is no way of retrieving your data. So far the the prevailing defense for this is a solid backup plan and never open attachments from an unknown source. It will encrypt all drives that are listed under computer, so keeping backup drives online will not help you. According to some that have encountered it, if some of your files are already encrypted they will not be touched. Some who have paid the ransom got their files back while others did not get the key, losing all their files and whatever amount they paid.
Guess I'm going to spend several days backing up everything I have to DVD's and then implement an incremental plan, again. I wish I could see a Delta-Force type team busting into this hackers den and just blowing these bastards away, justice ala Judge Dredd!
Every hard drive I have (which is quite a few) has an external USB HD the same size (or bigger) that I back up to weekly with an image of the drive. That way if I need to replace the drive I can put everything back exactly as it was and with Windows 7 if the new drive is larger than the old drive I can extend the imaged partition. I could just backup the files on my D drive, but the C drive also contains installed Windows and apps, so with the image it puts everything back as it was.
When I build systems I ALWAYS install 3 (or mor) drives. One for OS, One for Programs and one for Data. This way, if one goes bad the others are still intact. If you have to reinstall the OS, one drive still contains the programs and one the data and so on. You will have to reinstall most of your programs but you at least know what all you have on the Programs drive. Some people find this overkill but in my 16 years in the business I have never lost any of my clients data due to a bad hard drive.
@Sapphire
By using a LiveCD or a USB bootable Linux (such a Puppy Linux), you can make an image of a USB drive, or just about any media with 'dd'. This is a comprehensive image inclusive of the entire MBR (Master Boot Record).
It is a rather ancient Unix utility, but faithfully copies blocks of data by sector, not by file.
Of course, the challenge with it is that you do have to study a rather long list of choices of what to do at the Command Line. It is best to create a script that works and not try to retype the commands every time you need them.
It can be combined with other Unix utilities to copy an image over a LAN and to zip a copy of an image for compressed storage. But that takes even more study time.
The main point is that Linux does the copying without mounting the hard disk partitions, so nothing gets changed. It just reads the disk sector by sector and transfers the data to a file to later be used for restoration. It doesn't care if the sectors are NTFS or an unknown file system, it copies faithfully every sector it is told to do so.
The only drawback is that you have to reinstall the whole image to see what is actually available. So I generally use a second series of backups via rsync for data that needs to be reached on a file by file basis rather than a 'whole disk image'.
Of course sector-by-sector copying is inherently slow as it copys all and everything.
On the other hand, rsync is a file by file copying that just copies files that have changed... much faster after the first comprehensive image is created.
Thanks guys. I've never used DD or CloneZilla before. I've used Norton Ghost, booting from floppy and sending the image to an external drive, but it means your PC is unusable until it's done. And then can you ever really be sure the image is correct? Obviously having an image makes restoral easier, but the downtime is long if you're going to do it weekly. I realize that an image can't be made with the PC running, but I like Heater.'s comment about having fully redundant backups all the time. I just wonder if it's practical for a small network of a just a few laptops and PC...
And then can you ever really be sure the image is correct?
Yes. After you have copied a disk or partition image with dd or whatever you can use the md5sum command to calculate the MD5 hash of both images and it should be the same.
@loopy,
The only drawback is that you have to reinstall the whole image to see what is actually available.
You can look at the contents of a partition image file by mounting the image like you mount any other drive. Have a google for "loop back mount".
It is also possible to mount partitions within an disk image file. You have to supply an offset to the mount command which you can get by doing and fdisk on the disk image.
@Chris
That way if I need to replace the drive I can put everything back exactly as it was
That worries me. If your live system is corrupted or becomes virus ridden you might back all that up before noticing. All that corruption will be restored when you restore the image.
I don't see how a 50% reliablity in the Google report can be considered 'no good whatsoever'.
Perhaps I'm overstating it. But let's say you have 4 drives in a RAID array and that on average one of those drives will fail every year and that Google's report is about correct. So what happens?
Either:
a) During one year a drive shows a SMART error and you replace it at that time.
b) During one year a drive just spontaneously dies without any warning.
With about equal probability.
Well, you had better be prepared for case b) anyway so the SMART warning of case a) is not helping very much. If at all. Ignoring that SMART error or errors and waiting for total failure would be about the same. The Google guy discusses this.
