Have you backed your work up lately?

[Alphawolf]

Shit happens.

A few days ago I finally upgraded to FF 1.0, but something got cocked up and some of my bookmarks got deleted.

Somehow it got an older version which has some wrong LL submit url's and I lost megapornlinks submit url so that's gone.

Bummer, huh?

So, methinks...it's a good time to do at least a selective backup.

My Roboform data is now like a critical tool for me. I can't live without it.

Lots of websites, my bookmarks.html file, entire My Documents folder, cookies, and my 'downloads' folder which has all those 'little' apps I can't live without like colorimpact, winrar, ws_ftp, vid codecs, topstyle pro, etc...

I even tend to copy my Desktop 'cos in the event of a reinstall or new computer setup, I can see all the shortcut icons and smooth out all the edges knowing what else I may need or would be nice to have.

All this fit easily on 1 CDROM and took like 5 minutes.

Peace of mind...priceless.

So, if ya haven't done it lately...now is a good time!

[Ms Naughty]

You know, FF did that to me too. One day I loaded it up and my bookmarks, which I'd taken waaay to long to clean up a few weeks before, had reverted back to the old version

Backing up is good.

[Cleo]

I do a versioned backup of my home folder nightly and make a bootable backup of my entire drive whenever I update my system or do a lot of new application installs.

[codemonkey]

I would defo recommmend backing up!

Just before Xmas something went tits up and it looked like i lost a load of work. I ended up having to buy a hard drive recovery program to get the info back - even now i haven't got half of the info back so i'm a bit screwed. Lost like 3 years worth of Emails which were kinda important for our non adult stuff.

I feel like a right But now got a backup plan in place so shit like this doesn't happen again!! So always remember to backup regularly as it can and will happen one day when you least need it.

[Greenguy]

I've been backing up my entire system at least once a week, but this does remind me that it takes a very long time to do this, so I need to get an external drive for my content, which is eating up 1/2 my HD - this way, the content will be on the external & on one of my system HD's & since it rarely changes except when I get new content, I won't have to back it up that often.

[SirMoby]

I have a pair of these noisy beasts on my desk. http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?pid=10491 I use Retrospect to run every night at 2:00AM and perform one of the 3 different backup options. Duplicate C Drive, Duplicate D Drive or Duplicate my content directory. I think I'm going to need more just for my content soon and I'm thinking about having an off-site backup as well.

For now this is a cheap and reliable backup that I can access fast if needed. I use Lacie drives becasue they're 3 times faster then the my older Maxtors and often the Maxtors wouldn't finish in 8 hours. The Lacie's are fast but they are a bit noisy.

I'm thinking about getting somethign for off-site just in case my office gets hit by a meteor or soemthing.

[neticule]

thanks for remindin me im overdue for a backup thats for sure. just wish i had a dvd burner, a backup is going to cost me about 10 cd roms atleast... ugh.

[Cleo]

I have a bunch of FireWire drives.

I rotate them and sometimes give one of them to someone else so that I have some backups someplace besides my house in case something really bad happens like a meteorite falls on my house or something.

One of my accounts, a small design firm, got robbed and besides stealing all their Macs they stole the backup drives. Needless to say they were really fucked.

I have way too much stuff to backup to CDs or DVDs these days. Anyway FireWire drives have gotten really cheap.

[tiny]

That Lacie looks nice but alil to expensive .
I like my maxtors they do just fine .
Plug it in run it and unplug it its all good after that.
Now days if your not backing it up your crazy.
I don't trust CD's anymore sometimes they burp and refuse to work

[Cleo]

I've been seeing FireWire enclosures with a 120 gig drive for just over $100.

If you really want to go cheap you can open up the FireWire enclosure and just change out the hard drive.

[urb]

Originally posted by Cleo
... and sometimes give one of them to someone else so that I have some backups someplace besides my house in case something really bad happens like a meteorite falls on my house or something.

You send me your back ups and I'll send you mine. Do you think 4330 miles is safe enough from a meteorite impact?

[Cleo]

But what happens if our sun explodes?

[urb]

Originally posted by Cleo
But what happens if our sun explodes?

The magnetic effect of a solar explosion would wipe every drive and disk as far as Pluto.... and then I suppose there would be nothing for the planets to orbit, so....

let's hope it doesn't come to that.

[Cleo]

Our only hope is that warp drive is invented very soon. If for nothing else to save the collective porn of the primates that reside on the third rock from sol.

[cd34]

I can't stress enough the value of an off-site backup.

Years ago, in a land far, far away, when I was a Lantastic/Novell guy (haha, bring back memories?), it was a dark and stormy night. No wait, that's something else. To set the mood: Cell phones were $59.95/month and $.65/minute.

Back in the day, in the DC/Baltimore corridor, when Lantastic or Novell didn't work, consulting companies called me. If you don't know what DC commuter traffic is like, picture 4 lanes of traffic where there should be 3 lanes, bumper to bumper, 2-5mph for about 6 miles. Once you got beyond that squeeze, you could usually get to 15mph in short bursts.

So, I was dealing with a direct client that I had, and was looking at my watch and seeing that it was 4:00pm on a Friday. Things were about wrapped up, and I was about to get a head start out of the city. My phone rang, (no caller id, phone was as big as a brick), I answered, and the lady said:

This is the blah blah, you did some work for for us through our normal consulting company -- they cannot come out and gave me your number, could you drop by for a few minutes?

I'm leaving the city near Wisconsin Avenue, they're next to Union Station. The only thing worse than rush-hour traffic in DC is crosstown traffic in DC.

I almost said no, but she said the printers weren't working and they had to get a document out. (This was a non-profit foundation that did its work for children -- How could I say no?)

