# Data Backup



## dfw_pilot (Jan 28, 2017)

I often come across co-workers, friends, and family who don't backup their computer data, or at least, don't do it often enough or with any regularity to be effective. I wrote some of this elsewhere but wanted to share it on TLF. It also dovetails into g_man's backup thread.

*Easy and Often*

The goal for having a robust backup strategy has to be one that makes backups easy and often, otherwise, they won't get accomplished. Complicated regimens that require the user to actually think about and do it means they won't.

*A Tiered Approach*

There are three key elements to a solid backup plan. 1) Incremental 2) Bootable clones and 3) Off site. Before I touch on each one below, make sure you never let anyone tell you that RAID is a backup. Instead it's used for drive fault tolerance. Think of it this way: if you delete something off the raid volume or the house burns down, was the raid a backup? No. It's great for protecting against drive failure and for speeding up data reads/writes but you need a plan to backup the RAID.

*Incremental*

The best way to keep from losing files through corruption, or accidental deletion, is to have an incremental backup. I'm a Mac guy, so for this purpose, I use Time Machine. There are equivalents in the Windows world for this too. There really isn't an excuse to not use a program like Time Machine because it's so dead easy to use. You plug in an external drive and tell it to start backing up. It will do it all automatically and in the background. What's great about this kind of backup is that it can catch small mistakes that happen in daily use, like deleting the wrong file. It's pretty fool proof, too, so even your grandma can have it running on her computer. Time Machine will slowly fill the drive and then overwrite the oldest data. In many cases, it may not fill up for a year, so that's a lot of incremental backups that can save us from data loss.

One negative against programs like Time Machine is that its backup drive is not bootable. One can restore data from the backup, but this process will take hours. With an internal hard drive failure (this is not a matter of if, but when) and a cold spare isn't in the desk drawer, a new drive will have to be ordered. Then the hours long restore process will have to take place, all the while the computer isn't usable.

Another drawback to incremental local backups is that they don't protect against the big problems: theft, fire, flood, and EMP's. The backup drive sits right next to the computer. The same spilled coffee that fries the computer can fry the backup drive.

*Cloning*

Having an exact copy, block for block, bootable clone of all your data is an enormous source for peace of mind. In OS X, there is no better program than Carbon Copy Cloner. My CCC makes a bootable clone to a backup drive each night. It's a cheap internal drive that's plugged into a drive reader. I love this because these are bootable so as to get back up and running in a few minutes. There are four drives in a rotation where I keep one plugged in, one in my desk, one in the safe, and one off-site. This is the first real backup that I consider fairly safe. I rotate the drives about once a week.

One drawback to cloning is that they are susceptible to corruption. If you don't find an error or problem right away, the next night (or whenever your clone gets backed up) that error or deleted file is now replicated on the clone. This is why it's best to merge an incremental backup with a clone backup for better protection. However, attached clones still don't protect against: theft, fire, flood, and EMP's.

*Off Site*

The third prong of a good backup plan requires one's data to be off site from where the original data sits. Using CCC, I also send incremental backups to a drive connected to my mom's computer several miles away. CCC makes this easy and it serves as a free cloud backup. I could just as easily back up to a friend or relative's drive anywhere in the world there is an internet connection.

For more robust off site backups than just using CCC, I use Amazon's Glacier (but there are lots of options, like Backblaze, Carbonite, Dropbox, etc). It's pennies per gig and spread out on a worldwide network. I love it. For a few bucks a month, it's bullet proof, and used by all sorts of companies, big and small. I just run an SFTP backup to it every few weeks with Panic's Transmit. You can't upload directly to Glacier, but you can to Amazon's S3 and then transfer over to Glacier from there. S3 is like a web server - you can load the volume right on your desktop and have instant access to your files. The drawback is that it's expensive per gig. So, I setup a simple rule to move all my S3 files over to Glacier (I use a three day rule) and save a huge amount of money keeping S3 empty. Glacier requires 4-6 hours to restore, but for backups, this isn't a big deal.

Off site really helps protect against major disasters, but its drawback is both the cost and the very slow rebuild time if there is data loss. This is why merging off site backups with local backups provides the best protection.

I really have come to love CCC. You can backup all the computers in your house to a single drive mounted to one computer. They can be bootable, even when backed up over a network, so when your hard drive fails, it's easy to get back up an running with minimal or no data-loss. Don't wait until it's too late. Make a plan and start today. You have too many precious memories to lose if you aren't backed up.

*Keep Data Separate*

It's also good practice to keep your OS separate from your data. This makes software updates that end up with glitches less of a hassle - you won't lose data. My 'Boot' volume is my internal SSD running OS X, and my 'Data' volume houses my data. All of my data sits on an external Thunderbolt Thunderbay RAID managed with SoftRaid. This means my CCC backup drives have two volumes on them: 'Boot' and 'Data'. Easy. For more great articles on backing up, read Lloyd Chamber's excellent backup series.

*TL;DR*

Terabytes are cheap but memories are priceless. Back up your data before it's too late.


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## TulsaFan (May 1, 2017)

This is a great thread! Nothing sucks worse than losing your data until it has happened to you.

I am pretty old school...I backup all my computers with portable HD's. One in a safe place in the house and the latest backup in my safety deposit box. I rotate them all the time. You can never backup too much.


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## g-man (Jun 15, 2017)

Just as an update to my original thread. I went with Sync and I've been really happy with it. It is not a real backup solution, since it is a sync folder strategy. The difference with Sync is that it has a vault too (backup) of your sync files.

My setup is that I have a separate drive for data and the entire drive is synced. I keep all of my photos and important stuff in there. I can access all of my files from the cloud/cell app. It is encrypted with two point auth.

I setup Macrium Reflect free backup software to do a backup of the OS and data drive to a local NAS. This gives me a quick/fast restore option if I need it.


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