When did you last back up.

EDIT: was meant to be a poll, but it fscked up on me.

Let's not be petty about WHAT you back up, I'll take anything from burning a couple of documents to a DVD, or copying your favourites folder to another drive right up to a full hard disc image.

I ask because our server failed ANOTHER hard disc the other day (linux, being damned near uncrashable, not only runs so long that it grinds hardware to gravel, but is as close to oblivious to hardware failure as you'll ever see). This time it was the main system drive, with everyone's mail and all the firewalling rules and the shit I leave to my bro. Last time it was a date drive and it ran for 2 months before noticing the thing was dead

So I says to me bro "I've a reasonably not totally fucked 80GB disc you can use, just pop the backups onto it and we're off". He looked ashamed.

In the end with the use of fans and prayer to the datagods, we got the stuff off the drive, but it took nearly a week of no email or fuck all working right with the net.

Now it's like this.

He has copies of his backups. I have copies of his backups. My windows machine has copies of it's own backups. My linux machine has copies of my windows machines's backups. and so on and so on. And We're talking predominately partition images.[1]

Everything in about 6 places, some on external drives that are to be brought out, connected, filled with the latest backups and returned to a place of dafety.

In between times, I still make copies of several key windows files using WinRescueXP (I used to have a .bat file that I wrote to do the same thing, but I didn't back it up )

PS if you rely on "windows system restore", All I can say is "happy reinstalling LOSER"

[1] In Penguinland you just read the drive partition into a file. In windows, you pay £80 quid for a program that runs a ported version of the same command, or if you use it's boot disc, boots chuffing linux and runs the exact same thing It's not even a scary command cat /dev/sda1>windows.img

I back up nothing cos I dont leave important stuff on my computer and as it stands if mine crashed,all the better cos I would have fun repairing it.It needs repairing anyway.

Have an external hard drive, and then most of that on cd...the only issue F'ING VISTA! Bought this new computer that has Vista on it. My external was formated with XPs NTFS, however XP allows people to ACTUALLY be administrators, and Vista allows people to THINK they are administrators....as I don't have the administrative rights to change anything on the drive, but read it....aaaaarrrrggg!!!! and after hours of trying to fix it and talking to techs, I've found there is no cure but to wipe the drive and start anew!

and no comments outta ya Cambo! I know what yer gonna say, I don't wanna hear it! (cause I know yer right dammit!)

Provided there were no files larger than 4GB you could have used partition magic or something to convert it to FAT32 in place.

As for "nothing important".... what about the simple stuff like your internet faves, email, and how you like your desktop.

If I'm not mistaken though Vista doesn't read Fat32?

EdelBrock wrote: If I'm not mistaken though Vista doesn't read Fat32?

It WHAT?

FFS

not tried it, might do so just to see.

EDIT, yup, fat32 is not only unsupported, it's also fucking kryptonite. Plugged in a 4 GB USB disc with a fat32 filesystem.....explorer dropped stone dead, the entire shell, not just the disc exploring window. Fucking fabulous Bill, because of course NTFS works BRILLIANTLY on removable discs. Pillock.

nothing anal for me.

Whats a backup?

defo not me. photos on CD sometimes

I'm backing stuff up to external drives or DVDs daily. the size of the files I make at work means I have to. sometimes I'm creating a GB of data a day. across work, home and hobby, I've got 4 machines that share the critical info on about 6 hard drives although the very latest of that stuff only exists in one place. fortunately my itunes library is one of those things that exists in duplicate form (roughly). two weks ago, I had a technical hitch with the 500GB external drive that holds the 37,000 audio tracks and backups of dvd images and software. the technical hitch being I dropped it while it was running.... fortunately, partitions and duplicate libraries saved me. I was able to rescue the exclusive material off the less damaged partition and, over about a week, rebuild the mp3 library into the same file structure as the previous one. the old drive would no longer mount so I had to use guess work and some old screen grabs in order to preserve the pathways and filenames for the links to work. fortunately, I'd backed up this back up as last friday the new hard disk went down and wouldn't mount at all...! you'd think that the longevity of these hard drives would be better than DVDs or the computer's own dated internal hard drives. but I'm starting to collect quite a few under my desk now. I guess that's why the prices are so cheap these days.

get paid!!

