PSA: Backup your important files

[DenverGP]

And keep the backups up to date.

I'm a computer guy, software developer for a living for the past 20+ years. I'm the one who set up my companies SQL server backups with multiple levels of backup.

But tonight in my personal machine, my main 2TB hard drive crashed. Hadn't done a backup in about a year. Backup didn't include several files which I now realize were very important to me.

I've been lucky in the past that any drive failures I've had were the slow kind, where the drive starts to have read errors and they gradually get worse. So there is time to transfer the important stuff off to a replacement drive.

This time it was instant. Machine was running along fine, went to some website in my browser and it looked like it timed out. Then I realized the machine itself seemed to be sluggish, then blue-screen of death. Now the drive just makes a clicking sound when it first spins up. After 30 sec, it gives up, and spins back down. It's toast. And the stuff I lost isn't worth the price of a data recovery service, so I'm just re-building from scratch and recovering the parts I did back up last year.

I'm so pissed at myself.

[DFBrews]

Wise words do your recommend back ups on ssd or conventional drives?

[asmo]

Wise words do your recommend back ups on ssd or conventional drives?

Backup to spinning disk. SSDs can start loosing data very quickly if they are not powered on.

http://www.zdnet.com/article/solid-s...st-a-few-days/

[HoneyBadger]

Backup to spinning disk. SSDs can start loosing data very quickly if they are not powered on.

http://www.zdnet.com/article/solid-s...st-a-few-days/

That's interesting. I wonder if that applies to SD cards the same way? I have several 32 and 64GB SD cards that I use for storage and backups. For example, once a year, I put about 200 pictures along with all of our important paperwork on an SD card and give it to my parents for safe keeping (for insurance recovery purposes). Should I be concerned?

Of course, that whole article was based on a presentation given by major HDD manufacturer, Seagate. Of course they want you to believe that their competition is the devil.

[Dlesh123]

Also learning the hard way, I had protected against a hardware failure, with backup HD, thumb drive, and PDA, what I'd did not count on was a ransom ware that encrypted all of my spreadsheets and pictures. Affected all of my backups as they they were all attached at the time. And no, my stuff is not worth the 500 dollars ransom, even if you could trust a crook.


Urrgh.

and people wonder why I love paper.

[Skip]

Always a good PSA!

I use a combination of an external WD 1TB (which was surprisingly cheap) and then BluRay every six months or so (not cheap).

[kwando]

Redundant storage like raid is best. I use a drobo, and haven't had any issues (knock on wood because there ARE reports of drobos failing as well). My important docs like digital copies of paperwork, birth certificate, etc are on Flash drive (encrypted) in a small safe inside a larger safe. And I keep a copy at work as well (some frown on using work PCs for personal use)

[fly boy]

And keep the backups up to date.

I'm a computer guy, software developer for a living for the past 20+ years. I'm the one who set up my companies SQL server backups with multiple levels of backup.

But tonight in my personal machine, my main 2TB hard drive crashed. Hadn't done a backup in about a year. Backup didn't include several files which I now realize were very important to me.

I've been lucky in the past that any drive failures I've had were the slow kind, where the drive starts to have read errors and they gradually get worse. So there is time to transfer the important stuff off to a replacement drive.

This time it was instant. Machine was running along fine, went to some website in my browser and it looked like it timed out. Then I realized the machine itself seemed to be sluggish, then blue-screen of death. Now the drive just makes a clicking sound when it first spins up. After 30 sec, it gives up, and spins back down. It's toast. And the stuff I lost isn't worth the price of a data recovery service, so I'm just re-building from scratch and recovering the parts I did back up last year.

I'm so pissed at myself.

can you throw it in the freezer for a few hours, and then use as a slave drive and pull info off?

[Fentonite]

Thanks for the post. I just ordered a 2TB backup and a few thumb drives.

[Mazin]

Now this is the exact reason I'm building my own cloud. I'm sorry man I know the pain of losing data.