If your hard drive died right now, how screwed would you be? - Page 2

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[ARCHIVED THREAD] - If your hard drive died right now, how screwed would you be? (Page 2 of 3)

Posted: 3/29/2012 5:20:06 PM EDT

[#1]

Quoted:
I'm in the middle of tweaking the backup/restore strategy on my personal workstations and laptops, and this question popped into my head. I'm ultra paranoid about this shit, and I wondered who else was.

I'm the kind of guy who wants to be able to perform a bare metal restore - new hard drive, new PC...that sort of thing, as fast and easy as possible. Shit happens.

So, if your hard drive died right now, how fucked would you be? What would it take to get you back to your current config, if your drive took a shit immediately after reading this?

This is why you have a raid 10 setup plus an external backup. mMnimum downtime.

Posted: 3/29/2012 5:21:42 PM EDT

[#2]

No important data lost. PITA to reinstall my OS, do updates, and install games and apps, though. Carbonite FTW!!!!!!!

AV1611 out.......

Posted: 3/29/2012 5:23:27 PM EDT

[#3]

Well most of my stuff is on a iSCSI volume and it would take a number of drives failing to fault that array, my normal HDD failing would not really bother me.

Also I run Backblaze which backups all files even the iscsi stuff.

Posted: 3/29/2012 5:26:36 PM EDT

[#4]

I have been using Ghost for 13 years on Windows machines. It has never failed me.

It will image whole drives or partitions. It will restore from external USB drives. You can resize partitions before restoring as well.

I have used it to replace hard drives several times over the years.

Everything gets backed up overnight to an external drive. If my pc died right now, I can go back to just as it was this morning at 1:00 am.

Posted: 3/29/2012 5:29:16 PM EDT

[#5]

Quoted:

Quoted:
I have a 6tb backup.

I know from experience.

Bill

How long would it take you to get operational again, more or less the same as you are right now?

Everything would be on it, the 5tb RAID, various USB drives and system drive.
Should be a fairly "simple" thing, lol. Using Time Machine on the Mac AVID system.

I have another AVID edit system with a 24tb RAID set up as a 18tg RAID 5 which should be a piece of cake....on a Windows 7....

Bill

Posted: 3/29/2012 5:31:54 PM EDT

[#6]

I've got a rotating backup with 2 disks stored off site and my computer has a hardware RAID 5 array with a spare drive.

I'd like to eventually use an online backup service but I'm paranoid that one of these companies will mishandle or lose my data.

I've got 30 years of photos and 12 years of work on my hard drive.

Posted: 3/29/2012 5:32:28 PM EDT

[#7]

I had my lone external HD die on me last year. It sucked, because it had stuff on it that was not on my desktop machine's HD. I've replaced it with not one, but two external HDs.

I'm using the Time Machine auto backup on my Macs.

Posted: 3/29/2012 5:33:31 PM EDT

[#8]

Automatic daily backups on everything.

Posted: 3/29/2012 5:40:28 PM EDT

[#9]

Quoted:
Been there done that. Time Machine on the Mac is absolutely excellent.

Posted: 3/29/2012 5:44:23 PM EDT

[#10]

I would loose much, I burn all of my important files to DVDs.

Posted: 3/29/2012 5:44:49 PM EDT

[#11]

Desktop
Hardware RAID
System RAID 1
DATA RAID 6
Image system every night to a share on my server
Backup data with Backup Exec to Server share

Server (DATA RAID 6 also)
Backup with Backup Exec (runs over night) to USB hard Drive
take home every night - 5 drives in rotation

Also use the MS backup program in SBS 2008 (to a USB hard drive) for onsite backup
(incremental backup every two hours during the day)

If its worth backing up its worth having two copies.

and yes I test the image and backups at least every 3 months.

I hate to lose data

Posted: 3/29/2012 5:52:27 PM EDT

[#12]

not at all I back up everything on a second drive

and I also have 2 computer and both have the same stuff on it - so if one goes I still have the other and the back up drive

Posted: 3/29/2012 5:56:13 PM EDT

[#13]

Me and my partner have 21 terabytes in RAID5 between two workstations with the OS drives sourced from ghosted BluRay DVD's.

My home machine has triple mirrored backups for data, the system drive is not backed up. I regularly do Window reinstalls.

Posted: 3/29/2012 5:59:13 PM EDT

[#14]

Not at all.

My bulk media, photos, video, music is sync'd to 3 different computers, and backed up to S3.

My documents are in an encrypted file in DropBox and synced to 4 different computers, and backed up to S3.