Well, I rarely bother with comprehensive image backups as they are just too darned slow. And if you don't do an MD5 checksum along with the backup (yet another very slow process), you have no clarity that the image is going to reinstall faithfully.
So SMART offers up an opportunity to backup if one hasn't recently done so.
What I do is partition and use Linux. In that way, backups are faster just because the amount of data is smaller. So are checksum runs. And I use rsync to backup important stuff on anther hard disk on another computer. Of course, the really important stuff is all filed away on paper. So I don't have to worried about turning up empty handed at a tax audit or if there is a sudden change in my Taiwan residency status.
Computers can only do so much. There are several good principles of record keeping and accounting that have been substantially abandoned due to everything going digital. Spreadsheets are NOT as good as simply paper tape summations on a 10-key adding machine for demonstration of correct calculation, but hardly anyone has or uses a paper-tape adding machine anymore. All cash transactions are supposed to be witnessed by two people (like you and the teller at your bank when you withdraw or deposit cash), but now with have ATMs that can and do go haywire occasionally with you having to chase the bank for a correction.
Everyone I know has had their own share of data disasters. Most recently a friend here in Taiwan that had a huge hoard of DVDs on a Terrabyte hard disk lost it all. I am a bit ambivalent as he acquired the majority of it through pirate bittorrent sites. I really find I need less than 100 megabytes on one computer to keep my world documented, but my 2 TByte hard disk is chock full of backups and I find most of my life comfortablely fits a few partitions in Linux totalling less than the 100 Mbytes.
I used to back up my entire drive every few months, but it seem pointless to back up giga-bytes of programs that never changed, and that I could re-install it if my computer ever crashed. Now I just back up the user directories, and a few other directories where I keep my genealogy stuff and snail-mail lists. I need to re-structure my cygwin directory and the directories where I keep pictures so I don't keep backing up a lot of data that never changes.
I prefer manually copying my files to an external USB drive instead of using a backup program. It gives me more control over the stuff that is backed up, and I can easily access it if I need to find an old file that got deleted from my computer. I have two USB drives that contain my backup data. I keep one in the house and the other is stored in another building separate from the house. This gives me triple redundancy on my current files, and double redundancy on old files that I don't keep on my computer. I've had one backup drive die, and I lost some old data that was only on that drive. Now I try to keep my two backup drives in sync.
While the 'cloud' thing is new and hip, I've been doing this since when the internet first came out. Hell, back on AOL 2.0 I was using 'cloud' storage. Since none of my personal/work/school files were ever huge I just composed an eMail, uploaded my file to eMail as an attachment, and sent to myself. Now, I have a permanent copy in my inbox, which I promptly move to a Saved folder for special files, etc. For files that are Gigabytes in size, I throw on a USB stick and put the stick in a dry place where I can access it but no children can. Has worked solidly for me for about 15 years.
Good for you. "email backup" as the advantage that everything is date stamped and version controlled:)
As Linus Torvalds said: "Only wimps use tape backup: real men just upload their important stuff on ftp, and let the rest of the world mirror it "
It's a joke but has a sort of serious point. If it's of value and you publish it it will be copied and and effectively backed up. If it isn't then, well, it isn't. No loss.
One tip for cloning or backing up drives is EaseUS backup.
(easeus.com It's even free!)
I've even used it to clone the system disk on laptops onto a larger USB-connected HDD, then popping it open and installing the larger one into the laptop.
(Does not work well with Bitlocker, though, so that must be killed first and the drive decrypted before you start)
Almost as user friendly as the Disk tools in OS X.
The note on the tape safe at the ofice says "Real men don't backup, but they cry often"...
We have a HP tape robot with 3 LTO4 drives, so filling the dozen or so tapes for the monthly offsite doesn't take too long...
Good for you. "email backup" as the advantage that everything is date stamped and version controlled:)
As Linus Torvalds said: "Only wimps use tape backup: real men just upload their important stuff on ftp, and let the rest of the world mirror it "
It's a joke but has a sort of serious point. If it's of value and you publish it it will be copied and and effectively backed up. If it isn't then, well, it isn't. No loss.
That's how I feel about roughly 98% of my files. If they go, they go. If they weren't backed up, it's because they weren't worth backing up to begin with.
