Last year, my friends Mike and Catherine’s Powerbook died. Along with it, they lost a huge number of digital photos, including, heartbreakingly, most of their twin boys’ first few months of life.
Gone.
When it comes to hard drives, it’s a question of when they will fail, not if. And even though everyone knows you should backup the data you care about, not everyone does.
So then, for the April 30 episode of Spark, Nora and Merlin Mann (of 43Folders fame) are putting together a “Disaster Preparedness Kit” for your digital life.
Do you have a tip, trick, or tool that puts your mind at ease and keeps you from worrying about data loss?
By all means, please share it in the comments.
Original photo by Stewart.
For a few years now, I’ve been using Plaxo in order to sync and backup my contacts, which are critical for me professionally. It’s worked brilliantly, particularly when you work across platforms (Mac and PC). And with the premium service, you get additional levels of backup and restore — well worth the money.
In addition to a nice, big Firewire drive at home attached to my MacBoko Pro, I’ve been using Mozy in order to sync and backup my contacts, which are critical for me professionally. It’s worked brilliantly, particularly when you work across platforms (Mac and PC). And with the premium service, you get additional levels of backup and restore — well worth the money.
In addition to a nice, big Firewire drive at home attached to my MacBoko Pro, I’ve been using Mozy
Backup, backup, backup. The more disparate locations you can backup to, the better. As long as your backup routine doesn’t interfere with the rest of your computing life you cannot have enough backups.
Recreating data from scratch is not a fun thing to do.
And I probably should have mentioned multiple external hard drives and the combination of Amazon S3 and JungleDisk. Hosted Exchange comes in handy as well, as does Gmail’s POP access.
I use the software found at crashplan.com for my automatic offsite backup. You can backup to a friend’s computer for free or to CrashPlan’s servers for a reasonable annual fee.
I use a combination of strategies to protect data on my in-house network.
First, I backup to DVD-R discs for full backups, with intermediary backups to DVD+RW or CD-RW depending upon the size of the backup. For this, I use K3B when running KDE, the Nautilus burner when running GNOME, or GnomeBaker when running some other desktop.
Second, I synchronize the website development files between my desktops and my laptop. Also, contact data is synchronized between my three PalmOS-powered PDAs and my network.
Third, since I have GMail, the messages are stored on their servers, hence eliminating the need to worry about losing anything from the Thunderbird and Evolution clients.
Fourth, (you’re going to think I am nuts for doing this) I maintain an inventory of computer parts, namely old hard drives, floppy drives, CD and DVD drives, audio and video controllers, cables, etc. for on the spot repairs.
Fifth, I have Live CDs available of Knoppix, Ubuntu, MEPIS, Mandriva One, Puppy Linux, etc available in storage, and I keep a portable CD burner at the ready.
Finally, I keep DVD-ROMs of operating systems in storage for reinstallation if necessary. (The current distribution I use is Mandriva 2008.)
So, we can say that I am very much covered when it comes to disaster preparedness.
Advise: Buy a cell phone that has the ability to back up your address book.
My cell phone is with me all the time, so it was where I added new contacts when I was speaking with someone.
But the old phone kept forgetting my addresses. When I went to find out how much a cable would be to plug into my computer, I found out that it needed proprietary software to talk to it (so wouldn’t run on any device — or any of those that I owned as I don’t have Mac or Windows), and the cable was almost the price of a new phone.
I purchased a new one that showes up on every computer as a USB drive, and my contacts can be saved as a standard address book file on that drive. I now throw everything from music I listen to on the cell phone to slideshow presentations I just need to carry with me onto this USB storage.
It is worth looking for this feature up front, and avoiding phones that can’t be backed up easily without needing additional software or that don’t provide the cables with the phone.
Wow, Patrick, you are hard core! Thanks for the tips. I’m really looking forward to what Merlin has to say.
Make sure your most important stuff isn’t digital. Realistically, my most important files a few text files of FTP usernames and passwords, my resume, and some photos I really like. Obviously, these are backed up daily, automagically uploaded to an offsite server, etc etc. Every so often, they are printed out and put in my filing cabinet, or hung on my walls as appropriate.
