How you guys manage your pc data to prevent data loss?

Hi there guys I wanted to ask how you guys manage your pc data to prevent data loss. Back up to external drive on regular basis. How you manage it.?

Just went through a HD failure. Just wanted to know how I can prevent future data loss.

 

I have to admit that while I intend to make regular backups it really doesn't happen on a regular basis. I just had an accident where my computer was knocked off the table. The only complete backup I had was over a year old.
Most of my important data (In this case tax files) I store on a removable SD card, which in this case saved my ass, as I was in the middle of preparing taxes to be filed. Last month I hopped in a hotub with my S4 in my pocket and trashed it.
Fortunately, in the case of my phone, all the important things such as photos and contacts were auto synced to google and dropbox. Without that I would have lost some photos that are very important.
This has happened to me every few years and for a while I'm pretty diligent about backups, but then over time become lazy. For really important work I used SD cards and USB sticks, as it is simple and convenient.
Years ago I had to use a tape drive to back up at work. It was just policy and the tapes were rotated and stored offsite every 24 hours. So the worst case scenario was a days worth of work lost. I'm sure there are better solutions now.
I always worry about security of personal information when backing up to cloud services. But in this last case, I was damn glad to have dropbox on my phone and laptop, and after getting my image up and running it was the first thing I installed again.

 

I'd get a program to do it automatically every day, that way you don't have to think about it.

 

Can u suggest any program?

 

The best backup will be one that is on some external device. I do mine about once a month. I use Paragon Free edition. It makes image files of the whole disk. What I really like about Paragon is that you can extract a single file (if that's all you need) from the saved image file. Paragon also compresses the image size. I keep my images on an old laptop hdd that I fitted into a usb enclosure. It has 750GB.

 

Depending on the computer model you have, if there is an open second HDD bay you can install one and have a RAID 1 set up.

 

Raid 1 is a good thing, but it doesn't help if a virus destroys (encrypts...) the data or the laptop gets stolen.
You could use Windows built-in backup feature with a network storage device and configure a schedule like once a day or once a week.

 

It has two HDs in two HD bays.

 

Thanks guys, nice suggestions. I wish i had done that before the loss.

 

Computers may have 2 HDD bays but may not support RAID, it depends on the exact model.

 

Well we offer an online encrypted backup service, as for imaging it automatically offline I suggest you read some reviews out there and decide which best suits your setup.

 

Thanks Meaker

 

No problem, you should be able to find a free program if your backup needs are basic

 

Invest in a decent NAS drive. Most will give you access to your data over local LAN and internet as well. Or go so far as I did and set up a home server. I would also consider a NAS with an added backup drive so you can back up your NAS regularly. Nobody wants to spend the money until they lose data, then it costs ten times as much to recover it even if it's a few MB of data you need.

Also, if you're OK with cloud storage, look at Microsoft's OneDrive, Google Drive, or even DropBox. I use DropBox for my most recently and frequently accessed (non sensitive) documents, and then back those up to my home server, and every few months I do my own audit and if I haven't touched them they go onto my home server which also is backed up daily. DropBox doesn't offer a lot of free storage up front, but for most people they usually have less than 1GB of data that they use regularly, and I find it most convenient.

There are many programs too, like Macrium Reflect, that has a full featured free version, although backups have to be run manually with it. But the paid version allows you to schedule backups automatically.

 

Also things like AC wireless start making sense if you are going network attached storage (NAS) but it does make life very easy as far as handling data goes.

 

I use the excellent (and cheap) Cloudberry Backup software to backup in two ways (on an automated schedule):

1) To a large external hard disk (not great as a backup location, but quick to restore if something goes wrong with the storage on the laptop)

2) To Google Nearline Cloud storage (cheap as chips, but much faster retrieval than Amazon Glacier and easier to setup). Compared to using some packaged cloud backup solutiuons, it's remarkably cheap and they offer a 60 day free trial. I have about 500Gb data backed-up with them currently, but it wouldn't cost that much to backup loads more.