With the recent Dropbox/Google Drive storage it now makes even less since to back up a hard drive for personal use. For work and business especially on the larger scale, backing up things is just inevitable. However for personal files, small jobs/projects and what not, cloud is the way to go. For example I still have emails in my Gmail Saved folder that are well over 5 years old.
You know they have no obligation to keep your files .
Do I trust Google? No. In fact I don't trust any company really. But hey, got to just have faith. Like the grocery store, they aren't obligated to feed me, but I have faith that they'll have produce when I arrive. *knock on wood*
Comments
I geht the mac 10% hate all the time .what chance does a .1% OS like linux have .
perhaps this is a US and UK think . but the masses here in the USA will never consider linux to be a real OS .
Simple if you cant get it at a big box store . its not consumer easy to use mainstream . its to the masses a constiant joke that has way to many hurdles to jump just to watch a DVD .
I moved to OR and my main stock HDD was gettng old and pokey and kinda hot * the spindle was at +120*F*. so I went to frys and got me a 750GB and use time machine to dupe back what I had from when I moved ( remember I do masive backups when I move states or any huge point in time in my life .
so I used TM to dupe back and I only lost internet history I had the last week I was in IA .......... less then 100 MB ....
all my icons were there Prefs all the same .... It's like it never happend .
I was off line for less then a few hours.
I guess value my time more then my cash ..... Meh this is why I own a toughbook for college
one thing to keep in mind with me and computer failures ......
I am fully legalty handicapped .... I am unable to write at all . ever ..... so If dont have a way to type ,
simply put I am not able to function in life. just as if a person in a wheelchair cant move I cant go to class I cant bank . I cant do much besides my personal life . so I cant afford * down time *
By me doing all my backups as unplugged HDDs I have to only visit the bank in town to get a spare backup and volla I have off site secure storeage for less then a bandwidth limited internet cloud. I pay 33 a year for a box that holds a dozen 2.5 inch USB HDDs and a few full drives in esd cases .
bank closed on sundays . not a problem
I only keep the latest backup there ( along with my Long term backups from my moves) .....
but for my month to month backups I have the one that is one cycle older in my house .
reliability is as high as a net based system but also much faster to recover from and has less security issues .
the day the N$A is gone and get gigbit fiber in my house Ill only then consider a cloud for off site . .
My main issue why I got a bank box is fire ......
A TRUE media rated HDD safe that would fit my suff was gonna cost $1400
The bank box is a good deal and its truely off site .......
Unison is the same as TM( time machine ) ........... I can use ANY HDD IP or as a USB or Firewire as my target .
TM in auto mode is just as dangerous as Rsync or unison ..... auto backups can save bad data .
and TM DOES do checksums ..... there goes the issues with a backup not being valid .
Linux IS mainstream in the server world. The company I work for has over 40,000 deployed servers in our enterprise environment. Last year we started a major effort to convert all non-linux unix servers to Linux. Windows servers are being virtualized on large fsrms running Linux. Our 200,000 Windows desktop images are being moved to virtual desktops on large Linux farms. Hopefully, engineering and development platforms will be moving to Linux.
In the consumer arena, for desktop and laptops, you are correct, the current "mainstream" is Windows but overall, consumer devices (especially new ones) are Linux, Android (runs on Linux) or IOS, this includes tablets, smart phones, set top boxes and most other intelligent consumer devices.
You need to better define "mainstream" before you start throwing it around.
You are correct about consumer desktops and laptops/notebooks and big box store sales.
Please read back to my posts and you can see I was at all times refering my backup issues with respect to a mac mini and its issues with backing up a very costly AV editing system ( workstation / desktop)
simply put a normal Consumer computer .
not my Linux running debian server at my feet .
I don't see any ambiguity here at all!
US was not a short hand for the USA it was referring to US the geeks and the like AKA non brain washed consumers )
every person whom is not a geek is unlikely to consider Linux to be a mainstream OS
I use http://www.kanguru.com/ drives, I just got one of their USB 3.0 32GB from NewEgg. They're great! I get a few virus infected computers every once in awhile and don't have to worry about some rootkit or autoplay nonsense on my USB drive.
Sounds like you are well sorted.
I'm not sure swapping drives and running to the bank would suit me. Although I have worked for a company years ago that did exactly that. It was OK because I did not have to do it:)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T.
I suppose in Windows you have to buy an application to do this, but it can be done at no cost in Linux. Early warning of harddisk failure really makes backups less of a hassle.
