I'm interested in how people keep backups of important information.
How often do you take backups?
What do you backup (e.g. configuration data for applications, personal data (like C.V.s or other documents), game data (LFS setups, other game profiles), music/movies)?
How do you actually take backups (e.g. automated commercial software, straight file copies through your operating system, backup scripts you wrote yourself)?
Where do you store backup information (e.g. on a different drive/partition in the same machine, online backup site (e.g. Dropbox), on external USB/eSata/FireWire drives)?
How do you verify the integrity of the backed up information?
For me:
How often do you take backups?
Usually every week, more often for personal data and programming data.
What do you backup?
My own programming things, personal information, music, movies, car videos, Internet/eMail profiles.
How do you actually take backups?
I use a program I wrote myself to identify what files need backed up then I copy those files to backup disks just through Windows.
Where do you store backup information?
For important things (personal/configuration data) I use an external eSata enclosure that's offline unless I'm actually backing up or restoring anything. For less important information I use a combination of eSata backups and backups on other computers.
How do you verify the integrity of the backed up information?
I trust that when the files are being copied by the OS its own CRC checking is correct. Also, every time I update any backed up files I take a copy of the last modified timestamp and filesize of the file. I can then compare the meta data for the backed up files against the live files on the computer. That way any changes to the live files (e.g. editing a document) will show up the backed up data as being out of sync. I am considering calculating the CRC hash values of files when I back them up too and comparing them with live files, but that would probably take a prohibitively long time for some files.
How often do you take backups?
What do you backup (e.g. configuration data for applications, personal data (like C.V.s or other documents), game data (LFS setups, other game profiles), music/movies)?
How do you actually take backups (e.g. automated commercial software, straight file copies through your operating system, backup scripts you wrote yourself)?
Where do you store backup information (e.g. on a different drive/partition in the same machine, online backup site (e.g. Dropbox), on external USB/eSata/FireWire drives)?
How do you verify the integrity of the backed up information?
For me:
How often do you take backups?
Usually every week, more often for personal data and programming data.
What do you backup?
My own programming things, personal information, music, movies, car videos, Internet/eMail profiles.
How do you actually take backups?
I use a program I wrote myself to identify what files need backed up then I copy those files to backup disks just through Windows.
Where do you store backup information?
For important things (personal/configuration data) I use an external eSata enclosure that's offline unless I'm actually backing up or restoring anything. For less important information I use a combination of eSata backups and backups on other computers.
How do you verify the integrity of the backed up information?
I trust that when the files are being copied by the OS its own CRC checking is correct. Also, every time I update any backed up files I take a copy of the last modified timestamp and filesize of the file. I can then compare the meta data for the backed up files against the live files on the computer. That way any changes to the live files (e.g. editing a document) will show up the backed up data as being out of sync. I am considering calculating the CRC hash values of files when I back them up too and comparing them with live files, but that would probably take a prohibitively long time for some files.