All data that is backed up can be encrypted by Cloudberry Backup (I do this, as should everyone using cloud backup IMHO), can be compressed (I only do this for Google Nearline, and only for compressible data, so not photos or movies), and block-level back-up can also be used to backup only modified or new portions of files.

It can backup both my laptop (and any attached drives) and one network share (my NAS box).

Importantly restore is easy to do to.

I've tried various backup software and strategies and find Cloudberry Backup in conjunction with Google Nearline to be the easiest and cheapest to use.

I would not use Google Drive as a backup, it's not really designed for this and you can't easily encrypt backups made to it.

I also have back-ups of most my photo collections on Blu-Ray as as a third layer of backup.

 

Lemme see... backup... backup... oh! and backup. And a good partition layout.

Important tip #1: sync is not backup. Just because you have everything synchronized to Dropbox doesn't mean your data is safe. Delete a file? It gets deleted across all connected Dropbox clients. Corrupted game save? Dropbox will blithely replicate that corrupt save. Sync is not backup.

Important tip #2: RAID 1/5/10 is not backup. Delete a file? It's gone. Corrupted game save? It's still corrupted. Malware trashes the file system? It's trashed. RAID is not backup.

On single-disk Windows boxes I suggest allocating a smallish partition, 100-200GB, to the OS and installed applications as C: and the rest as D: for literally everything else: games, saves, documents, photos, music, you name it. On multi-disk Windows boxes I suggest a smallish OS drive and a largeish data drive or RAID set. Again, OS on C:, everything else on D:.

In my case I have several tiers of sync and backup going on. First tier is a sync mechanism (Unison over SSH) with my NAS at home. This replicates volatile data between whichever portable kit I'm using and the NAS box at home. Yes, I just got through saying that sync is not backup. It's not. But the NAS itself has a snapshot mechanism and these snapshots are created and written to auxiliary storage on a more or less daily basis (I have to swap aux disks in the caddy by hand).

Second tier is an actual live backup system. I'm using Acronis from a few years back because the Windows 7 backup tool sucks (IMO). I use it to back up the OS partition or disk. I run this every few days to keep up with security updates, application installs and removals, and any other system changes.

Third tier is overkill: imaging (aka Ghosting after Norton Ghost). I use a Clonezilla live CD/USB to create compressed images of whole systems, store them on the NAS. I run these every few weeks as an adjunct to Acronis.

 

What is your NAS set up? Looking to build up something for myself...

 

It's a bit old at this point: a HP N40L microserver, 4GB RAM, 4x2TB WD green disks with Btrfs (data=raid1), running vanilla Debian, plus a eSATA dock for auxilliary storage. Samba for file shares, SSH for remote access. I make snapshots and copy them to bare disks every day or so, and cycle the bare disks through a fireproof box every month or so. I intend to convert it to PC-BSD with ZFS this summer when I have a chunk of free time to do it.

The hardware works nicely with FreeNAS but I don't need all of the UI overhead it entails.

 

Just yesterday I stumbled on a thing that I think will keep me with Btrfs on Debian: duperemove. One of the things that's been drawing me (back) to ZFS is deduplication. One of the things that's been keeping me away is the massive RAM requirements that ZFS requires for deduplication. dupremove does deduplication on Btrfs on demand on specified files or directories. It has much lower RAM requirements that way and I can run it from cron early in the morning once a week so I won't see any performance hit.

 

Back when I had my store I would suggest local small business's to buy NAS drives. The good ones that came with pretty decent software was Seagate Blackarmor NAS. I actually picked up a Blackarmor 220 a few years ago for a little under $200. Although I don't have any backups scheduled on any of the computers I currently own (because they change so frequently), I can easily map the drive to access it. I pull windows images, updates, drivers, and other utilities to any computer I throw on my network. I can also store movies and music on it then pull them to my htpc in the livingroom.