I have a 2Tbyte SATA for my backup images in a desktop. That certainly need S.M.A.R.T. to avoid the dismal situation where you loose all your backups when you acutally need something.
Linux is much saner that Apple or MS as you can just rsync your /home directory for personal data over your local LAN and don't have to use disk imaging to store the whole software image inclusive of all your proprietary licensed software. I use rsync quite a bit to safe time... nothing is more boring on a computer than having to wait hours while it makes a complete image.
But reading the Google report on hard drive failures linked to above it seems that almost 50 percent of drives that fail have never reported any SMART errors. Which inclines me to believe that watching SMART is of no help whatsoever. Unless I'm interpreting their report incorrectly.
On the other hand if you get hold of a drive with even one SMART error then Google's report indicates it has a good chance of failing very soon and should be binned immediately.
Keeping all you back up images on a huge single disk does seem like putting all your eggs in one basket.
Does rsync blindly sync corrupted files onto your remote image?
There are some freeware Win programs with notification - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_S.M.A.R.T._tools
SMART is great for RAID controllers and predictive failure mode. I've had a lot of degraded arrays due to SMART failure rebuild onto the hot spare long before the failing drive failed entirely.
Do read that Google report on HD failures linked to above. The way I interpret their findings is that a drive is just about as likely to fail spontaneously with no SMART errors as warnings as it is to give you a SMART error. Ergo if you put a bunch of drives, that have no SMART errors, in a RAID array then SMART is not going to help you predictively.
Which is not to say that SMART isn't a great way to reject any potentially faulty drives before you take them into use. As you point out.
And then I had one SMART failure under XP that saved me a lot of difficulties. I don't see how a 50% reliablity in the Google report can be considered 'no good whatsoever'.
Any report that averts trouble is helpful... just as long as you are not getting false failure reports. So now, I am more than happy to deploy SMART if possible and having it send me an email so I don't ignore a screen that might fly by on boot up.
Thailand had a huge flood some years ago and suddenly there was a glut of defective hard disks on the market due to damaged goods being sold from flooded factories of some very major hard disk manufacturers With this kind of business ethic, every safety net you can impliment for yourself is helpful.
Absolutely, SMART rarely does indicate failures and pumps out errors that don't matter. I read the report a little bit, I have a lot of experience in this area and utilize that more than anything. SMART isn't something I rely on, in the few instances where it does work it is worth its weight in gold. Most of the drive failures I have seen the drive doesn't seem to even power up, followed by it powering up but not being seen by the controller.
Guess I'm going to spend several days backing up everything I have to DVD's and then implement an incremental plan, again. I wish I could see a Delta-Force type team busting into this hackers den and just blowing these bastards away, justice ala Judge Dredd!
My sentiments exactly.
What program do you use to make the image copy on your USB drives? How long does it take for each drive to be imaged?
I ran a full backup to my USB drive and it took a couple of hours, and that wasn't even an image.
By using a LiveCD or a USB bootable Linux (such a Puppy Linux), you can make an image of a USB drive, or just about any media with 'dd'. This is a comprehensive image inclusive of the entire MBR (Master Boot Record).
It is a rather ancient Unix utility, but faithfully copies blocks of data by sector, not by file.
Of course, the challenge with it is that you do have to study a rather long list of choices of what to do at the Command Line. It is best to create a script that works and not try to retype the commands every time you need them.
It can be combined with other Unix utilities to copy an image over a LAN and to zip a copy of an image for compressed storage. But that takes even more study time.
The main point is that Linux does the copying without mounting the hard disk partitions, so nothing gets changed. It just reads the disk sector by sector and transfers the data to a file to later be used for restoration. It doesn't care if the sectors are NTFS or an unknown file system, it copies faithfully every sector it is told to do so.
The only drawback is that you have to reinstall the whole image to see what is actually available. So I generally use a second series of backups via rsync for data that needs to be reached on a file by file basis rather than a 'whole disk image'.
Of course sector-by-sector copying is inherently slow as it copys all and everything.
On the other hand, rsync is a file by file copying that just copies files that have changed... much faster after the first comprehensive image is created.
@loopy, You can look at the contents of a partition image file by mounting the image like you mount any other drive. Have a google for "loop back mount".
It is also possible to mount partitions within an disk image file. You have to supply an offset to the mount command which you can get by doing and fdisk on the disk image.
