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MAKE A BACKUP!

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Urbandreamer
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MAKE A BACKUP!

#252885

Postby Urbandreamer » September 20th, 2019, 1:09 pm

ARGH!

Some 12 months ago my daughters laptop failed. She had no copies of anything that she stored on it.

Oh well, it was just the charging circuitry (or possibly just the DC jack).
I purchased the same model off ebay and swaped the keyboard (the new one had a Dutch keyboard), the memory (she had extra) and the SSD hard disk.
She was up an running again.

It's a Lenovo T430, so you can swap the optical drive for a hard disk caddy.
I purchased one and put the spare hard drive in it and showed her how to swap them.

She never did.
Today she poured a pint of water into the fan intake!! Ok she knocked her glass over, over the laptop which was on it's side, with the intake pointing up.

Worse she STILL hasn't made a backup!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

She's supposed to be a bloody adult. It's NOT ROCKET SCIENCE. Make a bloody backup.

Ps, that goes for anyone reading this who hasn't backed up their data.

staffordian
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Re: MAKE A BACKUP!

#252897

Postby staffordian » September 20th, 2019, 1:43 pm

Or, at the very least, use One Drive, Dropbox or similar to store files...

Breelander
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Re: MAKE A BACKUP!

#252921

Postby Breelander » September 20th, 2019, 4:33 pm

Urbandreamer wrote:ARGH!...
...She's supposed to be a bloody adult. It's NOT ROCKET SCIENCE. Make a bloody backup.

Ps, that goes for anyone reading this who hasn't backed up their data.



Backing up your data is ESSENTIAL. But better yet, back up your entire system so that you can restore it should the drive die.

Macrium Reflect Free is my tool of choice for that, with the added bonus that you can browse a Macrium image to retrieve individual data files.

bruncher
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Re: MAKE A BACKUP!

#252935

Postby bruncher » September 20th, 2019, 6:00 pm

Why backup to a remote system/server rather than onto your own media?

Sussexlad
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Re: MAKE A BACKUP!

#252938

Postby Sussexlad » September 20th, 2019, 6:11 pm

Breelander wrote:Backing up your data is ESSENTIAL. But better yet, back up your entire system so that you can restore it should the drive die.

Macrium Reflect Free is my tool of choice for that, with the added bonus that you can browse a Macrium image to retrieve individual data files.


I use Image for Linux and have done full restores many times and never had an issue with it.

https://www.terabyteunlimited.com/image-for-linux.htm

There is a tool for extracting individual files from an image but I've never had any joy with it but backup frequently updated stuff daily anyway and keep a four weekly copy in the garage.

Sussexlad

mc2fool
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Re: MAKE A BACKUP!

#252939

Postby mc2fool » September 20th, 2019, 6:18 pm

bruncher wrote:Why backup to a remote system/server rather than onto your own media?

'Cos it's easy and you still have the backups when your house burns down.

Although I would say do that as well as onto your own media....

Breelander
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Re: MAKE A BACKUP!

#252941

Postby Breelander » September 20th, 2019, 6:20 pm

Sussexlad wrote:I use Image for Linux ... There is a tool for extracting individual files from an image but I've never had any joy with it...


The 'tool' for Macrium is File Explorer. You can mount a Macrium image as a virtual drive and just browse for the files you want.

In fact, if you have W10 Pro you can even run a Macrium image as a Hyper-V virtual machine.

xeny
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Re: MAKE A BACKUP!

#252942

Postby xeny » September 20th, 2019, 6:22 pm

bruncher wrote:Why backup to a remote system/server rather than onto your own media?


Easy way of getting the backup decently off site as protection against a building fire or similar.

Urbandreamer
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Re: MAKE A BACKUP!

#252944

Postby Urbandreamer » September 20th, 2019, 6:29 pm

Glad to here that folks know and have many methods of backing up.

I have used Macrium reflect, Clonezilla, Paragon, Ghost and others in the past.

Reasons not to backup to the cloud include privacy. Reasons to backup to the cloud include the likes of a house fire.

Now all I have to do is convince my daughter that she should regard it as important!

Oh, I've checked and the HD survived. Windows needed repairing as drowning prevented a normal shutdown.
A replacement motherboard has been ordered from ebay.

stewamax
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Re: MAKE A BACKUP!

#252946

Postby stewamax » September 20th, 2019, 6:38 pm

Back up files (as they change) to the cloud.
Back up whole machines to a couple of external disks and store them (in rotation) in a fireproof thick-walled media safe.
Why? Restoring several terabytes of 'whole machine' takes ages and ages down a broadband connection. Do the sums and see.

Infrasonic
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Re: MAKE A BACKUP!

#252957

Postby Infrasonic » September 20th, 2019, 7:42 pm

Remote (cloud) OS backups via FTTP are becoming more feasible. A friend has a 1Gbps symmetrical ISP connection via Hyperoptic, and there are even 10Gbps full fibre options coming onstream (although not cheap, as you can imagine...).

mc2fool
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Re: MAKE A BACKUP!

#252960

Postby mc2fool » September 20th, 2019, 7:55 pm

Urbandreamer wrote:Reasons not to backup to the cloud include privacy.

Not an issue if you use a zero knowledge end-to-end encrypted service, such as https://www.sync.com/

Stonge
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Re: MAKE A BACKUP!

#253032

Postby Stonge » September 21st, 2019, 10:58 am

Urbandreamer wrote:
Now all I have to do is convince my daughter that she should regard it as important!



It's not important, dad will sort out boring stuff like that.

gbjbaanb
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Re: MAKE A BACKUP!

