Thu 2008/08/21 03:17
One of my HDs died yesterday although it didn't have that much that cant be recovered elsewhere. The problem that I have is that I usually keep a clone backup of my main machines HD. But when I increase the size of my main machines HD, I need to get another HD of matching size or I cant make a clone. In general I have tons of HDs which are backups of backups etc. Lately I've been thinking of going the Blu Ray route where each disc holds 50GB (its 50 right?). The going price here is 8,000 yen for 20 blank Blu Ray discs. How do you keep backups of everything? Do you just burn everything to DVDs or get extra HDs? Anybody here keeping backups on Blu Ray? Is there a magical place on the Internets where you can download whole series in the event that you loose yours?
Posted on Thu 2008/08/21 03:17 by
I need to start backing up everything ^^;
(ID #271865) Posted on 2008/08/21 03:22
Software Consultant, Business Intelligence
Trying to burn out to DVDRs as much as I can for Backups. I have alot of HDD plugged into my desktop for now, and about 5 HDDs lying externally. There's an awful lot of thing I can burn out, but I've been lazy =_=" (Pray hard to god no HDD die without at least giving me the sign it is going to)
(ID #271866) Posted on 2008/08/21 03:23
Student and full-time otaku
I was originally keeping backups of backups on both an external drive and dvds, but then my collection started increasing so fast it would become too pricy way too fast. So for now, I make sure I have double copy (drive+dvd, or drive+drive) of my fave series and risk deletion of some others. Another downside of keeping that many copies is the managing of it all; right now I have a huge Excel sheeting detailing it all, but I'm working to learn access so I might organize it more easily ^^
(ID #271874) Posted on 2008/08/21 03:27
I have a load of external hard drives, mostly the drives from old laptops with cheap HK eBay caddies. Anything important (photo's of my son for example) will go on DVD and a drive. I have had plenty of drives die, and DVD-R's decide they no longer want to work. Programs, series, etc I can re-download, but would be devastated if I lost the photo's.
(ID #271879) Posted on 2008/08/21 03:35
nanu (登録日: 2007/12/28 22:28)
I rely on the occasional internet news posting regarding hard drive failure to remind me to make backups ^^; it's been a while; I personally don't value much data but sometimes burn my own works to the current popular optical disc format. BTW, Danny, do you have a means for monitoring HDD temps? Of all computing components, cooling is most sensitive for hard drives to extend the working life, since they are mechanical...
(ID #271881) Posted on 2008/08/21 03:36
Director/代表取締役
Never thought of monitoring HD temp.
(ID #272182) Posted on 2008/08/21 09:38
I use Speedfan to monitor all temps including HDDs, not sure if it works over USB though (I only use eSata) If you run your drives in fanless enclosures temperature monitoring is critical since drive temp can easily rise 25 celsius above ambient (sometimes more depending on the number of platters), for most drives max temp is usually around 55 celsius (but of course it's not recommended to use them at max temp for a long time...) I used to make backups on DVD-R but they are too small now and BD-R are too expensive here, HDDs are a lot cheaper per GB so I just buy new HDDs and keep the old ones as backups (other benefits are that new HDDs are always faster and often more silent too...)
(ID #272209) Posted on 2008/08/21 10:04
nanu (登録日: 2007/12/28 22:28)
Well I don't really monitor my HD temps, but do check them whenever I change hardware config. This 20GB Maxtor Quantum Fireball from 8 years ago still works (for my gateway that needs a reformat), and I recently put a fan on top in hopes of milking it some more: http://i300.photobucket.com/albums/nn20/HOSB5NM7/dc/piggy.jpg
(ID #272355) Posted on 2008/08/21 11:48
No, HDD temps do nothing. The study from Google showed drives that were 40c to 60c died at the same rate. The biggest factor was how much data was initially written to the drive when it was new. New drives that had a ton of writes when new died much faster.