Doctor? wrote:

EdelBrock wrote: If I'm not mistaken though Vista doesn't read Fat32?

It WHAT?

FFS

not tried it, might do so just to see.

EDIT, yup, fat32 is not only unsupported, it's also fucking kryptonite. Plugged in a 4 GB USB disc with a fat32 filesystem.....explorer dropped stone dead, the entire shell, not just the disc exploring window. Fucking fabulous Bill, because of course NTFS works BRILLIANTLY on removable discs. Pillock.

Wow, I didn't know that either. What a piece of shit. I mean, even Linux and MacOS still support FAT32.

I backup my music and pictures from my laptop to my home machine using rsync (MacOS on both). That's really all I'm worried about losing anyway.

And when did you last back Down..............

get used to do it monthly

fcukin scaremongerers

alright then , i'll burn some pics and music to cd sometime . that good enough for yers?

Doctor? wrote:

EdelBrock wrote: If I'm not mistaken though Vista doesn't read Fat32?

It WHAT?

FFS

not tried it, might do so just to see.

EDIT, yup, fat32 is not only unsupported, it's also fucking kryptonite. Plugged in a 4 GB USB disc with a fat32 filesystem.....explorer dropped stone dead, the entire shell, not just the disc exploring window. Fucking fabulous Bill, because of course NTFS works BRILLIANTLY on removable discs. Pillock.

So let me get this straight-my external is Fat32. If I plugged that into a Vista computer, it would crash the computer straight out?

so basically I could not transfer my data??

WTF??????

a Mac looks good right about now.....

I back up every two weeks or so when I get a new cd or such.

I back up my "My Documents" with all my letters etc.

the new cds I get (I have 35 GB on iTunes-8,200 discrete files.

movies and pictures of the baby niece.

It is all backed up to a Western Digital my Book 160 GB external drive.

BonoShed wrote:

Doctor? wrote:

EdelBrock wrote: If I'm not mistaken though Vista doesn't read Fat32?

It WHAT?

FFS

not tried it, might do so just to see.

EDIT, yup, fat32 is not only unsupported, it's also fucking kryptonite. Plugged in a 4 GB USB disc with a fat32 filesystem.....explorer dropped stone dead, the entire shell, not just the disc exploring window. Fucking fabulous Bill, because of course NTFS works BRILLIANTLY on removable discs. Pillock.

So let me get this straight-my external is Fat32. If I plugged that into a Vista computer, it would crash the computer straight out?

so basically I could not transfer my data??

WTF??????

a Mac looks good right about now.....

Aye, now I admit it was an SD card and not a harddrive, but it was via a card adaptor which makes it function EXACTLY like any other USB mass storage device. I have 2 500GB externals in FAT32 (and one in EXT3) but they have much important stuff on them so I aint risking connecting them. In fact I have just started having all sorts of trouble with the card after it's run in with Vista. Bastard! the card is from my GP2X (think PSP running (an invisibile) linux), took me 4 fuckin weeks to get all the games and emulators and little flummies and doobries all working nice, now, since it was in the Vista PC, Norton Disk Doc found about 100 errors on it and even after it's repairs some things is fooked. I smell a full reinstall of all the shit :(

(tis a cool gadget too, video, audio, ebooks, emulators (speccy, c64, amstrad, ameoba games machine, atari st, Multi.Arcade.Machine.Emulator, Psx, Megadrive etc etc etc etc, it'll emulate an altair if you're out of your mind, plus a whack of linux games recompiled to run on it, including Doom and Quake :D :D :D )

i still have a good memory at times.,few hard drives lying around. need to reinstall winders sometime before the end of the year.

