A Timely Reminder - BACK IT UP!

seriousrikk

seriousrikk

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Richard
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OK, firstly I didn't loose anything important.

But I did have a total hard drive meltdown and quite frankly the speed at which it happened is something that has to be seen to be believed. The system went from working to dead is a few seconds. Within days my laptop hard drive also failed - no relation - just unlucky.

If you haven't got all your images backed up at least once do it now. If you haven't done a scan of your backup drive, do it now. If you have a place for backing your images more than once, use it.

(BTW, does anyone know of any software that can bulk copy just new files from one drive to the same location on another - manual copying is getting a bit tedious now.)
 
If you're on a mac then time machine is the obvious answer.
If not, then I don't know, but I'm sure somebody will have written something similar somewhere.
I've recently started a monthly backup to my network drive, requires very little effort, just takes a bit of time.
 
MS SyncToy will do this if you're on Windows. Its a free download from the Microsoft site.
 
I used SyncBack SE or something before.....but now I just periodically copy from my laptop to my external drive, and then onto my HTPC.

Periodically is basically whenever I've added any shots that I'd be annoyed to lose.
 
It does surprise me how often it takes a HD crash to persuade people to back up. Everything I have is backed up twice ( What me paranoid!!!?)
 
I had to learn the hard way, albeit a long time ago with only unimportant college work and games that were lost - but I was still annoyed that I'd have to go through the process of replacing and reloading everything!

Now I use a RAID 1 setup (mirrored drives) with all my important stuff backed up onto a USB drive just in case. With the price of HDDs being so low nowadays, there really isn't any excuse not to back up.
 
When using XP i found SyncToy a pretty good back up solution as you can just select the folders you want backing up and where to back them up.

On a Mac i use Time Machine with Time Capsule, this backs up my Macbook Pro and external hard drive every hour to the 1tb Time Capsule.

Backing up is essential, i can't stress this enough to people as i've lost a fair amount of stuff over the years.
 
goffski said:
i found SyncToy a pretty good back up solution.

Backing up is essential, i can't stress this enough to people as i've lost a fair amount of stuff over the years.
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Backing is is essential, but SyncToy is not a backup solution. All that synctoy does (in the overwhemling majority of situations) is copy a file from one drive to another. This is not backup. What happens if your house burns down or Mr.Burglar takes a fancy to your PC and peripherals?

I know it all comes down to how "valuble" people's pictures are, and people will spend accordingly on their backup "solution"

If you really wouldnt want to lose your pictures, back them up to an external drive (synctoy does work brilliantly for that) and THEN back them up to somewhere off your premises. For this I use http://www.jungledisc.com/ though there will be a lot of similar services by other companies.
 
Biggz said:
Backing is is essential, but SyncToy is not a backup solution. All that synctoy does (in the overwhemling majority of situations) is copy a file from one drive to another. This is not backup. What happens if your house burns down or Mr.Burglar takes a fancy to your PC and peripherals?

I know it all comes down to how "valuble" people's pictures are, and people will spend accordingly on their backup "solution"

If you really wouldnt want to lose your pictures, back them up to an external drive (synctoy does work brilliantly for that) and THEN back them up to somewhere off your premises. For this I use http://www.jungledisc.com/ though there will be a lot of similar services by other companies.
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its a backup in the sense that you have multiple copies of your data but yes like anything it wont protect against fire or theft. but then you can just sync to 2 or more disks and just take one off site. never been a big fan of internet based storage personally maybe because ive never had enough bandwidth to get it all up there in the first place lol

ive got 4 copies of my data now. one on a portable HD that is wherever my laptop is, one on my HTPC storage, and one each on the two desktop drives that live on my desk at work.

paranoid? yup. ive been on the receiving end of total data loss before (albeit with tape backups lol).
 
Paranoid is the best way to be about backups. I wish every one was, can you tell that I support too many people who aren't paranoid about it at work? :P
 
With digital pictures likely being a record of your life, you really don't want to underestimate the value of a simple copy.

My reason for getting a digital camera is to be free of the restraints of film processing costs and to shoot lots of photos of my kids growing up. To risk losing them all would be foolhardy in the extreme. But my graphic design business needs it too, so it's a no-brainer.

It's not the most exciting thing to spend money on, but could be the best couple of hundred you ever spend.

Graham
 
Biggz said:
Paranoid is the best way to be about backups. I wish every one was, can you tell that I support too many people who aren't paranoid about it at work? :P
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tell me about it, ive lost count how many times ive told people to store their work on the servers. and then they complain when theyve deleted something and theres nothing we can do to get it back.

Raymond Lin said:
That's why I am saving up for a Drobo !
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to be honest there are cheaper devices that do the same thing and it still doesnt give you multiple copies of your data.. unless youre minted and youre getting 2.. lol
 
neil_g said:
to be honest there are cheaper devices that do the same thing and it still doesnt give you multiple copies of your data.. unless youre minted and youre getting 2.. lol
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I've been researching......but failed.....what other ones?

I found one for £160 odd, it doesn't have LAN though. I also like it to have firewire as well.
 
neil_g said:
i'll have a rummage about for you later..

the drobo doesnt have LAN by default anyway does it? unless theyve released a new version if i remember rightly its a 150 quid extra unit?
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Drobo share comes free with a lot of online retailer now.
 
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