Backing things up seems to be on of those things that people just never seem to do. I know I should be doing it and have lost huge amounts of data in the past due to failed drives. I have had other times where I just deleted or saved over and file I later needed. I have a habit of just keeping old drives and CD-RWs even entire computer towers just because I’m worried that someday I’m going to want something off there. I worry that even if I backup the files, what if in 5 years the current software I have will not allow me to view my old files? Kinda like old super8 movies, or slides, or video tapes. You can store them all you want, but you need the hardware to play it back or it’s useless.
I don’t feel too bad about loosing the odd file or too, even NASA has had huge backup/data loss blunders.
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/apollo/apollo_tapes.html
In 1999 my 40 gig drive totally died. Physical disk failure. Everything was on it. My digital photos. Everything I had written in University. All my music (I had ripped everything to MP3 and subsequently sold all 250 CDs). I would have lost everything had it not been for a data recovery company. Of course, getting that 40 gig back cost me $2500. Ouch! From then on, I started taking backups seriously. Only recently, however, has backing everything up become a no-brainer.
These days, I use a Macbook running Leopard for both my home computing, and my work as a programmer.
At home, every night at 3am, SuperDuper! automatically makes a bootable image of my laptop and copies it to my D-Link DNS-323 network attached storage device, which is rocking two 500GB drives in a mirrored RAID configuration so that if one drive dies, I still have a copy of all that data on the other drive.
At work, every day at lunch time, SuperDuper! automatically makes a bootable image of my laptop and copies it to my 500GB external hard drive, so that if I need to restore at work, I can (this has saved me twice in 6 months).
At work, I also run TimeMachine, which is set to store its files on my external hard drive. I usually only need to recover previous versions of work files, not “home files”, so this is okay for me.
So far everything is 100% automated — as it should be (because we’re all lazy).
There is one manual process, though. My master iTunes and iPhoto libraries live on my external hard drive at work. Once a month, I take that external hard drive home and copy it to my network attached storage. Yes, this breaks my laziness rule, but it only happens 12 times a year, so it’s not too bad.
Lastly, on top of all of that, I use iPhoto to arrange and order physical photo albums of all my most prized digital photos. They’re nice to have on the coffee table, and they won’t magically disappear when lightning strikes.
Go to Costco, (or wherever) and buy 2 external drives (I picked Western Digital MyBooks)
Back up your data to both of them.
Now, leave one connected, and take the other one to the office, your mom’s, or wherever. Exchange the drives periodically (I do so every couple of months).
Software-wise, on Mac I use Time Machine (it schedules automatically), on XP I use SyncBackSE (set to schedule daily). On XP I only back up “My Documents”
Once a year I reformat my computers to get rid of any junk I’ve accumulated. This is a great time to test the backups.
I’ve recently gotten in the habit of buying 2 hard drives when upgrading my laptop hard drive capacity.
1 goes into the laptop
the other one goes into an external enclosure, and I use superduper at least once a week to backup to it, making a bootable hard drive. Combine that with time machine, I can be back online for a hard drive failure very quickly.
What I don’t have is a habit that keeps a backup avialable offline to deal with a catastrophic event to my home.
As a computer tech of many years the 2 mistakes people make about backups are:
1) Not making backups
2) Backups kept with computer. Take your backups OFF-SITE.
In a fire a melted tape/cd sitting on top of a burned out computer is not going to help. Same goes for thieft.
I keep backup at my inlaws house.
Hope that helps. If you will excuse me this remindes me I have not made a backup in awhile. (See #1)
I am a mac guy and have had several HD crashes over the last couple of years. I use 3 external HD’s. One I use for backing up my main computer and clone it with superduper. One is used for timemachine and the other is a combination of files such as pics and music. Then I use dvd’s again for pics and they are kept in a safe.
I can get back up and running within an hour of a crash. If it is not saved twice then it does not exist.
I have a very simple but by proven strategy:
1 – Every evening I logout of my account for a few minutes before leaving the office so TIme Machine can do its thing (I use FileVault so I need to logout – external Firewire 800 1TB HD)
2 – Every Friday afternoon I also logout for 30-40 minutes and let SuperDuper! update the bootable mirror (same 1TB external HD).
3 – Daily automated backup (12 PM) of all application preferences, keyrings, contacts, calendars, templates and the “working folder” to my iDisk (using Apple’s .Mac Backup program).
