EXTERNAL HARD DRIVES

[Alex_B]

You do realize the difference between a Base backup and Incremental backup???

Yes I do, but I cannot see how this relates to my post.

I myself mirror my important data on two different sets of external harddrives, one of them off site. A full backup is done every half year or later, depending on the amount of data accumulated. In between there is some incremental backup.

Nothing is 100% safe, but I feel fairly safe.

 

[sabbath999]

thumbs up!!! You doing offsite storage puts you above a chunk of multi-million dollar businesses that I support. They have this sensitive data but protecting it comes at the bottom of priorities and funding.. scarry eh?

I have a locked drawer at work that serves as my offsite storage.

I see drive failures all the time.. more so with consumer level harddrives. Most companies will not take responsibility for any lost data.. they see it as your responsibility. Even software backup corporations have little disclaimers for limited liability.

I am a System Administrator in real life, one who has helped a business recover from a flood that saw every computer system they owned go under water. We had them completely functional (computer wise) the next morning because they backed up off site.

At work, we use RAID and Mirroring for disk failure, backup hard disk imaging and direct copy for all of our files (including the personalities of every work station... email, documents, etc) and we do secure online backups to a firm with three redundant data centers (new york, california and Toronto).

My entire photo collection (plus purchased downloads from itunes) is stored off site, and my "keepers" are also backed up to a data center on line.

 

[usayit]

Yes I do, but I cannot see how this relates to my post.

I myself mirror my important data on two different sets of external harddrives, one of them off site. A full backup is done every half year or later, depending on the amount of data accumulated. In between there is some incremental backup.

Nothing is 100% safe, but I feel fairly safe.

It relates... if you take base backup occasionally, the concern with corruption should be limited. The frequency of your base backup is determined by your backup window and how much your are willing to risk.

In the end... mirrored disks should not be single item in your backup solution. It doesn't matter if you suppliment with magtape, CD-Rs, DVD-Rs etc... the media doesn't matter it is the backup procedures/systems put into practice.

 

[Alex_B]

It relates... if you take base backup occasionally, the concern with corruption should be limited. The frequency of your base backup is determined by your backup window and how much your are willing to risk.

OK, I agree here!

In the end... mirrored disks should not be single item in your backup solution. It doesn't matter if you suppliment with magtape, CD-Rs, DVD-Rs etc... the media doesn't matter it is the backup procedures/systems put into practice.

OK, again I agree. All I say is, that you can use a different set of harddrives as the supplement, in particular with the current free fall of HDD prices (well it is not a free fall, but it got so cheap). But as you said, you need a procedure.

 

[nossie]

address of a guy in Canada that rescued a drive for me for less than str£100 [email protected]

TIP: Drives have a life expectancy (there's a name for it) so when using multiple drive configuration it is suggested that you use drives from different manufacturers giving you different life expectancies.
For example in my RAID storage I have 3x500GB drives, 1 from Seagate, 1 from Western Digital and 1 from Maxtor, but I suppose the house could still be hit by a meteor.