I'd suggest not going with cloud storage, but invest in a good NAS drive.

If you want to go the cheap route you can make your own. Just buy an enclosure and hdd and be done with it.

I also have a couple external hard drives, one 2.5tb that I use for my jtag xbox 360, the other is a 1.5tb drive in a metal gear box enclosure that I don't use anymore since it's not usb 3.0.

 

I think replying on a NAS drive alone for backup is dangerous, what if your house gets broken into and they steal the NAS drive (actually happened to me a few years back that I had some external hard drives stolen during a break in) or if you have a fire/flood or some other mishap? I'm not saying backing up to a NAS drive is a bad idea, but I think backing up offsite (e.g. to cloud storage, as long as you're encrypting it) as well is essential.

 

Physical security trumps all. There is a very simple and inexpensive way to secure NAS boxes. It's a steel pet cage. Seriously. A heavy duty pet cage can be had for around $100. Fifteen bucks for a good lock. Chain it to something immobile and you have your very own private, secure data cage.

 

Not always practical, depending on living arrangements, but ingenious! Still doesn't help in case of fire, flooding or other such disaster. offsite, whether cloud or otherwise, is the only real solution here

 

I dump my snapshots to auxiliary disks which I rotate through a fireproof box. One could use a proper safe or a safe deposit box at a local bank or credit union.

Cloud is a non-starter in my opinion. Storing data in the cloud means entrusting that data to entities that you have every reason not to trust.

 

That's why I always encrypt any data I back-up to the cloud, also I would never rely on it as my only form of backup. Using Google Nearline via Cloudberry Backup is ridiculously cheap, so it's a very low cost additional back-up layer.

 

I've seen you mention this before.. How much does it cost you etc to use these services?

 

Encryption isn't about keeping the bad guys out. It's about keeping the bad guys out long enough. Problem is, once you've put something out there in the cloud it is out there forever. You can't take it back. And like the man says, attacks only get better with time.

 

Not really an issued I'm worried about. To crack AES 256 bit encryption would take a huge amount of computer power and a very, very long time " It would take 1038 Tianhe-2 Supercomputers running for the entirety of the existence of everything to exhaust half of the keyspace of a AES-256 key." - http://www.reddit.com/r/theydidthem...e_and_energy_required_to_bruteforce_a_aes256/

Also, why would someone bother expending this amount of computing resources on some random user's account when they have no idea what the files are, as even the file names are encrypted?

 

Prices are here: https://cloud.google.com/storage/pricing

So 500Gb would be $5 a month - don't forget you can compress files automatically that can be compressed (so not already compressed images and video) using Cloud Berry backup, to reduce space requirements.

 

Those numbers are for brute force (exhaustive search) attacks. If there's a weakness in the algorithm or in the particular implementation of the algorithm or in the PRNG then the time will be drastically reduced. In fact, AES now has several known, exploitable weaknesses. There's no need to panic today; AES is still strong enough for the foreseeable future. Still, more weaknesses will be discovered, attacks will get better, and your encrypted data will essentially be unprotected.

As to why someone would attack your encrypted data? Because money. If there is a way for someone to use that data to get money from you or someone else then someone will eventually try it.

 

I'm not exactly an obvious target compared to more exploitable higher-value possibilities

 

The proliferation of ransomware is proof that an individual's obviousness or value, perceived or otherwise, is irrelevant. Attackers will target anyone and everyone they can if there is a chance that some of them will pay.

Yes, I am being pessimistic. That's the nature of security. Those of us in the field don't think in terms of best cases or average cases. We think in terms of "what's the worst that can happen?" and go from there. One worst case scenario is that a catastrophic weakness in AES is discovered tomorrow, one that renders all of your AES-encrypted backups unprotected. Then someone at the cloud storage provider you use gets greedy and starts wholesale decrypting users' data, including yours, looking for passwords and bank numbers.

