Comments on: The joy of backup

By: Limeyboy

Limeyboy — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 21:46:00 +0000

As real estate web designers we need to know that our files are always backed up. Despite the best intensions, manual backups were never as regular as they should be. Online solutions are great both the their automated nature and the offsite location.

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By: technogeist

technogeist — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 20:21:26 +0000

OK,
1. Western Digital Caviar ‘Blue’ WD1600BB – failed motor.
Does anyone know if vertically-mounted drives suffer more wear and tear than horizontally mounted drives?

2nd drive, Seagate (250GB 7200.10) is now O.K since testing it with SeaTools.
I think the BIOS might have been gotten confused as to what it saw at boot time when the Western Digital drive went down.

The WD disk was originally inside a USB caddy, which I replaced with a Seagate disk. (luckily)

By: Pete Morris

Pete Morris — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 12:50:39 +0000

I love backups too. I had anumber of crashes over the years and like Tim eventually realised backups are a good idea, so I bought a RAID controller and let it do the backups for me. Problem was the raid controller hardware failed and scrambled the disks. So I started to use MS backup. This worked fine until I tried a recover, when I discovered the index file was not backed up with the data. I am currently having a months long dialogue with the suppliers of my current back up software because it won’t do what I want. Perhaps I shouild try Carbonite. It sounds good. By the way, do not rely on a single external drive. There are only two kinds of hard drive in the world, those that have failed and those that have not failed yet.

By: David Bayon

David Bayon — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 11:27:08 +0000

@Noel: Acronis can image your entire drive to be restored should anything fail, but that’s not quite the same as a backup – I wouldn’t want to image my PC too often as it’s pretty time consuming, so you need a regular data backup too.

To be honest, I’d recommend having something like Acronis running a full image every month or so, but backing up just data to an external disk each week. Then complement that with Carbonite to add an extra off-site layer of cover for your data – it backs up files as they’re changed so it’ll be more up to date than a scheduled backup.

By: Noel

Noel — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 11:13:24 +0000

Is it correct that Carbonite will only back up data, whereas Acronis is supposed to back up not only data but also programmes and the operating system? So that, if the hard disc crashes, Acronis can provide a complete restoration of operating system and data, but Carbonite cannot?

If so, Acronis would seem to provide better backup. Does anyone have practical experience of this?

By: Andrew

Andrew — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 09:54:19 +0000

Short Update.

It appears that Acronis have fixed their website. Last night I was finally able to sign-up and login.

An email from their support team then pointed out that many of the 64 character codes they issued are invalid. Therefore there is a specific web page that I was pointed to where you can enter the old invalid code and get given a new valid code.

I was then able to enter that new code and now the software is active.

I did a full backup last night and setup 2 regular backup jobs, so I’ll see how they go and test a restore soon.

By: Paul B

Paul B — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 20:13:37 +0000

@technogeist – Could you name names – I’d be interested if you could tell us if the two drives that have failed are from the same manufacturer, and what manufacturer that was?

By: Andrew

Andrew — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 13:44:23 +0000

I took a slightly different approach. Based on the PC Pro (which I’ve subscribed to for many many years) A-List I went out and purchased Acronis True Image 2009 to use with my new 1.5tb external USB hard drive.

Unfortunately I couldn’t be less impressed.

I received the software last Thursday and promptly tried to install. There I hit the problems. It has a 64 character (I kid you not) serial number that’s required. Which to make things worse is slightly blurred and some characters could possibly be others. Still I’m pretty sure I can make the characters out.

So I type it and the software won’t accept it. The “submit” button just won’t light up. I triple check my typing and I’m sure it’s right.

So I look up the documentation and it says “sign up to the website – go to this page and we’ll send you are far more friendly code”.

So I sign up to the website and get one of those verification emails. I click on it and….. Error 500 on the web page. /doh !

Great – so I have a 64 character code that won’t be accepted and a website I can’t sign up to.

So I email Acronis. And on Sunday (of all days) they reply saying “send the 64 character serial number to them”. So I do…

Then nothing.. So I write again… Still nothing. So I write again to every email address I can find on their site.

Today I get an email back that makes no mention of the code I typed in and sent to them. Just stating could I sign up to their website (I’ve Tried !!!!)..

So on my 7th day after getting the software and much frustration I can’t even use it yet.!!

I’m really not impressed with this recommendation. Should of just used the Windows backup software.

By: technogeist

technogeist — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 00:09:55 +0000

After yet another hard drive failure this week, I’m now starting to consider having some form of online backup as a second line of defence. Thankfully none of my files have been lost as I use external usb drives. But what concerns me most is that the two disk that failed are less than 2 years old, and weren’t heavily used. I used to power them down after 10mins via power-management and didn’t foresee a failure for at least another 2-3yrs, there were no warnings via S.M.A.R.T either!

Initially I suspected the power supply, but it’s well within operating limits and has ~250w headroom.
Perhaps I got a bad batch, but I just can’t trust the manufacturer’s quality controls as much as I used to do.