Posted: 3/29/2012 6:01:40 PM EDT

[#15]

I wish I had a backup for my backup. RAID 5, so if one drive fails I'm fine. Catastrophic file system failure and I'm screwed. Need to get an external drive to back up to.

Posted: 3/29/2012 6:01:59 PM EDT

[#16]

The beauty of LTO and cpio means that I will be fine.

Posted: 3/29/2012 6:04:06 PM EDT

[#17]

It would depend on how long it took you to get here.

j/k

In reality, not that fucked. I back up pictures and work stuff. I discovered I had no redundancy with my encrypted password file that was on my mac, so life would be a lot better if I got that bad boy back together.

Posted: 3/29/2012 6:06:35 PM EDT

[#18]

Not bad, as soon as I got a replacement drive. Soon as they come down in price I'll have one.

Actually, I have replacement drives but they're all old and slow though functional.

So between software on hand and daily backups, I'm pretty good.

Posted: 3/29/2012 6:16:50 PM EDT

[#19]

Parallel SATA 1 terra byte HDDs Ghost imaged monthly.

Having said that, I'd be fucked.

Posted: 3/29/2012 6:29:38 PM EDT

[#20]

I'd lose my saved games in New Vegas.

Posted: 3/29/2012 6:39:12 PM EDT

[#21]

i replace hd #5 tuesnight on a 2 yr old laptop, then found out my image was corrupted

. Fortunately no critical loss this time.

Posted: 3/29/2012 6:47:49 PM EDT

[#22]

For a simpleton like myself who has a $299 pc, a few gigs of photos, and some turbotax files is there any need for a solution other than an online backup or having the files backed up to an external sdd?

Posted: 3/29/2012 6:50:30 PM EDT

[#23]

Quoted:

So, if your hard drive died right now, how fucked would you be? What would it take to get you back to your current config, if your drive took a shit immediately after reading this?

Which one you mean? C:, D: or E:? All of which have copies of the same data on them.

If C: failed, I'd have to replace it and reinstall OS and apps. Copy mail and some docs back from E:
If D failed, I'd have to replace it and copy personal photos and docs back from E:
If E failed, I'd have to replace it and copy personal data back from D: and reinstall Warcraft.

Posted: 3/29/2012 6:56:23 PM EDT

[#24]

Time Machine.

Posted: 3/29/2012 6:58:02 PM EDT

[#25]

Quoted:

For a simpleton like myself who has a $299 pc, a few gigs of photos, and some turbotax files is there any need for a solution other than an online backup or having the files backed up to an external sdd?

Get a external or two for less than half of what you paid for your PC and back all the stuff up on them, buy a couple of 32GB thumb drives and then burn everything on to DVD-R's and not worry about it.

I've done everything except the burn part and I feel OK.

I'm in the same boat as you for PC needs and I have the important stuff backed up multiple times and my biggest problem would be if I lost it after 9pm as I wouldn't be able to get a new PC till 9 am.

Posted: 3/29/2012 7:01:15 PM EDT

[#26]

Quoted:
I'd be golden.

My external drive would have to die, too, in order for me to be properly screwed.

I wouldn't quite be GOLDEN, because I'd have to buy a new laptop, but I keep an external hard drive separate from my computer that is pretty up-to-date.

Posted: 3/29/2012 7:06:53 PM EDT

[#27]

I would be fucked. This POS needs to be replaced anyway. Hopefully I can get a new one before it strokes out.

Posted: 3/29/2012 7:18:42 PM EDT

[#28]

I heard an odd assortment of clicks today and went right out and got a new drive....external.

Half terabyte of pics and music and video.

2 externals duplicating music, video, and pictures so pretty secure.

Not much on MBPro internal whic will soon be ssd.

Posted: 3/29/2012 7:28:36 PM EDT

[#29]

Tagging to remind me to do backups.

<––-last one was 6 months ago.

Posted: 3/29/2012 7:41:14 PM EDT

[#30]

Quoted:
I'm in the middle of tweaking the backup/restore strategy on my personal workstations and laptops, and this question popped into my head. I'm ultra paranoid about this shit, and I wondered who else was.

I'm the kind of guy who wants to be able to perform a bare metal restore - new hard drive, new PC...that sort of thing, as fast and easy as possible. Shit happens.

So, if your hard drive died right now, how fucked would you be? What would it take to get you back to your current config, if your drive took a shit immediately after reading this?

RAID 1, it was IIRC $109 for the insurance policy. (I do understand the limitations)

Posted: 3/29/2012 7:42:09 PM EDT

[#31]

4xHDD in RAID 5
Primary backup: 3TB external drive in safe (full array image)
Secondary backup: 1TB external drive in a separate enclosure (critical files and system image)
Tertiary backup: Carbonite (real-time backup on-line, off site)

If one of the drives died I'd just keep cruising along. If two died at the same time, that would suck but could be back up in a few days with no data loss. For a home system I think this is a pretty decent plan. Why do I have this? Well, let's just say I learned through the school of hard knocks that you don't skimp on backing up your important files.

