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If disaster strikes the day before you backup, you would be a fool to _ever_ backup.
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...it is all safely stored in my head.
"Life, as well as software, has bugs." - Roger Wright
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David Wulff wrote:
it is all safely stored in my head
Ohhh,Then what happend if your head crashed? 
Mazy
"If I go crazy then will you still
Call me Superman
If I’m alive and well, will you be
There holding my hand
I’ll keep you by my side with
My superhuman might
Kryptonite"Kryptonite-3 Doors Down
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I find a good long soak in neat ethanol normally does the trick -- well at least then I can't remember what it was I couldn't remember. 
"Life, as well as software, has bugs." - Roger Wright
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My believe is that one need to backup at two levels. This is especially true when you work in small firm.
The first backup level should be performed daily (weakly) and the backups can be stored inside the firm (working enviroment).
The second backup level shall be done weekly (monthly) and the backups MUST be stored on a remote location -- another building.
If this sounds paranoic to you, image your office in a fire, which do not only destroy your HDD, but server, CDs and backup tapes as well
... or ...
a simple burglery that results in a loss of your computer and all backup CDs (nicely labeled and organized) that were stored on a shell above your computer.
We should not forget that in a true disaster  you can lose several working years, either yours or your team's.
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I was looking for a cool software to backup my data, code's, mp3's, emails, favorites, etc..., i found a nice software that can backup data and my Outlook Express emails, 100 rule, 10 accounts  ,etc.., its called Genie Backup Manager
http://www.genie-soft.com
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A friend of my is also a LAN administrator ad a company in the Netherlands. At one time their main server (PDS) completely crashed. Knowing they make a backup on a daily bases, no need to worry he thought.
The only problem was that he could not restore the tape (big progblem).
I think everybody has to check their backup tape on a frequent bases by restoring some files (I know, I do). I'm using Veritas Backup exec and never encountered any problems.
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Daily...
In the little enterprise where I work the environment is hard, and there's a lot of iron particles floating in the air...
two of the four computers that are here have been completely destroyed: the hdd, the video card, and others have suffered and have been lost.
The first time the backups where made each month. And we lost only one month.
The second time we where making the backup daily, but then the HP COLORADO 5GB was not correctly handled by Win2k...
Imagine my life when I discovered (after calling to HP and Microsoft) that that streamer would not be holded any more. And that the internal program that comes with the OS save information to the tape, but is not capable to load information from it.
After all of this I have bought the Veritas Backup Exec program and now I'm running it... This seems to work properly.
Regards.
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I would first get on the phone to Gateway then I would lament the loss of hundreds lines of code that didn't even compile anyway. My biggest loss would be my financial records but I backup that every time I update it(rare).
- Matt Newman / Windows XP Activist
-Sonork ID: 100.11179
"You can't seriously believe that you could get away with suing someone over quoting text from a message posted in a public forum, can you?" - John Simmons
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But all my documents, code, audio, video and other irreplaceable stuff lives on a 60GB mirrored partition so I would need to simultaneously lose two physical hard discs to lose the lot.
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No you wouldn't - all you'd have to do is delete the wrong file, and POOF...
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What if your computer gets stolen?
- Anders
Money talks, but all mine ever says is "Goodbye!"
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Anders Molin wrote:
What if your computer gets stolen?
Yes, this is a possibility, but as I have literally 50GB of data to back up, there is not other option except to get a tape drive which are like £500 which I don't have the money for.
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50GB to back up?
That's a lot.
I only back up my source, images from my digital camera and some word/excel documents. Together that's aprox. 2GB.
When I get too many images, I'll burn them on a CD, and exclude them from the backup.
I have a HP DAT8i which I love, there is nothing better than tape for backup
- Anders
Money talks, but all mine ever says is "Goodbye!"
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Unfortunately I have my entire audio collection (250+ CDs) on my PC which amounts to over 30GB of data, the other 20 is years of software, documents, v large images etc. Guess I'd better come up with something better pretty soon.
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Seems to me that you don't need to back up the audio collection -- you have the CD's to restore from. With the software, the same is true. Most documents and very large images are static, right? So you only have to back those up once. Whatever's left should be small enough to back up regularly.
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I'm sure I've been unlucky but on the two occasions I've seen a raid 5 system fail, it's been the controller that's failed, not the drive and it's managed to destroy all of the data on all of the disks.
Making a copy is good, but I'd make sure that the copy exists on a different computer using totally separate hardware, preferably on a different site in case of theft or fire or something.
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This is a common, but also very risky way to do backups. Among all those really good arguments against it like deleting the wrong file, virus infections, stolen machine, burning office and so on, there is also another important thing:
Maybe you won't believe it, but it is true: Most hard disk failures are due to corrupt power supply, overheating, shock and other similar non-intrinsic problems. And in this cases it is very probable, that both disks die at nearly the same time! (This is also the reason why a RAID disk array is never an alternative for backups.)
A good backup neads at least 3 generations of indipendent medias, that are not phyiscally connected to the machine and at least one of them should reside in a fire resistant safe or at a remote place. If you love and need your data, you should really think twice about your backup strategy!
--
Daniel Lohmann
http://www.losoft.de
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All my company projects live on a remote SourceSafe database anyway, which I assume gets backed up everyday by the Net Admins. Any backup that I do are all personal stuff (email etc) that possibly shouldn't be there in the first place
-chinster-
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I class this as 'living on the edge'.
What happens if you get a virus, or screw up a file that then gets mirrored to the other machine, or you have a fire in your office, or a lightning strike, or...or...
cheers,
Chris Maunder
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When we release a new version, we also make a backup of the code tree to help insure that if required we can always rebuild that specific version.
We also do weekly backups of everything and use sorcesafe.
Tim Smith
I know what you're thinking punk, you're thinking did he spell check this document? Well, to tell you the truth I kinda forgot myself in all this excitement. But being this here's CodeProject, the most powerful forums in the world and would blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself one question, Do I feel lucky? Well do ya punk?
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I use SourceSafe with the database on a different machine, so I at least have two copies. That's not even counting the history which can be really close to current.
Then the server gets backed up nightly. First to a network storage array and then to digital tape. Then once a week the DAT tapes get picked up and stored in a safty deposit box. I should have a copies of everything available in case of a disaster. 
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It depends on the size of the disaster. Should a plane-crash occur on your building (I surely hope it does not) do you have the safty deposit box.
Best regards,
Alexandru Savescu
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There may be two answers to that:
Just say that on my personal computer (where I don't do too much coding, but have a lot of data I would not like to loose), I am not doing enough backup. It is as much a matter of time than a matter of thinking about it. When it come to save data that is spread all over a lot of directories, it is not something you do in a few minutes. 
For my professional computer, NEVER. It is done on daily basis (I think) by the system engineer, but I never care about it my self. I do in a way by using source safe, as the base is on a network computer, but more because of the configuration management thing than for a backup purpose  .
Computers have enabled people to make more mistakes faster than almost any invention in history, with the possible exception of tequila and hand guns.
- Carl Gundlach
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Our stuff gets backed up daily through our main server. But this has only recently been on-line.
People who may remember me impersonating another user when my hard disk suffered internal mechanical failure last year some time will know I suffered from a backup nightmare around then. Fortunately, through the help of a data recovery house, my skin was saved...... and also my data/code.
Roger Allen
Sonork 100.10016
If I had a quote, it would be a very good one.
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