How do YOU secure your data?

Your working on the project up to late in the night. Finally, you complete it but you're too tired to print it out, you tell yourself you'll print it in the morning.

When you wake up in the morning, you hear an unusual buzzing in your computer, upon further analysis you realize its the hard drive. You took care of this system and you have no idea why this would happen, but it did, now you don't have your project anymore (at least not on this system).

Imagine a scenario like this and I'm sure you've thought about securing your data, as any 5 year warranty from a hard drive company is not going to bring back all that precious content you worked on.

So, how do YOU secure your data?

 

Don't buy Maxtor hard drives.

 

I don't, with most of my stuff.

But the most important files and other important documents generally go on my 8GB flash drive. I don't really have many important files that would be of enough importance to back up anyway. Most of the stuff I have can be easily gotten again.

 

THIS. More seriously. Usually when I want to make sure something important has to be backed up, I save on my laptop hard drive as usal, then on the sd card in my card reader, another copy on my desktop then on the flash drive and finally I dump the file in my skydrive account. If it's sensitive data, I just password protected rar file, change the extension of the file and repeat the operation.

 

Isn't that what external drives are for?

Each workstation/notebook is backed up daily to two or three different external HD's and these HD's are rotated to two different offsite locations every second or third day. Nothing gets deleted from the systems internal data drive either (except for the notebooks) - these internal drives just get replaced with new models and the 'full' HD gets to retire.

Nothing is perfect, but this is where my comfort level is happiest for now.

For important work happening in real time (photo-editing) - I will not leave a system until that work is copied to at least one external HD (or USB key if the size is less than 64GB). If the 'work' is a document then it is also printed too - if I was working on my accounting package - that is copied off also.

No, I don't trust computers - I love them! But just like lovers, they'll turn on you when you're the most vulnerable.

The only way to not have a broken heart is to... erhh.. uhm, I mean the only way to not lose data is to plan as if you are, and take appropriate counter measures.

Above all else, listen to Soviet Sunrise and don't use Maxtors, ever!

Cheers!

 

Windows gives a long list (I was boarded) of the various ways to backup data along with the pros and cons. So far, all my important documents are still saved the old fashioned way: on paper in a file.

Once I finally decide to convert everything to computer, I guess I'll use the double redundancy rule and have on copy data on an external HD and another off-site on one of the may web based data storage sites. For the best protection, you really need to get your important data away from your house of office just in case the unthinkable happens. That way even if you lose everything, at least you'll be able to prove you are who you claim to be.

 

I think he's talking about how to save data from corruption, not someone jacking the machine, but I guess that works too.

I have two externals, a USB flash drive, and skydrive. The stuff that's really important to me is backed up to those four, and it's just fine.

 

True it is ambiguously stated, but the solutions would be the same in either instance.

And for the record, a HD!

 

My hard drive maintenance routine involves backing up my data on a monthly basis with important files mirrored on the spot when needed. Chkdsk and HDTune error scans are performed once every two months. My notebook drives are defragmented once a week. My archive drives are defragmented once every two months. All of my hard drives are Seagate's and none of them have failed me, including the HDD's that I retired once they hit five years old.

 

I use a combination of 3 different technologies:

1) Subversion. Though the goal here is to be able to easily sync all of my computers, as a bonus I also get an extremely comprehensive backup that puts Previous Versions/Shadow Copy to shame.

2) Drive image. Not much of a backup per se, since I just make an image of a fresh OS install and never update it. Mainly used to save reformat + driver hunt time.

3) Copying folders to an external HDD the old fashioned way.

 

Drives are cheap.

Every storage volume I own is raid1

I backup my raid1 sets to larger raid1 sets which are kept at my in-laws house and only brought home for 'refresh'.

On the windows machines, I run shadow copy services to add a bit more redundancy in case I inadvertently delete a file.

 

I use Windows 7 backup of profiles to my D: partition and then SyncBack to get the data on my usb drive. I ordered a second hard drive and when that arrives the Windows 7 backups will go to the secondary drive before being synced to the usb drive. So 3 devices needs to fail before i loose my data. Of course i don't run Windows 7 backup after "working on the project" all night i will loose all data if the drive fails.