Ask Slashdot: It's World Backup Day; How Do You Back Up?

MrSeb writes "Today is World Backup Day! The premise is that you back up your computers on March 31, so that you're not an April Fool if your hard drive crashes tomorrow. How do Slashdot users back up? RAID? Multiple RAIDs? If you're in LA, on a fault line, do you keep a redundant copy of your data in another geographic region?"

Comments

RAID is not a backup solution

[M1FCJ]

Simple. Redundancy backup.

Re:RAID is not a backup solution

[hairyfeet]

USB hard drives are damned cheap and Win 7 has a backup software built in and that is as simple as "clicky clicky, next next next" so there really isn't much excuse for not having backups anymore. All I have to do is tell my customers "If this PC was to disappear tomorrow, poof, with ALL the stuff that was on it, would you lose anything you couldn't replace?" to get them to see how much stuff they have on their PCs they really care about.

I tell them to use a defense in depth which is really quite easy to do, use USB HDDs for their basic backups with DVDs and the cloud used for those things like pictures that are really important to them with the DVDs stored somewhere offsite like a family member or friend's place. Hell DVDs are so cheap this kind of backup costs practically nothing and there are plenty of places they can upload and store small things like pictures for free.

A perfect example of how well this works is a customer who had a fire last year, even though his house and the PC in it were burnt to the ground because he took my advice and was swapping USB HDDs once a week with his dad so they would both have offsite backups he only lost 4 days worth of stuff and even that didn't include anything important as he had gotten into the habit of uploading photos when he downloaded them onto his PC. He simply came by the shop with the USB HDD from his dad's, told me what happened, and in less than 4 hours we had him back to exactly how he was before on a new PC, with all his stuff back in its place and nothing he cared about lost.

So PLEASE stress how important multiple forms of backups are to your friends and relatives, as there is nothing more heartbreaking than to tell some girl those pictures of her dead mother are most likely gone forever because her laptop got trashed and she didn't have backups.

If it's not off site it's not a backup !

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a raid.

RAID

[Ash-Fox]

How do Slashdot users back up? RAID?

Can we moderate this article flamebait?

Backups are for the weak !

[captain_dope_pants]

Live on the edge guys...

When you boot up in the morning and it takes a little longer than usual, the heart beats a little faster and you think "OMG is the machine going to fail? My data will be gone". Or perhaps there's an electrical storm to liven your day up - "If that thunder gets any closer I might have to shut down the PC, but if lightning hits then everything's toast !".

These scenarios, and many others, all get the blood pumping in fear. If the computer /does/ boot or you /don't/ get toasted by bolts of electricity then the sense of relief is wonderful !

Try it - it's fun ;-)

Automated backup of NAS

[AliasMarlowe]

All of our important files (even the kids' files) are on the server. It backs itself up automatically 3 times per week to external USB drives. I rotate the USB backup drives every few weeks. So we need do nothing special today, as the backup works fine.

More important

[elrick_the_brave]

World backup day? How about world test your restore day? All the backups in the world don't mean anything unless you test your restores and know your data.