Animadversion wrote: i still have a good memory at times.,few hard drives lying around. need to reinstall winders sometime before the end of the year.

I'm sorry, that's SUCH a painful experience. The linux I chose to use compiles from scratch, and on a slowish machine like my 1.6GHz laptop, that can take DAYS for a fresh install (though much of the time is downloading the thing which is done automatically on a need to have basis), and configuring it can be long winded (but not hard). And I'd STILl sit through it five times before insalling windows.

Vista installs nice, it's just that from then on it goes downhill.

Doctor's Top Tip for WinLusers

Hate installing windows as much as me?

Easy. Next time you install the sod, as soon as it's installed, as soon as you've culled the bits you hate, got your drivers in and your wallpaper set and your homepage set to NOOL and all the other pruck that makes it so irritatiing to install, but BEFORE you start throwing apps and games at it[1]......THEN BACK IT UP.

Next time it goes completely mental, you have a completely "zeroed" custom windows ready to roll in in a flash.

I DO NOT MEAN SYSTEM RESTORE!!! it will fuck you in the arse at every turn! Use a drive imaging utility, acronis trueimage or norton ghost. Or download any linux boot disk, even a 30MB one, and I will guide you to typing the 3 things you need to type.

Also, windows on one drive, everything else on others.

[1] if you use this backup in a year, year old drivers will still work until you can get new ones. year old versions of internet applications and games may not.

Facsimile wrote: I'm backing stuff up to external drives or DVDs daily. the size of the files I make at work means I have to. sometimes I'm creating a GB of data a day. across work, home and hobby, I've got 4 machines that share the critical info on about 6 hard drives although the very latest of that stuff only exists in one place. fortunately my itunes library is one of those things that exists in duplicate form (roughly). two weks ago, I had a technical hitch with the 500GB external drive that holds the 37,000 audio tracks and backups of dvd images and software. the technical hitch being I dropped it while it was running.... fortunately, partitions and duplicate libraries saved me. I was able to rescue the exclusive material off the less damaged partition and, over about a week, rebuild the mp3 library into the same file structure as the previous one. the old drive would no longer mount so I had to use guess work and some old screen grabs in order to preserve the pathways and filenames for the links to work. fortunately, I'd backed up this back up as last friday the new hard disk went down and wouldn't mount at all...! you'd think that the longevity of these hard drives would be better than DVDs or the computer's own dated internal hard drives. but I'm starting to collect quite a few under my desk now. I guess that's why the prices are so cheap these days.

Thanks a lot tosser! I;ve just invested about £250 on 3x500GB Freecom externals (containing samsung spinpoints) and a Hitachi 400GB in an external enclosure. AND spent weeks putting all my DVD backups on to them and sorting them and moving stuff and going insane. And now you tell me they fail a lot. Ach pish!

The plan is for them to last until 1TB or 2TB ones are cheap, then copy and continue (with an extra layer of backup from the old drives)

You can tell you've had run ins with lost projects.

Best I ever had was minor, but still brilliant. An essay for college (on New Order ) got spliced with the word processor's dictionary file because I change the disks and the Atari never realised and just saved the data in the sectors it thought were free. Took 7 hours to get it all back together, and after I handed it in, I realised there were still duplicate sentences.

Lost far more since, but not quite so frantic or funny.

EDIT: on re-reading your post, I was reminded of this one, which equals yours. In 2003 there was a thunderstorm and my linux box went down HARD. The entire partiion of /usr/local was apparently gone. /usr/local is for programs that belong to users and are not part of the system as such, so I had basic commands and fuck all else, no desktop, nothing. On closer examination the linux filesystem checker had rescued every single file (some 35,000). It had not however recovered any directory information. It had just dumped them all in folders with funny numbers based purely on where they'd come from on the surface of the disc. Took me fuckin days to crawl out of that. My bro wanted me to just reinstall or use a backup, but I got pigheaded and won out in the end.