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General discussion

Poll: What's the reason why you don't back up your data?

Feb 11, 2011 7:27AM PST

What's the reason why you don't back up your data?

-- I have nothing important to back up.
-- I don't know how to. (Visit our forums or do a Google search on the subject.)
-- I'm lazy. (I hope we don't see you in the forums when failure does happen.)
-- I don't have the time. (How much time do you think it will take to recover your important data?)
-- I've been meaning to, but haven't gotten around to it. (Have you heard of Murphy's Law?)
-- I like living on the edge. (I hope we don't see you in the forums when failure does happen.)
-- I used to, but I'm so far behind, I gave up. (It's never too late.)
-- Other (What's your reason?)

Discussion is locked

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(NT) I don't like to do what snotty people tell me to do.
Feb 11, 2011 8:29AM PST
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OK. Don't back up your data.
Mar 4, 2011 4:13AM PST

Does that mean you won't listen to us, and backup your data now?

Happy

It's your data, and none of us have a stake in it except for you.

Cheers!
-Lee

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Poll: What's the reason why you don't back up your data?
Feb 11, 2011 8:51AM PST

Ever since I have a Dell XPS 420 system, I have not backed up anything. I was told that this PC backs up everything automatically on a second drive.
I follow the explanation of a technician at the time, but really have never quite understood
where this backup is located or how I can access it.
I am a senior citizen and like having a computer a lot, even though I find it difficult to know the myriad features that it has.
I use it primarily for email, word processing, some spread sheets, and photo editing and storage. The endless and immediate information on any topic available through the internet is a real boon and I enjoy doing research.

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It doesn't sound...
Feb 12, 2011 9:07PM PST

Despite what the tech said, it doesn't sound like your stuff's being backed up. If you have anything you don't want to lose, get a backup made and occasionaly update it.

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Where's the option to say "I do backup"?
Feb 11, 2011 9:49AM PST

With the price drop in NAS, is it honestly that hard to backup your stuff? Just get a NAS drive, a decent disk imaging program, schedule the thing to backup stuff, and that's it.

I have my computers setup to backup my system partitions once a month, and they backup the "Documents and Settings" folder and a few other things every day. Doing this has saved my butt more times than I can even remember.

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But I do, and it's important and easy!
Feb 11, 2011 2:26PM PST

When Apple introduced Time Machine in their Leopard operating system several years ago, I decided to try it, since it was a backup application (or program) provided as part of the operating system. All I needed was an external hard drive. It operates seamlessly in the background and works extremely well. I have had two occasions when I needed to use the backup: Once when I replaced the hard drive for a larger one in my laptop and the second time when a hard drive failed. In both cases Time Machine took about an hour to rebuild my hard drive to the same functionality as before the hard drive changes; a process which took literally weeks when I experienced a similar failure a few years ago with a PC without backup. I consider this Time Machine to be arguably the best feature of Apple computers, and a good enough reason to change from PC.

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Darn programs don't work
Feb 11, 2011 2:28PM PST

They seem fine up to the point of burning, then don't proceed. Never had this problem with my XP desktop, just this Vista laptop. Haven't given up, though.

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Why need to backup ?
Feb 11, 2011 4:49PM PST

I built my own PC : Vista Home Premium 64bit, with 2 HD drives. So of course I store all data on second HD.
If I find system not as fast as just OS installed, I format C: and reinstall Vista since all data are safe in D:.
By the way I use Microsoft Security Essentials. It's free, so why not use it in Microsoft OS system ?
You can find that I do nothing specially about backup. Reinstall is all you need to do about every 3~6 months and you'll got no problem to care about.

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Don't Back up
Feb 11, 2011 5:43PM PST

I have a RAID 5 array, so why back up, I think my
A*** is well covered??

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Other scenarios
Feb 12, 2011 10:27PM PST

What if you overwrite that data with incorrect/corrupted data? What if the data on the RAID5 drive is infected with a virus? What if a power surge or other issue causes at least two drives to fail simultaneously? What if your house burns down or the PC is stolen?