It's unlikely that things will go pear-shaped that quickly. That's not the point. The point is that things will go pear-shaped sooner or later so what do you do when that happens? Well, when your data is out there somewhere outside of your physical control then you can't do anything. If it's out there then it's out there forever. You can't take it back. You can't change the passwords and you can't change the ciphers. That's the risk associated with the convenience of the cloud.

It's up to you to decide if the risk is worth it to yourself and your data.

 

I take your point, though part of that risk assessment should be based on what you're backing-up to the cloud. I'm not backing up sensitive banking details and passwords to other services, for example, which probably would not be wise to store in such an environment. The hackers are welcome to try to decrypt my files containing pictures of me and the missus on holiday, for example, I'm not going to lose sleep over that....

 

If the NAS drive died or it had some other hardware failure I could live with it. Though if someone broke into my house they would probably be shot by me or shot by my neighbors (one thing I like about the south, we all have guns). In the odd event they got into my office when I wasn't home I would doubt they're going to get into my closet and get up into the attic to get to the drive. They would be grabbing all the random technical b.s. I have laying around in my office, I doubt they would have enough time to grab more than a handful of stuff.

If it was a fire I'd probably lose the data but I do have a fire safe I bought a couple years ago that I have all the irreplaceable objects and documents stored in. I wouldn't care if I lost the data in the fire, though I test the smoke detectors frequently and have a small fire extinguisher in my office.

Once I was doing bga rework in my store and forgot to remove a cmos battery, it got hot enough to explode and shoot sparks everywhere. By law I was required to have a medium sized fire extinguisher but I never had to use it. I live by that rule, rather have it and not need it, then need it and not have it.

As for cloud backup, it's just not for me. I have thousands of pictures on my photobucket, I don't think there's really anything I couldn't live without or regain.

Anyway I doubt neither of those situations are going to happen, if they do I'm prepared.

 

No guns in UK (thankfully), not needed as the vast majority of criminals don't have them either (nor even our regular police), though I guess the genie has been out of that bottle for a long time in the US, and I do realise it's a different situation there.

Of course, "guns don't kill people, people kill people", but having a gun does makes it an awful lot easier... Some interesting statistics:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate

Thankfully violent crime has been dropping quite dramatically in the US in recent years though

Mind you, I do have a a recurve bow (for target sport, only), though I can't see myself threatening an intruder with it, Robin Hood-style, LOL!

Anyway, I'm aware this is straying from the topic...

Also when our house was last burgled when we were on holiday, so it wouldn't have made any difference if we were tooled-up.

This is a good point, in fact these days whenever we go away for an extended period, we always hide most of our computer kit in the attic (which is easy to do with notebook computers).

Indeed!

Well Photobucket is a cloud service, obviously! It's not really a true backup system, though

 

I'm in a rented place at the moment and I think it must have been burgled at some point and the door replaced and it would take some SERIOUS equipment to get through it, it has a re-enforced internal structure and additional pins in it to stop it coming away just from kicking.

That or it was a drug house but it's a bit small for that lol.

 

Well I used Acronis for a few years then with UEFI I had to switch to Macrium Reflect and then Macrium Reflect Pro I find Acronis flakey on lately and MR right on and that's why I paid for it. I have regular Image back ups and File and folder back ups. My Business has 2 Cloud back up 1 daily and one real time besides the local external hard drive back ups I use to local one external and one internal

As to the rest I own and operate a firearms repair business, were armed here and the cops answer any panic alarms and any other alarms that happen. Were prepared for most anything that happens. We in the US are not required to be victims we have the right to defend our people and property and millions of us do everyday. That's not going to change our country is based on it.

 

Oh it's different in the states where guns are much more common, in the UK you just don't encounter them in general. I should really set up a backup for my wife since she is going to have more important data on her machine.

 

Yes Meaker is a real shame they took away your firearms.

 

They never really existed in great quantities in this country, at least not compared to the US. You either have them or don't, either way works in its own way but there is not really a middle ground. Anyway, I think I will get a NAS to store data and host backups.