(ID #272392) Posted on 2008/08/21 12:36
Actually that study showed that for their hdds that were 3 years old or older, the annualized failure rate of drives running above 45c was 3 times higher (15% !) than those running at 30c, so temps do not do "nothing"... The problem is also that if the temp rises above max temp it can be recorded in the SMART informations and can void the warranty...
(ID #272537) Posted on 2008/08/21 14:21
Depends on how long you turn it on too. If you leave it on 24/7 (like I do ^^), chances are higher that it will fail since the motor will probably break down due to all that wear and tear.
(ID #273344) Posted on 2008/08/22 01:29
Game Designer
Backup by burning into dvd~ though sometimes Im even lazy to do backup~ BlyRay is 25Gb per layer~ max is 4? or 6 layer it can goes up~ that is what i heard~
(ID #271883) Posted on 2008/08/21 03:39
Service desk support
blu ray drives and disks are too expensive for backing up the level of volume I have. I stick to my external hard drives as a point of backup and only a small portion of stuff is stored on DVDs and the like. BTW, The capacity of a blu ray disk is 25GB but they can be stacked so dual layer disks hold 50GB and so on. Not sure if the recorder drives have caught up to take advantage tho...
(ID #271884) Posted on 2008/08/21 03:40
Director/代表取締役
The burners here are about 30000 yen and can do both sides.
(ID #272184) Posted on 2008/08/21 09:39
Professional Bum Mode
No backups for me at this point. I can't buy an HDD ext backup because my money is always spent on figures and kits. xD BTW, thanks for reminding, now I need to burn files on dvds to create backup.
(ID #271890) Posted on 2008/08/21 03:43
T_T I very scare about losing everything on my hdd as well..... very precious for me
(ID #271893) Posted on 2008/08/21 03:46
i just keep backing up stuff onto dvds as and when a series is completely downloaded. As for hdd's i use acronis. so even if the hdd is of smaller size it doesn't matter as the program just compresses the backup before writing but only upto a certain extent. anyway 500Gb to 1TB hdd's are quite cheap now.
(ID #271898) Posted on 2008/08/21 03:48
Acronis FTW. One of the best piece of software ever created. The compression rate is good. I can squeeze my backup files on a smaller HDD.
(ID #273369) Posted on 2008/08/22 01:37
Used to burn my data, now I only have an external HD which is still new. I need to do backups ....now where was that HD ^^
(ID #271908) Posted on 2008/08/21 03:51
WebDesign, Coding, Administration
Two good NAS with a nice raidsetup and bout 2TB storage each works fine for me unless the big thunderstorm comes and does toast it. ^^ (nah i got a security power adapter and whatsonot for that as well) For things which shall be stored longer i usualy use DVDs, at least atm but i think i could lean towards blueray sometime sooner or later as well... at least when the DVDs get their "age" that they could fail and i need to copy around again. *cough* :D
(ID #271918) Posted on 2008/08/21 04:00
It didn't surprise me that your HD died when I saw the brand. Maxtor sux, buy Seagate.
(ID #271926) Posted on 2008/08/21 04:08
Maxtor IS under Seagate now anyways =p
(ID #273364) Posted on 2008/08/22 01:36
I suffered a HD death last year. It was the most depressing experience, since I lost all my personal pics, memorable works and music. I've had a couple of dead HDs, but this was the worst. I was considering taking the HD to a data recovery place, but I'm kind of skeptical. I don't want my personal things being copied and leaked. It took me almost close to a year to accept the fact that I've lost everything. As for backups, I only burn the REALLY important things and anime onto DVD. I have a portable 2.5" drive that I use to transport work/music to and from my office.
(ID #271927) Posted on 2008/08/21 04:11
at first I only relied on my WDC 320GB as my backup, but later bought some dvd burner and burn DVD+ for my backups.. which reminds me, do DVD+ burn much slower than DVD-?