@Chris That worries me. If your live system is corrupted or becomes virus ridden you might back all that up before noticing. All that corruption will be restored when you restore the image.
Either:
a) During one year a drive shows a SMART error and you replace it at that time.
b) During one year a drive just spontaneously dies without any warning.
With about equal probability.
Well, you had better be prepared for case b) anyway so the SMART warning of case a) is not helping very much. If at all. Ignoring that SMART error or errors and waiting for total failure would be about the same. The Google guy discusses this.
So SMART offers up an opportunity to backup if one hasn't recently done so.
What I do is partition and use Linux. In that way, backups are faster just because the amount of data is smaller. So are checksum runs. And I use rsync to backup important stuff on anther hard disk on another computer. Of course, the really important stuff is all filed away on paper. So I don't have to worried about turning up empty handed at a tax audit or if there is a sudden change in my Taiwan residency status.
Computers can only do so much. There are several good principles of record keeping and accounting that have been substantially abandoned due to everything going digital. Spreadsheets are NOT as good as simply paper tape summations on a 10-key adding machine for demonstration of correct calculation, but hardly anyone has or uses a paper-tape adding machine anymore. All cash transactions are supposed to be witnessed by two people (like you and the teller at your bank when you withdraw or deposit cash), but now with have ATMs that can and do go haywire occasionally with you having to chase the bank for a correction.
Everyone I know has had their own share of data disasters. Most recently a friend here in Taiwan that had a huge hoard of DVDs on a Terrabyte hard disk lost it all. I am a bit ambivalent as he acquired the majority of it through pirate bittorrent sites. I really find I need less than 100 megabytes on one computer to keep my world documented, but my 2 TByte hard disk is chock full of backups and I find most of my life comfortablely fits a few partitions in Linux totalling less than the 100 Mbytes.
I prefer manually copying my files to an external USB drive instead of using a backup program. It gives me more control over the stuff that is backed up, and I can easily access it if I need to find an old file that got deleted from my computer. I have two USB drives that contain my backup data. I keep one in the house and the other is stored in another building separate from the house. This gives me triple redundancy on my current files, and double redundancy on old files that I don't keep on my computer. I've had one backup drive die, and I lost some old data that was only on that drive. Now I try to keep my two backup drives in sync.
While the 'cloud' thing is new and hip, I've been doing this since when the internet first came out. Hell, back on AOL 2.0 I was using 'cloud' storage. Since none of my personal/work/school files were ever huge I just composed an eMail, uploaded my file to eMail as an attachment, and sent to myself. Now, I have a permanent copy in my inbox, which I promptly move to a Saved folder for special files, etc. For files that are Gigabytes in size, I throw on a USB stick and put the stick in a dry place where I can access it but no children can. Has worked solidly for me for about 15 years.
Good for you. "email backup" as the advantage that everything is date stamped and version controlled:)
As Linus Torvalds said: "Only wimps use tape backup: real men just upload their important stuff on ftp, and let the rest of the world mirror it
It's a joke but has a sort of serious point. If it's of value and you publish it it will be copied and and effectively backed up. If it isn't then, well, it isn't. No loss.
(easeus.com It's even free!)
I've even used it to clone the system disk on laptops onto a larger USB-connected HDD, then popping it open and installing the larger one into the laptop.
(Does not work well with Bitlocker, though, so that must be killed first and the drive decrypted before you start)
Almost as user friendly as the Disk tools in OS X.
The note on the tape safe at the ofice says "Real men don't backup, but they cry often"...
We have a HP tape robot with 3 LTO4 drives, so filling the dozen or so tapes for the monthly offsite doesn't take too long...
That's how I feel about roughly 98% of my files. If they go, they go. If they weren't backed up, it's because they weren't worth backing up to begin with.
With the recent Dropbox/Google Drive storage it now makes even less since to back up a hard drive for personal use. For work and business especially on the larger scale, backing up things is just inevitable. However for personal files, small jobs/projects and what not, cloud is the way to go. For example I still have emails in my Gmail Saved folder that are well over 5 years old.
You know they have no obligation to keep your files .
Do I trust Google? No. In fact I don't trust any company really. But hey, got to just have faith. Like the grocery store, they aren't obligated to feed me, but I have faith that they'll have produce when I arrive. *knock on wood*