Since my MacBook Pro HD died twice in 2007 (hardcore usage almost 24/7 and almost everywhere), I consider this workflow proven. After installing the new HD it takes about 1.5h to be fully restored.
Next time a HD dies, I will try GRC’s SpinRite before buying a new HD though.
/Sven
As a digital photographer and recordist, I have given some thought to this issue. What a wonderful thing to share a photo or a song with anyone else with a computer and an internet connection.
We are creating more cultural artifacts per day, like youtube videos or blogs than was ever possible in the past. In a sense Alvin Tofflers “Third Wave” has materialized in the digital realm, where every consumer is equally a potential producer of cultural artifacts. This trend seems to be increasing exponentially. We will eventually be awash in data. Right now, things are crudely sorted, in a similar way to sands and pebbles sorted on the beach. Among the grains, like on many beaches are tiny gems, if we can only find them. As more artifacts are created, will the proportion of gems to base material increase? Probably not.
So one question that comes to mind is; “Does the quantity of data that we collectively produce devalue, and make expendable individual elements?”. Or from another perspective; “Who will do the sorting, and how?”.
Imagine a world of infinite storage, where everything that anyone wants to record, is there. Generation after generation of thoughts, images, sounds, smells, tastes and sensations, all there for the asking…
…but were to begin, and where to end.
At what point do the address names become larger than the things that they address?
The volatility of digital data, coupled with our increasing dependence on digital storage and the increasing size of files are creating a condition equivalent to “Putting all of our eggs in one basket.”. Magnetic, optical and solid-state storage like compact flash all have relatively short lifetimes when compared to, say, this cuneiform tablet, clay tablet.
The simplest method that we have come up with so far is to copy, copy, copy, and distribute everything. Certainly increasing the number of eggs in the basket increases the chances of a single egg surviving some calamity, aside from basket failure (ie hard drive crash) or copy process failure (ie trojans). Archiving to antiquated storage methods like magnetic tape or paper files, is also a popular choice of government and some industry. This unfortunately bottlenecks the mode of content to whatever the media can accommodate, (imagine a youtube video flipbook). We will probably, in time come up with some more robust method of storage, like polymer configurations. We may even recontextualize our information in such a way that content is active and multidimensional, like us.
Sitting here, looking at this 1930 photo of the construction of the Fifth Street Bridge in Chatham, Ontario, its frayed edges and faded contrast, yet with distantly familiar faces, I’m struck with the seeming permanence of this image and left wondering what will survive the next 80 years of information erosion.
Ken Bell
I have two external hard drives. One is for Time Machine backups, and the other is for a nightly Superduper! clone. If anything goes wrong with my laptop, I can take the drives to one of the Uni’s computer labs, boot from the superduper drive, and restore that drive from the most recent Time Machine backup. Hopefully then I won’t be caught in the lurch in the middle of writing a paper.
Time Capsule. 500GB. So far, so good.
I’m a freelance filmmaker and photographer. At the moment, I have about 7 Terabytes of data sitting next to me. Over time I’ve developed a slick backup system that is safe, efficient, and cheap.
It all centres around three Drobo units (www.drobo.com). They are dummy-proof multi-drive USB hard drives. I have three, each stuffed with four 750GB or 1TB hard drives – but it doesn’t matter what you use. Throw any off-the-shelf SATA drives in and it figures out how to keep your data safe, so that even if a drive fails, nothing is lost.
I use them as backup drives to the various flavors firewire and SATA drives I use for my projects. Each night, ChronoSync (a handy Mac Backup utility) copies over any new data from my project drives to the three Drobo units.
I also use Time Machine for my personal files, which updates every hour on the hour, and a utility called JungleDisk to keep the most important files backed up online (on Amazon’s servers).
I’m a backup nut, but I don’t really have to think about it now that it’s set up. It just churns away in the background and I know my data’s safe.
I don’t delete pictures from my camera memory cards until I have backed up (to two DVDs) my uploaded shots on my computer. I then keep one DVD at home and one at work. Why? Because my MacBook’s hard drive died on me while I was in New Zealand on holidays. I lost many, many good pictures and it really broke my heart.
I backup everything to CD-R or DVD-R and make multiple copies of truly valuable stuff. Never throwing anything away helps too.