(ID #271929) Posted on 2008/08/21 04:11
I built a raid-5 system with 4 X 750GB hard drives(so 3TB). But only 2.25TB are accessible for writing, 750GB is kept for redundancy. So if I lose a drive(any one of the four), I just need to replace it and all the data is still there. I wanna try out the Drobo with 4 X 1TB(4TB!) next. http://www.drobo.com
(ID #271932) Posted on 2008/08/21 04:14
Drobo's great. I just got one of the 2nd gen ones with FireWire 800. Plugged 4 x 500 gig drives into it and it's churning along happily. Haven't had any trouble running it in Vista Ultimate either. I wholeheartedly give my endorsement of it.
(ID #272055) Posted on 2008/08/21 06:46
Yes, and with Drobo you can run RAID arrays with mismatched drive sizes too. No wasted space.
(ID #272395) Posted on 2008/08/21 12:38
You theoretically can do this with Intel's Matrix Storage system (it even allows for running, say, RAID1 on 1/2 of each drive, and RAID0 on the other. Thus you can balance it for both speed and reliability, with your precious data being redundant, while stuff like your operating system is very, very fast). That said, the low (non-existent?) maintenance of a Drobo is really appealing.
(ID #272696) Posted on 2008/08/21 15:48
For my home use I have a 1 TB network hard drive that I store my back ups on. The back up job runs every two weeks keeping my stuff pretty up to date. The odds of that backup drive dying and my normal drives dying at the same time are pretty slim. I still find the best way to back up a server is to use tape back ups. You can easily get 200 GB per tape and the tapes themselves don't take up huge amounts of room.
(ID #271935) Posted on 2008/08/21 04:20
Dropping computers, starting all over again at Journalism
I used to keep DVD backups... and before that, CDs. But lately, I'm not making backups as I should. Too much stuff. Sometimes I just don't learn from my errors... I have a horror story. Sometime ago a 300Gb external HDD failed on me, and it had more than 290Gb of non-backuped data... including stuff like most of the pics I took in Japan, several documents, and other stuff very important to me. It was like loosing a part of my life... and in fact, it was, since it took me a long time to gather all that. If BD-Recorders weren't so expensive around here, I'd buy one too. DVDs just ain't enough these days...
(ID #271939) Posted on 2008/08/21 04:26
I have copies of most data on local HD, DVD and a 1TB Nas. I have also shared my anime with a friend so almost anything could be retrieved from him. If you want to talk about paranoid though my photos are on Internal HD, External usb HD, Nas, DVD (Multiple copies), A hidden partition on my sisters machine, An encrypted partition on my work machine and Flickr.
(ID #271946) Posted on 2008/08/21 04:33
I use 2 external HDs (1,5 TB) when i have something to backup.
(ID #271953) Posted on 2008/08/21 04:39
I recently outgrew practically using DVDs as backup. What's sad is that just 2 years ago, when I first got my iMac, I was able to back up EVERYTHING on a single CD. Then again, at the time I was using an ancient frankencompy that took forever to do anything and only had intermittent internet, which was probably a huge factor in my data usage. ^^; Still, I really should get an external hard disc. There's just too much stuff that I'd rather not loose, and after having a hard disc get totally PWNed by spyware in the past, I know it's better to be safe than sorry.
(ID #271961) Posted on 2008/08/21 04:46
Student & Authorized Chicken Slapper
Right now Bluray is a bit expensive to use as backups in my opinion, I would stick to an external HD for backups.
(ID #271962) Posted on 2008/08/21 04:47
(University)Student
I'm guilty of not backing up enough.... But in recent months I did buy a 500gb ex hd, which keeps all my anime nice and snug. I've backed it up onto dvd's aswell though. Just to be safe. Since my computer has a crappy 80gb(66.5gb because of Vista...:hissss: hd I really needed the 500gb lol.