I told her, I'm 8 miles away, I would guess it will take me 45 minutes to get there -- she said, No problem. So, 45 minutes later, I struggle to find a parking spot -- she's out on the street, offers to let me park in their driveway (DC has a strange townhouse/office community on the outskirts of the business district)

So, we go to a machine, and the fact it wasn't printing was only part of the issue -- she failed to mention that they couldn't even retrieve the document. Tthis was back in the day of Coax Ethernet (you remember that right, a break in the cable takes the entire network down). But something just didn't feel right -- because I could hit the alternate print server.

Aha, the main server had crashed. So, I ask her where the main server is and she said, I don't know. The closet where we keep it is empty and the only things left are a bunch of wires. We fired a guy today and shortly after he left, we couldn't print -- when do you think we'll be able to print and get our document?

I said, where is your backup tape? Oh, its in the server. How about last weeks? In the server. The other tape went bad so we use the same tape.

Long story short:

make backups
take one offsite
make more than 1 generation (i.e. if you back up data bad data on a hard drive, you have a copy of bad data)

If you're talking about your server, learn how to use mysqldump or pg_dump -- usually when you back up files, the databases aren't included.

If you have a lot of data, consider incremental backups. For your server, rsync will send only changed files.

PS, they did get 99% of the document back thank goodness to me having set up the default word perfect setup to write backups to their local drive.

I always told people -- You only need to save your document when you get to the point that you wouldn't want to retype since your last save.

[urb]

Originally posted by cd34

Aha, the main server had crashed. So, I ask her where the main server is and she said, I don't know. The closet where we keep it is empty and the only things left are a bunch of wires. We fired a guy today and shortly after he left, we couldn't print -- when do you think we'll be able to print and get our document?

Last place I got fired from they called security before they sacked me, grabbed my cardkey, and then escorted me out of the building. Which is another thing to learn from the story.

[LeeNoga]

Funny you should ask this and start this thread.

Over New Years I blew out the fat table and drive partition New Years Eve..and it cost some bucks for the data recovery.

I ended up getting a new system and built a network....so this was a real expensive start of a New Year.

Did I have a recent backup?

Nope.

[GeorgeTH]

At least once in while I back-up... LOL: I'm actually not that bad!
I guess once every 10 days or so, but it depends very much on what I'd been doing. When I finish a new design or new site (I'm not talking free site, more complex lay-outs) things get backed-up straight away. During layered graphic work I tend to save to alternative physical harddrives (just in case - and it's also easier to get a point of return without lots of different file names like ver1, ver2, ver3).
And I usually have a fairly recent copy of everything on my notebook, which is placed in an easily accessible place next to a folder containing our passports, birth certificates, insurance documents, etc. = one grab and run in case the house is on fire (or the next tsunami hits).

[GeorgeTH]

Gosh - I would really hate to loose all my Netscape/Modzilla BOOKMARKS! Mine go back as far as 1995!!!

Not that many 1995-1998 bookmarks are still in there, since most pages disappeared, but still.. The file is 380kb full of information. And I believe I have like 7 or 8 copies of it floating around - just in case.

Submit password and page links are all organised on a few simple HTML pages, and stored locally and on the server! That's actually an easy system and a lot faster than bookmarks!!

[LeeNoga]

WHAT really hosed me over New Years was I could not find the .DBX outlook mail files...I have no idea why those little rascals are so difficult to locate but I lost years worth of keeper emails and pics.

Anyone know for the future where these dang .DBX files are? Somebody told me you have to go into the Windows registry and start tracking from that point..

Me and registry's do not get along, and I stay out!

[Alphawolf]

Originally posted by cd34

Long story short:

[Alphawolf]

Originally posted by LeeNoga
WHAT really hosed me over New Years was I could not find the .DBX outlook mail files...I have no idea why those little rascals are so difficult to locate but I lost years worth of keeper emails and pics.

Anyone know for the future where these dang .DBX files are? Somebody told me you have to go into the Windows registry and start tracking from that point..

Me and registry's do not get along, and I stay out!

http://www.neoseeker.com/Hardware/faqs/kb/18,70.html

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q233264/

http://www.updatexp.com/tip23.html

http://www.mailnavigator.com/read_ou...dbx_files.html

Basically, you just need to show Hidden Files.

From one of those websites:

"Options->Views->Show Hidden Files and Folders

The DBX files that Outlook Express uses are located in:

c:\ (or whatever drive windows resides on)
Documents and Settings
Username (your username)
Application Data
Identities
GUID Identifier (random string like {3B0FA092-2222-1111-A1B2-111A1AA1AAA11}
Microsoft
Outlook Express"

[LeeNoga]

WOW, Thanks A..I sent you a PM, BTW.

I wonder if I can recover those old email files.

Your a keeper! I will let you know if I have success :-)

[Alphawolf]

Lee,

Yep. I saw the PM, and replied back to you.

[GeorgeTH]

Originally posted by LeeNoga
WHAT really hosed me over New Years was I could not find the .DBX outlook mail files...I have no idea why those little rascals are so difficult to locate but I lost years worth of keeper emails and pics.[...]
Anyone know for the future where these dang .DBX files are? Somebody told me you have to go into the Windows registry and start tracking from that point..

I just learned another reason why I'm not using Outlook! All I still have to learn how to teach Win XP to not even install it?!?!

But 3 basic windows lessons:
1. Microsoft is really good in hiding things 5 sub-directories down
2. always turn file extensions and hidden files on (both!)
3. if in doubt use a 'search' to find the burried sub-directories!

...I discovered plenty of new spots for Windows to hide elemantal files when I cleaned out my recent virus/trojan attack (which by the way is still giving me some minor trouble).