On Thu, 15 Oct 2009 21:47:57 -0600 (MDT), Warren Block <wbl...@wonkity.com> wrote: > Just a general note: backup to a hard drive isn't bad, but it's not the > same as removable media. One failure can kill all of your backups...
That's why it's often a good choice two have at least two hard disks (maybe external ones) for backup, so if one fails (which seems to be a problem of "modern" disks rather than older ones), there's still an intact backup on the other one (or on one of the others). > Backup in general is making copies of information > you won't need as long as you have a backup of it.a A wise summary. :-) > dump(8) doesn't do all sectors, just ones used by the filesystem. > > Also, dump doesn't cross filesystems. In a typical FreeBSD install, /, > /var, and /usr are separate filesystems. A dump of / won't get them all > at once. The dump utility is good when you want to work partition-wise. If you have a setting where everything goes into a big /, dumping it will get all data - from that partition. Slices and MBR are out of dump's scope. > > My server should boot fine with the FreeBSD CDROM (fixit), because it > > uses a subset of the GENERIC kernel device drivers. > > If you can, try that before an actual emergency. Furthermore, it's good to check backups regularly. A defective backup is NO backup. If data doesn't restore as intended (e. g. to a testing system), then...? A situation that many of you surely have come across, as I have: Operator: The hard disk crashed, we need to restore from backups. Customer: Of course I have backups! Here! Customer hands over three tapes. Operator starts restore with tape #1. Operator: First tape is through. Good. Next one. Computer displays rroor reading /dev/nsa0: Tape is defect, cannot read. Operator: Do you have other set of tapes? This #2 is defective. Customer: Yes! Tape #3! Operator: I need a working tape #2. Customer: BUT I *HAVE* BACKUPS!!! Testing the backups may take some time, I agree, but it's mostly worth it - it's worth as much as your data is to you. -- Polytropon Magdeburg, Germany Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0 Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ... _______________________________________________ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"