Posted: 3/29/2012 7:44:09 PM EDT

[#32]

Not bad at all. I have 2 seperate hard drives that are written to when storing. Should one take a crap I still have the other working. And this is not one drive partitioned into two but literally two hard drives. I'm paranoid like that.

Posted: 3/29/2012 7:51:14 PM EDT

[#33]

This was a good reminder to delete a bunch of pics that were dupes, bad shots, no longer needed, etc. Got rid of probably 500+ on my MacBook, deleted all pics and docs on Windows laptop, and now have 12% more space on my Picasa account.

And plug in the external hd, since it's been a while since I used it.

Posted: 3/29/2012 7:54:43 PM EDT

[#34]

Quoted:

Quoted:
However long it take to restore this from the Netatalk server running on my Linux NAS.

http://i251.photobucket.com/albums/gg281/Avenger069/TimeMachine.jpg

Ever tried it, with a brand new HDD?

Yes. When I upgraded my 320GB drive to 500GB and put the original into a caddy to replace the super drive.

Same here. We used a TM backup to upgrade our HD and never missed a beat.

ETA: Time Machine works equally well migrating from one machine to another. And yes, we have multiple copies including one in a fire safe.

Posted: 3/29/2012 7:56:12 PM EDT

[#35]

0% screwed.

every system i have backs up daily. macs have time machine, windows has windows backup. uh, linux has rsync. i am prepared for any of my systems to fail, and will be back up and running as soon as i have the replacement drive.

Posted: 3/29/2012 7:57:17 PM EDT

[#36]

It would be a severe pain in the ass, but I have backups of my dissertation. I would lose some research, but that can be found again.

Posted: 3/29/2012 7:57:44 PM EDT

[#37]

Oh, I forgot to add... My backups are stored encrypted on a drive buried outside my bedroom window. So I should be good in the event of a fire. The setup below runs at 1gbps and I usually get around 40MB/s speed to the drive. Been down there since November and still alive. The drive spins down when not doing backups.

3TB WD MyBook Live I've hacked. Running Debian Linux with some NFS exports. You can see the POE splitter to power the drive.
Thoroughly sealed up in an aluminum outdoor enclosure. Added some moisture absorption in the box.

Direct burial flooded Cat 5E with drain wire running to the box with some flexible steel conduit to keep the critters from chewing the wire.

The POE injector that ties into a fiber media converter and into my switch. The POE injector runs off a different UPS. This setup is to protect my network against the possibility of lightning strike.

-Foxxz

Posted: 3/29/2012 7:58:43 PM EDT

[#38]

The oldest email in my inbox is from 30th August 2000 - 'nuff said

Posted: 3/29/2012 8:07:24 PM EDT

[#39]

I'd lose file changes done in the last rolling 60 minutes for any file not explicitly saved. No fuss, no muss - change out hard drives and carry on.

Posted: 3/29/2012 8:09:14 PM EDT

[#40]

I have a $50 refurbed laptop for web/arfcom usage. My desktop gets backed up once a week. The laptop dying would put me out $50 for a new one. The HD on my desktop would put me out a week or so of data.

Posted: 3/29/2012 8:09:34 PM EDT

[#41]

My HD just took a crap on Tuesday.

No problem I've got Time machine....on a 2 tb external drive.

FUUUUUUUU no back up since October 2010 - WTF I must have turned it off for some reason.

The next 12 hours were spent trying to fix the disc and finding data (docs, music, pics, contacts, ancient yet important emails,) between crashes. luckily my iPhone had all my contacts, calendar and music.

I finally said F It and bought a new 27" iMac for my birthday. I'll start over and give the old iMac - if it works - to one of my kids.

Now I've got my data on the new machine, bought Drive Genius and ended up re-initializing the original drive. I'm literally installing new system software as I type on my new iMac.

Lessons learned:

Don't turn off time machine.

Consider a raid array.

Have good recovery software available.

Don't be a dumbass.

Posted: 3/29/2012 8:13:06 PM EDT

[#42]

Annoyed, but not screwed. Critical docs are up on Sky Drive, and Steam will reload my games.

Posted: 3/29/2012 9:06:51 PM EDT

[#43]

Quoted:
Oh, I forgot to add... My backups are stored encrypted on a drive buried outside my bedroom window. So I should be good in the event of a fire. The setup below runs at 1gbps and I usually get around 40MB/s speed to the drive. Been down there since November and still alive. The drive spins down when not doing backups.