(ID #271964) Posted on 2008/08/21 04:47
I feel sorry for you, then
(ID #271997) Posted on 2008/08/21 05:14
Unemployed Desktop Support / Admin
Losing a hard drive can be heart breaking. About three years ago my Mac Mini's HD failed. I lost about 20Gb of music files that I failed to back up. The other files were of no concern, but one third of my music files were gone and of course the important iTunes database. Since then I have been synchronizing my important data to two other separate HD. My music, photo, and important data files are backed up this way. ChronoSync seems to work well on my Mac Pro. I used to backup to DVDs but it takes time and lots of DVDs. My music is over 100 GB and photos are approaching 100 GB very fast. I also test each DVD to see if it copies back the data to a hard drive with out errors. The Blu-Ray route for backups is on my mind too. Like everyone else, I am starting to collect spindles of DVDs all containing AVIs. The AVIs are mostly of JDramas that I have enjoyed. My anime is comparatively small. Once I am done with a series it gets backup immediately to DVD. Should a HD fail containing AVI, it would not be a great loss for me.
(ID #271965) Posted on 2008/08/21 04:49
Otaku/Student of University of Western Ontario
I've lost everything on my old computer when the hard drive died, which includes a whole bunch of old photos. Now I backed up pretty much all my old files onto my lap top and burned all my anime onto DvDs.
(ID #271971) Posted on 2008/08/21 04:55
Whole series? yeah, there's da-anime.org. A really lifesaver
(ID #271986) Posted on 2008/08/21 05:04
Horror☆Star
Dear Danny, you may try "http://www.carbonite.com/" online backup, I tested it a year ago. Currently profiling my hardisk data to DVD, Blu Ray burner is still cost a buck in M'sia ^^;
(ID #271987) Posted on 2008/08/21 05:04
Director/代表取締役
Thanks for the link. 50 USD is pretty cheap.
(ID #272191) Posted on 2008/08/21 09:45
Online backup sites aren't really recommended unless you have a blazing fast internet connection and very little data to backup. Will take ages to backup over 1TB of data with a 1Mbps 'broadband' connection here.
(ID #273378) Posted on 2008/08/22 01:43
Stay away from Maxtor ^^ All the hard drives i had dead or with problems are Maxtor , never had any problems with Seagate :p Now i would love to buy a Blu Ray burner but it still too much money ... sadly :(
(ID #271996) Posted on 2008/08/21 05:13
Otaku/Student of University of Western Ontario
The hard drive that died on my was Maxtor as well >.>
(ID #272009) Posted on 2008/08/21 05:27
Service desk support
Make that 3. In fact, I had 3 Maxtor drives die on me!!! never bought them again and specifically look at the make these days.
(ID #272048) Posted on 2008/08/21 06:35
I've had several Maxtors run for 4+ years without a single problem. Very seldom are companies consistently making bad products... Harddrives have moving parts and thus are extremely prone to failure. Perhaps having multiple drives fail also prompted you guys to invest in keeping your harddrive(s) cool, not over-using them, etc. I definitely would, if I had ever had a drive fail. Even so, I make sure my drives are taken care of.
(ID #272706) Posted on 2008/08/21 15:54
Western Digital has never failed me =)
(ID #273372) Posted on 2008/08/22 01:40
What a coincidence... My father's HD also died yesturday.. and it was a Maxtor. I back up all my stuff on HDs and DVDs.
(ID #272000) Posted on 2008/08/21 05:21
I never keep a lot of backups. Just some CD-Rs and DVD-Rs with videos, photos and other data that's important to me. I thought I would take it worse when my main hard drive died recently, but there wasn't much important stuff there... XD I'd like to see if it's possible to recover a few things from it sometime soon, but if it's totally dead then I don't really care, since I had pretty much all of my personal works uploaded on the web and ready to redownload. Blu Ray's seems nice but I don't have anything worth backing up that would take advantage of their capacity, so I'll prolly be sticking to DVD-Rs for awhile.
(ID #272003) Posted on 2008/08/21 05:23
I used to burn everything to DVD-Rs, but after having burnt a few hundred this strategy got a bit too tedious. Currently I keep all my media and some backups on 2TB of external drives (1x1TB, 1x500GB, 2x250GB).
