Data backup? : Othor Games

» Sat Aug 27, 2011 6:51 pm

Something that doesn't seem to have been mentioned yet but that's quite important is that before you settle into a backup routine too much you should actually try to restore from one of your backups (on a system other than your primary one, just in case something doesn't work right). The basic rule is that backups are easy, but restores are hard- the last thing you want to find out after your hard drive starts giving you the click of death is that those backups you made had some problem that prevents you from restoring from them.

» Sat Aug 27, 2011 8:25 pm

I'm thinking of situations where one might, say, plug in the wrong drive and not realise until its too late. Because, y'know, sometimes we do things that are completely, utterly stupid

. Having two backups means that if you manage to FUBAR one, you can just fall back on the other instead of beating yourself to death with your palm.

Of course right after telling you that shouldn't happen with a proper backup, I just formatted the wrong hard drive setting up my new computer wiping out the data :facepalm: Currently restoring 550 gb. Only lost my linux ISOs (which I didn't bother backing up since they go out of date so fast it usually isn't worth it)

Something that doesn't seem to have been mentioned yet but that's quite important is that before you settle into a backup routine too much you should actually try to restore from one of your backups (on a system other than your primary one, just in case something doesn't work right). The basic rule is that backups are easy, but restores are hard- the last thing you want to find out after your hard drive starts giving you the click of death is that those backups you made had some problem that prevents you from restoring from them.

Indeed. A backup untested is nothing more than hope. Of course if you don't have a spare machine to test the restoration on, just use a virtual machine.

» Sat Aug 27, 2011 10:35 am

Something that doesn't seem to have been mentioned yet but that's quite important is that before you settle into a backup routine too much you should actually try to restore from one of your backups (on a system other than your primary one, just in case something doesn't work right). The basic rule is that backups are easy, but restores are hard- the last thing you want to find out after your hard drive starts giving you the click of death is that those backups you made had some problem that prevents you from restoring from them.

Yeah, that's a really good idea. We once discovered a backup procedure that had stopped working for several months: fortunately nothing was lost, but the possibility was a little hair-raising.

» Sun Aug 28, 2011 12:22 am

Of course right after telling you that shouldn't happen with a proper backup, I just formatted the wrong hard drive setting up my new computer wiping out the data :facepalm: Currently restoring 550 gb. Only lost my linux ISOs (which I didn't bother backing up since they go out of date so fast it usually isn't worth it)

:lol:

Spoiler

'Course, if you'd lost anything important I'd post a more sympathetic reply. But you didn't, and I did chuckle a little

.

» Sat Aug 27, 2011 9:50 am

So I noticed that external drives are cheaper than internal ones. Any particular reason that this is the case? A 2.5TB WD elements costs less than 100 dollars, a WD Green of the same size costs about the same. The cheapest enclosure I can find (that is reliable) is 20 dollars extra.

» Sun Aug 28, 2011 12:33 am

It sounds risky putting 2.5TB of storage on a single drive.

» Sat Aug 27, 2011 10:05 pm

So I noticed that external drives are cheaper than internal ones. Any particular reason that this is the case? A 2.5TB WD elements costs less than 100 dollars, a WD Green of the same size costs about the same. The cheapest enclosure I can find (that is reliable) is 20 dollars extra.

preassembled externals are made from cheap drives and enclosures. Making it yourself allows you to choose quality and achieve better copy speeds. Your example of a WD elements is going to get significantly slower than even USB 2.0 speeds because the drive will be very slow. Building your own external allows you to potentially achieve higher data transfer rates, which means your backups are done faster.

» Sat Aug 27, 2011 4:18 pm

preassembled externals are made from cheap drives and enclosures. Making it yourself allows you to choose quality and achieve better copy speeds. Your example of a WD elements is going to get significantly slower than even USB 2.0 speeds because the drive will be very slow. Building your own external allows you to potentially achieve higher data transfer rates, which means your backups are done faster.

So there is an even lower tier of units than Green that WD uses for the externals exclusively?

» Sat Aug 27, 2011 12:49 pm

So there is an even lower tier of units than Green that WD uses for the externals exclusively?

They are the WDs that don't meet the QA of greens but are still usable drives (no actual defects, just real bad I/O). Some are also IDEs