I do agree that RAID5 is a viable solution for maintaining a local copy of the latest data, but it can't save you if that data is corrupted or overwritten. All you have then is a mirrored copy somewhere of the same bad data and the original, good data is lost.

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Agreed with Considerate_Guy...
Mar 4, 2011 4:09AM PST

And if you system goes up in flames? Or there is an electrical short, killing your drives. What if your computer is stolen? What if the your house is flooded? What if all drives have mechanical failures? The list goes on.

RAID is great, but "stuff" happens and don't say it doesn't. Playing it safe never hurts and just when you think you think your a** is covered, it gets exposed at the worst of times.

If your data is important take care of it and always consider the worst case scenario.

Cheers!
-Lee

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My attitude towards backups ...
Feb 11, 2011 5:55PM PST

I do actually back up relatively frequently and to multiple devices, but ...

... Murphy's law says that the drive that breaks next is the one that you forgot for half a year and when you restore that backup your OS still needs fixing.

I also try to differentiate between personal information and data that is easier to source again than to backup and restore. But sometimes i find myself religiously making backups of backups of original DVDs or CDs.

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how many harddisk's do i need...
Feb 11, 2011 8:06PM PST

I have back-ups but one time both fail'd.
So how many harddisk's do I need?
It's going to be costly sometimes, and you're not surtain for a disk to work if it stays on the shelf over the years...
o, yeah... one last resort if everything else fails.
24 hours in the freezer, (the metal will shrink enough to free the heads over the disk) may help, though you can do it only once.

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How many HDs?
Feb 14, 2011 12:57AM PST

Enough to save all your important data. They're cheap nowadays, so I'd reccomend one, to keep at home in a safe place. But also burn backups to DVDs and keep off-premises, just in case your home burns down.


BTW: I'm a SOT: which means Save Our Tounge.

"harddisk's" should be "hard drives". Two words, no apostophe.

Ahh! Now I feel better.

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Storage
Feb 11, 2011 8:43PM PST

I don't have another 12,7 TB space to back up my data, but it's running in RAID 5.

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Backup? When
Feb 11, 2011 8:49PM PST

I am trying to find a good backup software package. The one Microsoft packs with Windows is so lightweight it's almost useless. I've looked at Arcserve - too pricy for a home user, and some can't quite do a bare metal restore that I need. Plus there are so few out on the market that support Windows 7. I am open for suggestions.

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Personally,
Feb 14, 2011 4:04AM PST

I've been reasonably impressed with Acronis True Image. About 30 bucks. Support is good. I find the "wizard" interface a bit annoying but it is easy to use. I also tried the "enterprise" product, Acronis Backup and Recovery, also reasonably priced, but find it a bit overkill for home use. I prefer the option to use a command line interface and scripting like Norton Ghost, but NG has been unreliable lately. The boot disk you can create works and allows a "bare metal" restore. When I'm being good I do a backup to LAN and another to external HDD. If I were really serious I'd also do Internet, which they also support, but I don't know how competitive their storage space rental is.

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Computer hate me!
Feb 11, 2011 10:04PM PST

December 2009 desk top internal hdd dies, get new HDD go to retore from my 1TB external back up HDD it starts and dies. Why bother backing up Murphy is my brother. lost evererything not backed up to DVD such a family pictures.

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Backup guys!
Feb 11, 2011 10:30PM PST

Backup is important if you don't want to lose your stuff.
Computers WILL BREAK DOWN sometime. I had this a few years back but I was amazed how much data you can retrieve with the old DOS (I had an old Compaq machine with Win98 at the time).
Since then I moved along and have WINXP on my 2 PC's(Desktop and Laptop) and quite a few Linux's as well. I back up everything between my different OS AND on a extenal HD as well
AND on a few DVD's.Paranoid? no, just cautious.
Don't play around with Murphy,you'll lose.

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Back Ups Automatically
Feb 12, 2011 12:29AM PST

Since I have always backed up my photo's and data on eternal drives or disc, it seems I don't need to answer this poll. The easiest for me to back up the things I don't want to lose is my subscription to Carbonite.

I have loss data and some photo's in the past and if you have also, do something.

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I'm not RICH enough....!!
Feb 12, 2011 1:59AM PST

I'm sure that many of you will not believe this reason but it is 100% true....