#253247

Postby gbjbaanb » September 23rd, 2019, 11:12 am

or megasync if you need more space (15Gb for free). If you want to pay, then a service like backblaze would be better, $6 a month but it will store your entire system without you having to do much more than install a thing that does it all automatically.

StepOne
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Re: MAKE A BACKUP!

#253853

Postby StepOne » September 25th, 2019, 2:08 pm

Breelander wrote:Backing up your data is ESSENTIAL.


Genuine question - is it really essential? I occasionally backup. Maybe annually, maybe not even that frequently. 99% of the data on my laptop is photos, but any of those photos that are any good probably are already shared on Facebook, WhatsApp, etc., or via email, or occasionally printed out, and if I lost all the copies on the laptop it would not be the end of the world.

The few documents that I have - copies of letters etc, similarly would not be missed. I have a bunch of spreadsheets that I regularly update with share prices etc, but I have to say that even losing them would probably feel more like a weight off my shoulders rather than a significant burden. Anyway they are all stored on onedrive, so I am assuming they are reasonably safe. (I'm aware that onedrive could disappear at any point, or certainly it could corrupt my files at any point, but I'm willing to live with that risk).

The bottom line is that I'm a lot more sanguine about backups than I used to be in the past. They are more of a nice-to-have than an essential. (And as for rotating external hard drives in a fireproof safe... I can barely even keep on top of the washing in our house!!)

Cheers,
StepOne

Dod101
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Re: MAKE A BACKUP!

#253868

Postby Dod101 » September 25th, 2019, 3:08 pm

I am glad to read the latest post by StepOne. The thing that would really annoy me might be my Money file but even that could be reconstructed as far as it needed to be. I keep my family history files on OneDrive but apart from that have very little that I need to back up so I do not do it either. I thought I was maybe the only one in the universe that does not back up.

I have been redecorating my study and have just burnt about 20 years of bank statements, letters and stuff that I thought were of vital importance but certainly were not. I think much the same could be said of a lot of stuff on my PC.

Dod

Infrasonic
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Re: MAKE A BACKUP!

#253883

Postby Infrasonic » September 25th, 2019, 4:07 pm

It's dependent on your use of course, but no back ups at all is living on the edge IMHO.

Even if you have file backups to the cloud (OneDrive, Dropbox et al) then what do you do if there is a major catastrophe there and they lose the whole lot? Been a few actual direct lightning strikes over the years on large data centres belonging to MS, Google, Amazon etc. with attendant major disruptions.

I use several cloud operators with mirrored set ups (via IFTTT and MS Flow) to try and mitigate that, as well as local OS and file backups. (Macrium/File History.)
A Macrium OS restore is going to be way quicker than even a clean install of W10 ( although I run a W10 multi boot clone HDD as well for instant redundancy).
Once scheduled (a five minute job) it's pretty much set and forget with Macrium and File History, so I don't really get why there is resistance to using these services.

Urbandreamer
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Re: MAKE A BACKUP!

#253885

Postby Urbandreamer » September 25th, 2019, 4:15 pm

In answer to StepOne, yes and you are doing it.

A "back up" is a copy, of what you want to keep and nothing more. Of course there is no need to copy the things that you don't mind losing. Also if you know that there exist copies of the things you value, then you may not need to do anything as the back up's exist!

It is possible that Dod could reconstruct his Money file from the paper statements that he now feels no need to keep (and possibly doesn't), but those paper statements WERE a back up.

Those suggesting backing up an entire system, value both the ease of doing so and ease of restoring a working system after a windows 10 update, rather than simply the data on the machine.

I may have over stressed backing up computer files however my daughter is off to University and the idea of anyone losing their thesus before it is submitted is unthinkable.

BTW, the replacment motherboard didn't work. Though fortunatly the old one has dried out and now does!

production100
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Re: MAKE A BACKUP!

#253887

Postby production100 » September 25th, 2019, 4:26 pm

As an aside, I recently tried Windows Storage Spaces as a means of backing up data. With this you set up a pool of disks (in my case two large disks). You can then create virtual raid disks on that which give redundancy of data.

It worked for a while and then one day the pc decided that it needed to scan the disks and after the scan the pool had just disappeared. As a result I completely lost all of the redundant drives. It even refused to see the disks on Disk Management.

I transferred the disks to another pc - one of the claimed advantages of Windows Storage Spaces is that you can transfer it all to another pc and it all works. No pool.

I was only using it to store backups so it did not result in any loss of data - and after reformatting the disks with a non windows programme I just made the pool again, made the disks again on the pool, copied the backups back onto the disks from my remote backup disk and carried on.

Some weeks later it did exactly the same again...

So if anybody is using Windows Storage Spaces to store data then be aware that it can all suddenly disappear with no warning. Even with a raid setup on Windows Storage Spaces when the pool disappears you have no data other than by using a disk data recovery programme (which takes ages and may not recover all the data).

Chris

Infrasonic
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Re: MAKE A BACKUP!

#253890

Postby Infrasonic » September 25th, 2019, 4:57 pm

Some of the better SOHO NAS' like the Synology and QNAP mid to higher tier machines now have ransomware protection as an option, so the benefit of cloud storage 'file versioning' can be had at the local level.
Might not make economic sense for occasional users but if you need large amounts of data backup it might be a good long term option.
QNAP also do hybrid DAS/NAS' (with M.2 NVME SSD cache) whereby you can take advantage of Thunderbolt 3 (4x) 40Gb connections for uber fast two way transfers, as well as standard 1Gb/(or even 10Gb...) Ethernet NAS functions.

W10 'protected folders' will do a basic anti-ransomware job too, and whitelisting is a lot easier now since FU 1809.


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