I wonder how useful it all is anyways, since the only things proven to survive more than 50 years is wax and paper.
@ the Time Machine people. I just (like, just) got a Mac. Everyone happy with Time Machine?
After having been stupid one too many times, I now have a couple of backup strategies…
First is, I keep the vast majority of my data and files either a) Synchronized between multiple machines or b) “In the cloud” using web apps. That way, my data is generally always available to me from ANY computer.
Secondly, I have a cron job that runs rsync on every machine in the house to a RAID array and then that gets synchronized to my offsite hosted server.
Hardcore? Why yes. Yes I am!
I am constantly amazed at the incredible variety of software/hardware solutions to backup. The key, however, is not in the hardware or in the software.
The key is to actually DO it. If you don’t DO it, it doesn’t matter what you bought or planned to do.
Whatever the plan is, just DO it.
Jim Droege
For desktop computers, I have recommended dual hard drives for years.
The C: drive gets the OS and software, the D: drive gets data.
Why? Because drives are mechanical, and Windows is great at creating swap-files that can really beat up a hard drive, and all it takes is a crash or two, and the FAT can collapse, and everything’s toast.
With a D: drive, you pull the data you need from it, the drive goes back to sleep, until you save the file. So, the D; drive gets much, much less wear and tear, and is much less susceptible to crashes. Also, most viruses look only for the C: drive.
The back up solution I recommend is to use an external hard drive enclosure with an appropriate size hard drive installed in it. Then obtain a software back up tool called XXCLONE. It’s free and very reliable. You can back up your entire drive and should your internal drive fail you can take the drive out of the external enclosure, insert it into your computer and you’re back in business. If you choose optical disks as a back up media, remember the data is NOT permanent on CD and DVD disks. The data on the disks deteriorate over time and one day there’s nothing left.
Great show, keep it up.
Martin Dodson
Like many others who have “been there, done that, did not get the t-shirt”, I have lost data to hard drive crashes, re-writable media failure, and (the always dreaded) PEBKAC (Problem exists between keyboard and chair.) In addition to regular use of DVD media, external USB hard drives and memory sticks, I recently learned of an online service called Carbonite.
Rather than ramble on here about Carbonite, I’ll just link to an article on my web site:
http://www.k-c-p.com/html/CarboniteReview.html
I’m surprised (or not) that no-one has yet made mention of the *privacy* issues of online backups – how solvent is your backup company, who owns the data that has been backed up, esp during bankruptcy proceedings?
Nevermind America’s so-called Patriot Act, which gives the US.gov the right to warrantless access to data held by subject companies – namely all US corporate organs. So if your backup is being hosted on US soil, or by a US company, then your friends at US.gov have read-access rights to all of your data which is sufficiently important (and probably personal) to you, to be worth backing up.
Spark: At least when discussing online backups /please/ raise the issues of privacy, especially the merit of using a Canadian-based and owned company. (It’s a good issue for which to play the ‘nationalistic’ … and Anti-American cards
I would recommend online backups.
There is a Canadian company in Victoria B.C. by the name of CUBE GLOBAL Storage.
After checking out a number of different companies CUBE GLOBAL offered the best peace ofg mind.
First, they are in Canada and so no Patriot Act intrusion into ones data.
Second, all backup data is encrypted and one can encrypt the data before the data is encrypted again with the online backup software.
Third, they have a very secure physical site requiring their employees to have background checks. Access to the building and internally by using security passes and more…
Fourthly, they have done and currently do archive storage for physical items. Which they have done for 28 years plus and requiring them to have long term finacial commitments
Fifthly, using their online backup service is easy to use. Requiring minimal human intervention.
Sixthly, restores can take place easily anywhere ther is an internet connection in the world.
While travelling in Asia my challenge was to backup my digital photo’s.
While in India I backed up onto DVD in an interet cafe only to find out I cannot access the material. Yet I did check it after having the DVD was burnedand could see the material.
However, while connected remotely with a laptop I did delete a photo and did retore it witout any issue.
While a very useful method to back up it may not be ideal for everyone.
It did provide for less luggage while travelling and peace of mind if a complete loss occured for me.
That provides for online
putplace.com goes one step further. You can store your images/etc in a number of places online and putplace organises, manages and keeps track of all of your digital content.