3TB WD MyBook Live I've hacked. Running Debian Linux with some NFS exports. You can see the POE splitter to power the drive.
Thoroughly sealed up in an aluminum outdoor enclosure. Added some moisture absorption in the box.
http://nullbits.foxxz.net/albums/buriedbackup/IMG_1959.sized.jpg

Direct burial flooded Cat 5E with drain wire running to the box with some flexible steel conduit to keep the critters from chewing the wire.
http://nullbits.foxxz.net/albums/buriedbackup/IMG_2028.sized.jpg

http://nullbits.foxxz.net/albums/buriedbackup/IMG_2033.sized.jpg

The POE injector that ties into a fiber media converter and into my switch. The POE injector runs off a different UPS. This setup is to protect my network against the possibility of lightning strike.
http://nullbits.foxxz.net/albums/buriedbackup/IMG_2041.sized.jpg

-Foxxz

wait. what.... WTF?

Posted: 3/29/2012 9:31:06 PM EDT

[#44]

No big problem. My iMac runs a time machine back up twice a day. I would just have to have another HD installed and then hook up the external hard drive with the back up on it and it will completely reproduce the machine as it was at the last back up.

Has actually happened to me when I lost the HD right after I bought the iMac. Took the machine to an apple repair station and had it back that afternoon with the new HD. Applecare rocks!!!

Patrick

Posted: 3/30/2012 6:43:25 AM EDT

[#45]

Quoted:
Oh, I forgot to add... My backups are stored encrypted on a drive buried outside my bedroom window. So I should be good in the event of a fire. The setup below runs at 1gbps and I usually get around 40MB/s speed to the drive. Been down there since November and still alive. The drive spins down when not doing backups.

3TB WD MyBook Live I've hacked. Running Debian Linux with some NFS exports. You can see the POE splitter to power the drive.
Thoroughly sealed up in an aluminum outdoor enclosure. Added some moisture absorption in the box.
http://nullbits.foxxz.net/albums/buriedbackup/IMG_1959.sized.jpg

Direct burial flooded Cat 5E with drain wire running to the box with some flexible steel conduit to keep the critters from chewing the wire.
http://nullbits.foxxz.net/albums/buriedbackup/IMG_2028.sized.jpg

http://nullbits.foxxz.net/albums/buriedbackup/IMG_2033.sized.jpg

The POE injector that ties into a fiber media converter and into my switch. The POE injector runs off a different UPS. This setup is to protect my network against the possibility of lightning strike.
http://nullbits.foxxz.net/albums/buriedbackup/IMG_2041.sized.jpg

-Foxxz

Ummm...I think you misunderstood the meaning of offsite storage.

Though I do find the idea.....interesting.

My recovery would take a couple of hours, depending on which drive crapped out ( I have 8 in my pc ). If it was the OS drive, I have images of my Windows 7 and LMDE builds to restore from. I have several data drives, with additional internal backup drives in my pc. I then have 3 other external data hard drives in the safe. I whipped up an rsync script that copies my data from the OS drive to my data drives, and then backs up to my internal backup drives. Once a month, I pull the drives out of the safe, hook them up to the pc, and run another rsync script.

Plans this year are to upgrade the networking infrastructure in the house, and build a NAS.

Posted: 3/30/2012 7:31:36 AM EDT

[#46]

It would be annoying, but not much more. I use Carbonite (it expires in a week and I need to either renew or switch) and since I use Gmail my work email, contacts and calendar are safe and I've also got a bunch of important docs in Dropbox.

Posted: 3/30/2012 7:32:41 AM EDT

[#47]

My external recently died, so I'm without a backup.

Damn, I need to remedy that.

Thankfully most of what I need is my music library which is stored on two iPods and my laptop (Sharepod can have my iTunes library rebuilt in an hour or so).

Posted: 3/30/2012 7:33:02 AM EDT

[#48]

I'd lose about two days' worth of emails that have come in since my last (double) full backup.

OTOH those are all on my Blackberry, so I'd lose essentially nothing.

Posted: 3/30/2012 7:35:55 AM EDT

[#49]

All of my important files are backed up in duplicate.

I am no IT guy, so actually effecting repairs is beyond my capability and I'd have to call a friend I know.......

Posted: 3/30/2012 7:36:01 AM EDT

[#50]

Not

I back up all my important docs on google docs, and EVERYTHING on a dvd-RW on sunday nights.

[ARCHIVED THREAD] - If your hard drive died right now, how screwed would you be? (Page 2 of 3)

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