(ID #272023) Posted on 2008/08/21 05:51
i don't have any off-site backups yet... in the meantime raid 5 protects me from a single hd failure ^_^ in the past it's been tedious cd/dvd burning...
(ID #272025) Posted on 2008/08/21 05:54
In my field you quickly learn how important backups are. And I mean live ones, not to optical. If you lose 1TB of data that you archived optically, it'll take 20 blu-ray disks and several hours to recover it (not even going to talk about standard DVD ;) If you have a backup drive though, just pop it in and away you go.
(ID #272035) Posted on 2008/08/21 06:12
Indeed, I recently had a drive failure in a server at an office, and even though the harddrive was <100gb (was a SCSI) and I had made regular optical backups, it still was a pain to get everything restored and working again. Looking into upgrading that setup to a RAID1+0, and from there keeping a backup drive or two to carry off-site regularly.
(ID #272715) Posted on 2008/08/21 15:59
Troubleshooter, Universal Exports
DL (Dual Layer) is 50 GB and SL (Single Layer) is half that size. Only problem is most RE (Record/Erase) disc I have seen are SL and not DL. Have you seen BD-RE DL disc in Tokyo? I was pricing players back in June while in Osaka. There is not much selection here in the states yet in the way of burners and disc are too expensive. Right now, I have a 1TB drive -attached to my Airport Extreme using Time Machine- and use three HDs to clone my two Macs OSX partitions. I keep the Windows partitions backed up to DVD. I was thinking about going to a network 1TB RAID... I don't keep every series I watch so I usually back up those up to DVD-R DL disc or dumped to an HD. Most other files are moved to DVD. I'm very conservative about what I back up since I can't keep everything. What really worries me the most is my music and photo libraries. Both are very quickly becoming too large to back up. Right now I only back up purchased music and important iTunes files and photos to DVD. In the future I made move these to a RAID.
(ID #272036) Posted on 2008/08/21 06:15
Director/代表取締役
I still dont know knowt about the blu ray standards and types. time to look for a tutorial ^^;
(ID #272192) Posted on 2008/08/21 09:46
fulltime-otaku / soldier
I don't back up very much cause I need those ???-TB for my stuff. I just make Time-Machine backups to restore the OS without problems @ my Second PC and Vista-Complete-PC Backups from my system-partition @ my main-system sometimes. I don't want to back up things on DVD's or Bluerays cause I hate those small, slow opticial storage things. Are you using Time Machine, Danny? Cause I think that's the best Backup-solution out there. And yeah, there are sites with nearly every series :)
(ID #272041) Posted on 2008/08/21 06:21
Director/代表取締役
Am using time machine but what if the time machine HD fails? Me need to think of a fail safe solution.
(ID #272195) Posted on 2008/08/21 09:47
fulltime-otaku / soldier
Well, but do you think your none-backup drives are dying at the same time as your "normal" HDs? The best solution I can think of is a Raid-fileserver, but having 2,6TB of stuff and running out of space soon, it would be a expensive solution. I'll pray to the Geek-God that my files won't die until I have somthing like that. ;)
(ID #272270) Posted on 2008/08/21 10:54
fulltime-otaku / soldier
I mean: " Well, but do you think your Time Machine HDs drives are dying at the same time as your normal HDs? " sry, it's 3am here^^
(ID #272274) Posted on 2008/08/21 10:56
Geek Liaison
Well there is no true fail safe solution but the odd of your main drive and your time machine drive failing at the same time are pretty darn high. I can't swing a Blu-ray drive right now but the DVD backups I do make are mainly for off-site backup. Cause no matter how many back-ups you have if they are all stored in the same house one good fire and your boned.
