2007-09-10 21:03:08
I am really paranoid about the type of thing you said. I ve heard too many
stories of people s backups being bad and all-is-lost type of situation. With
pretty much all of my life s memories being digital (I ve gone digital a long
time ago, storing all receipts, photos, CDs, etc digitally) if I were to suffer
a data loss I agree - it would be devestating and $10k would be cheap to
recover it.
My backup plan is as follows:
1. My main home PC hosts most of the active data. I have a normal HD - no RAID
as that can sometimes make data recovery more impossible - not to mention if
you do striping and not mirroring it doubles the chance of one hard drive
taking out all of your data. If I had a lot of money I would probably do RAID
mirroring of some sort.
2. I have a linux server in-house that acts as a file server. I back up all
music, documents, and anything else I can think of to this server hourly or
nightly depending on the type of data. Backup is unencrypted.
3. I have a portable hard drive I plug in once a month and back up most things
to. This is then stored in a fire-proof safe in my residence. This backup is
compressed and encrypted in case it is stolen.
4. I rent a dedicated server to which I back up to. This backup is done daily
and is encrypted; and is located fairly far away from me to give some
separation for any sort of natural disasters.
5. I backup my photos manually maybe twice a year onto DVD. This is in the
off-chance that someone sets off an EMP which manages to wipe out all magnetic
storage devices. I told you I am paranoid.
6. I backup all other information such as USB Key Drive and Laptop data to my
main PC which is then eventually moved to the other backups.
The main software I use to do all of this is called SyncBack SE
http://www.2brightsparks.com/syncback/sbse.html
I highly recommend to all - you have not only scheduled backups but also
backups based on when you insert a certain drive or other criteria.