Huh? Izzat true?

Post #11,890 by Ashton 10/5/01 5:34:49 AM Reply	Huh? Izzat true? So for the many sans CDRW - how do they er 'backup' anything? Yeah I know they don't really backup much, since with Windoze you can't * - but I thought they were sorta taught to put their immortal prose and those important recipes - on something removable? So are you saying that your recent experience is: home users just.. write to HD, do defrag when someone nags them and - that's it? * I'd imagine Ghost (either to an image on another partition or via CDRW) -- to be beyond a basic home user's capabilities (?) S/he'd have to learn PMagic to make that partition, for one thing.. (Now you can tell us from your considerable experience: how many biz folk, those who sorta get the idea of 'backup' - have ever actually loaded that backup (of three made, to be really paranoid) ??) Ashton who likes the incremental CD-as-floppy, as world's cheapest, fast SYA: 30+ MB of all-mail costs 2\ufffd, all of 5 keystrokes..
Post #11,938 by Andrew Grygus 10/5/01 12:37:01 PM Reply	Home users? Hell . . In September I had 5 cases of total data loss brought to me (total of 6 hard disks). Four were businesses (including a CPA firm), and one was a student who lost all his school work. Every time I'm faced with a recovery job, the instruction is the same, "Please, my whole life is on that disk". No most people do not back up at all. Many think they're backing up but never verify. When the crunch comes - no data. Then I have one client, "Stupid Stew" as he often calls himself, who checks the tape backup log first thing every morning, takes critical data home on Zip disk, and has a backup server automatically updated every evening just before the tape run. According to "Stupid Stew", "I'd be screwed without my data". He doesn't like downtime either (costs about $60/minute). [link\|http://www.aaxnet.com\|AAx]
Post #11,975 by kmself 10/5/01 3:21:27 PM Reply	I need to recover my data...Load your backup tapes... I have no sympathy for these people. I could, but I don't. The first rule of data recovery is "restore from recent, and verified, backups". I've been doing same on my systems every 2-4 days, with a multi-tape rotation. I publish my own [link\|http://kmself.home.netcom.com/Linux/FAQs/backups.html\|backup recommendations], and it's one of the more popular documents on my site. It might almost be better if consumer drives were of sufficiently low quality that the realities of data loss and recovery were driven home more often. The sad truth is that for most people it's a "friend of a friend" problem, that hasn't directly effected them. And few consumer devices ship with a suitable archival system (though CD-R/DVD-R is changing this, somewhat). I still like tape. `-- Karsten M. Self [link\|mailto:kmself@ix.netcom.com\|kmself@ix.netcom.com] What part of "gestalt" don't you understand?`
Post #11,980 by Andrew Grygus 10/5/01 3:37:53 PM Reply	Situations can get bad enough that . . . . . Drive Savers, one of the leading data recovery houses, employs Niki Stange (a former suicide hot line councilor) to handle the more distraught customers. [link\|http://www.aaxnet.com\|AAx]
Post #11,995 by Ashton 10/5/01 5:08:39 PM Reply	!!! - words fail..
Post #12,010 by kmself 10/5/01 7:45:29 PM Reply	Ounce of prevention I can believe it. I still don't have to sympathize. `-- Karsten M. Self [link\|mailto:kmself@ix.netcom.com\|kmself@ix.netcom.com] What part of "gestalt" don't you understand?`
Post #12,103 by dmarker2 10/6/01 9:34:44 PM Reply	Re: Backups are a PITB - but ... Having been part of corporate business for the best part of 30 years & having once had the job of teaching, setting up & testing CICS back-up & recovery systems. I find backups on PCs a PITB. My answer is to have 4 computers each with massive disk capacity divided into 5 logical disks. Each disk H: has copies of old files etc:, each disk G has copies of new software etc: the others have installed pgms & data. I have 2 rw cdroms & hate them both - they are so damn erratic. I know I should buy a good SCSI disk & rwCDROM but just haven't got round to it. But I still do periodic writes to CDs as well. I have tried r/w CDs but find them irritatingly slow. So use them as periodical back up like I do with W CDs. I have lost 3 disks in the past 12 months but have been able to recover each one except for one bit of 4 weeks incoming mail items. It is so much easier to copy stuff to a fast server. Cheers Doug Marker
Post #12,110 by kmself 10/6/01 10:55:07 PM Reply	Filesystem structure The GNU/Linux (or Unix) filesystem hierarchy makes backups so much easier. The utter lack of architecture under Windows is what makes backups so difficult. Under GNU/Linux, a user wants their personal stuff backed up? `$HOME`. As a sysadmin the local installation stuff? `/usr/local`. A decent systemwide backup? `/etc, /root, /boot, /var/stuff, /home, /usr/local`, plus a list of currently installed packages and/or versions. You're 100% at that point. Over-the-net backups -- that's an option. It's convenient, but it's not a full solution, and the expense (particularly for multiple versions or historic backups) are prohibitive. MS Windows backups are a PITA? Blame the [link\|http://www.microsoft.com/\|fucking vendor]. `-- Karsten M. Self [link\|mailto:kmself@ix.netcom.com\|kmself@ix.netcom.com] What part of "gestalt" don't you understand?`
Post #12,117 by static 10/7/01 1:35:27 AM Reply	Others by implication. ArcServe is horrible. Over-engineered, over-priced rubbish. Oh it backs-up okay, but I wish they'd spend all their millions on a cadre of decent UI designers. The thing is a real pain-in-the-arse to configure. Wade. "All around me are nothing but fakes Come with me on the biggest fake of all!"
Post #12,121 by pwhysall 10/7/01 3:36:29 AM Reply	Arcserve has one terrible, terrible feature It makes Backup Exec look good. And that, believe me, is a BAD thing. Peter Shill For Hire [link\|http://www.kuro5hin.org\|There is no K5 Cabal]

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