(ID #272808) Posted on 2008/08/21 16:40
Blogger+Student
I always use an external HDD for backup my PC. I can't trust something like DVDs. >,<"
(ID #272053) Posted on 2008/08/21 06:43
I'd backup on DVDRs if I had better organization of my doujinshi collection. It's hard to rifle through all the stuff I had before I learned to use original filenames, renaming, purging duplicates, etc etc... especially with several thousand doujinshi. With anime I try to keep them to DVDs, but sometimes they get a few megs over and I get testy about whether I should reencode some, use an overfill CD, or if it's worth burning. I keep my large capacity drives external so I can regulate how long and how often they get used. Maybe it's some naive peace of mind. If you want whole series, you might be lucky and find something on a torrent index in some dark corner of the internet.
(ID #272060) Posted on 2008/08/21 06:51
My current method of backups are DVD-Rs right now but that will change in the next month or so to HDDs. Since collecting anime series, music, h-games, and software take a lot of space really quickly, having an external HDD would come in handy. Currently i'm thinking of a plan of building another computer to be used as a file server, using a large tower that could contain many HDDs at the same time so i would be able to access the backup data through the network instead of having to "plug-in" the HDD every time i need it.
(ID #272069) Posted on 2008/08/21 07:02
There is a 6 TB fileserver running raid 5 sat under my stairs :D, so if a HDD does die i just grab a new one and everything is restored automatically... Also i attend a LAN party every 6 weeks and we all essentially have complete clones of each others fileservers so if anything majorly goes wrong i can always get it back in no time.
(ID #272079) Posted on 2008/08/21 07:23
Technical Writer/Editor, Designer, Collector, Artist, Nice Guy
Yeah, definitely sux when that happens. Just recently, I had a Western Digital 500GB external USB drive which died on me after 12 months. So I'm just sticking with their smaller but more-reliable WD 100-120 GB sizes. As for downloads and/or personal backups, I've burned hundreds of 4GB DVD discs. The only problem is their rumored 5-to-10-year lifespan before they degrade; but no matter, the solution is just to re-burn them again. Don't know the degradation rate of Blu-Rays, but your massive HD sizes are a totally different dilemma from mine. Sorry I can't help! ^_^; P.S. Like "WiseFreeman" mentions above, Ipswitch has an online solution called "Carbonite" (a la Han Solo, lol). Might wanna check it out.
(ID #272080) Posted on 2008/08/21 07:33
Luckily, I've never had a problem with a hard drive dying. I don't really backup things other than important documents and stuff (which are normally small enough for a quick FTP back up.), Most of the stuff I'd want backed up I normally pass on to others... so if I ever lose it I can just get it back from them ^^; And I'm surprised how cheap Blu-ray disks are there... a 5-pack of 25GB Blu-ray disks are around (an equivalent of) ¥10000 here.
(ID #272088) Posted on 2008/08/21 07:51
I depend on HDDs, as I hate the idea of hundreds of thousands of DVDs scattered all over the place. I tend to duplicate data across my PCs, as well as using memory sticks and a basic NAS (thanks Netgear) that unfortunately is a bit slow. I like XJAYMANX's idea of using smaller hard drives, especially if you can get your hands on server-grade HDDs (despite the extra cost).
(ID #272102) Posted on 2008/08/21 08:14
Wow... Blu-Ray media got cheap without me paying attention. I wish drives would go down in price around these parts. Right now my primary machine is a sweet new laptop and I spend the weekend backing up everything from my PC to it (I know it's kinda backward). But at least now I've got everything in two places (more or less).
(ID #272103) Posted on 2008/08/21 08:14
I have never backed up anything in my life...never lost anything either :D
(ID #272115) Posted on 2008/08/21 08:23
I usually just back up most of my stuff on DVDs. But I also have a second internal HD that I use Time Machine to back everything up onto. I love how user friendly Time Machine is for retrieving lost files and such.
(ID #272116) Posted on 2008/08/21 08:24
Buy some cheap, big hard disks and make yourself a RAID. If you have a Mac, the RAID software is built into OSX. You can probably get it as shareware on Windows. Non-technical people can buy ready-made RAID units which you just plug in. They are more expensive. A 500GB RAID will hold many hours of compressed video.