On 19 Oct 2005 at 15:20, Johannes Gebauer wrote: > I am sometimes amazed how much people trust computers. You can't. In > the end it makes no difference whether the software or the hardware > fails, data will get lost, and you better have a backup somewhere. > Better have several.
I want to second this. I have plenty of experience setting up backup systems for clients, and the ones who have lost the least (or no) data have been those with multiple layers of redundant backups. When there's a failure, there are almost always multiple failures simultaneously. I've more than once seen THREE layers of backup fail at the same time. I'm experimenting these days with using external hard drives for backup media. I've just started using a $50 piece of backup software called Acronis TrueImage, that does both traditional file/folder- based backups, but also can image a whole drive. The nice thing about the images is that the software also allows you to do incremental or differential backups of the image, thus reducing the amount of space it takes to keep an up-to-date image of a drive. In my test-bed scenario, I have a file backup (differential, i.e., all files changed since the last full backup; incremental is available, too, which is all changed files since the last backup pof any kind, but I don't like incremental backups because it makes restorig files much, much more work; as long as there's plenty of disk space available on the backup volume and as long as the differential backups don't take too long, I'll not worry about incremental backups) running on a daily basis, and an image backup running on a weekly basis (differential, as well). This is my first time using Acronis TrueImage, so the jury is still out on how well it is going to work. But I definitely believe this kind of backup to a hard drive (especially over a network to another machine) is a vast improvement over the old days of tape backups. I'm still deciding how to handle offsite backup. Acronis TrueImage can backup to optical drives and span media, so I'll probably set up that for creating backups to be taken offsite. But that can't be done unattended, so it's less reliable. I'll probably set up the smallest possible backup set to backup to the optical drive (the machine has a DVD drive, but I'm not sure if all the software is installed to make it work properly, nor am I sure if it's a writable DVD drive). But, of course, there is the problem of having to have the writable disk in the drive for the backup to happen, which is highly problematic on WinXP, so I'll have to see what can be done. Anyway, sorry to ramble on so long! -- David W. Fenton http://www.bway.net/~dfenton David Fenton Associates http://www.bway.net/~dfassoc _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