I'm a unemployed 63 year old with precious little chance of getting employed. Money, to me, is for paying rent, rates, every-day essentials - like food, laundry, household items, loo paper, electricity, gas, etc., etc. The phone and internet are my one luxury and cost me

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re; not rich enough
Feb 12, 2011 4:16AM PST

There are some venues I don't know if you have tried - but in a lot of major areas, they have what's called Freecycle - and alot of people want to get rid of obsolete/old hardware and you might find something to help you out there. Their main page is www.freecycle.org. Not trying to do a plug for a service or anything - but they have some really cool stuff to be recycled. Matter of fact the computer I use, was about to be put out to pasture and I saved it - best little machine I ever found! It's been updated and I run Linux on it perfectly. (More stable than Windows - sorry Bill G...)

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What's the reason why you don't back up your data? Other
Feb 12, 2011 4:47AM PST

Have tried but both windows and mfgr provided methods ether wont provide functional results or wont allow a complete back up (ie software installs) I keep important data on disk but the time for recovery is in software. Apparently the sw industry found a way to block backup of installed product

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Re: Can't backup installed products
Feb 12, 2011 6:56AM PST

Try XXClone - http://www.xxclone.com/ - it just does a clone of your HDD to another drive, regardless of what it is, and also has a feature to make the new HDD bootable as well. Download the XXCLONE Freeware Package (for personal use only) - about 1.5Meg zip file. Worth it's weight in gold.

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can't backup installed products
Feb 13, 2011 12:51AM PST

Thank you for posting this link;
it states: Supports all 32-bit Windows (95, 98, ME, NT4, 2000, XP).
I am running Windows 7
does this mean I am out of luck and unable to use XXCLONE freeware package?

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Re: Can't backup installed products
Feb 13, 2011 7:24AM PST

It should work OK on any FAT or NTFS drive. Maybe you could drop the company an email to check on it.

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You need an Imagaing program
Feb 12, 2011 10:17AM PST

You need a good Disk Imaging program, something that copies everything on your disk into a file somewhere else (like on an external hard drive). This takes an exact snapshot of everything on your hard drive. Here's one drive imaging program.

http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/

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Backing up
Feb 13, 2011 10:44PM PST

I realize the importance of backing up but find it by no means straightforward. Firstly there sems to be little point in backing up to the same hard disk, even though it is a separate partition. Secondly, just what are you backing up? Suppose your PC fails to boot-up, what can you do, do you need a separate boot-up disk? Does this get out of date or is it good for all time?
Do the Win 7 and Vista Back-up programmes save all your system files, such as Cute FTP file transfer and photo processing programmes?
Do imaging programmes that are supposed to save mirror image of your complete hard disk really do that? Would they allow restoring completely to a new hard disk or a new computer? Presumably it would take a long time to save a mirror image, so how frequently would be reasonable?
It is easy to save photo and document files to an outside storage medium, but that is only the half of it, what about all the operating system that makes your PC work? It is uncertainty about the latter that causes me concern about backing up.

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Re: Backing up - Use RAID or Striping
Feb 14, 2011 2:01AM PST

The only really good way to back up your HDD, to include Boot and System, is to use Dual HDDs with RAID or Striping. That way, if one drive fails, everything still works and all you have to do is replace the dead HDD with a new one and switch on. The RAID/Striping system automatically duplicates everything to your new HDD.

If you run a more Industrial type system, your HDDs may even be Hot Swappable - i.e. changeable while your machine is still running. Just drop the catch on the dead one, replace it, lift the catch back into place and Hey Presto...!

Using a USB HDD to back up your work, every day (or week), would still be a good add-on in case a lightening strike takes out your whole system.

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Thank goodness I DO back up!
Feb 14, 2011 4:03AM PST

In January, my computer totally died. When I finally got the new one, I discovered that half of the back up disks I made last year were missing. I had almost 20,000 images, photographs and graphics I had made. The good news is I had been so obsessive about backing up stuff that I have several copies of almost everything and only lost several days of work. If you value your productivity, you'll take backing up your computer seriously. I know I do.