External backup hard drives to the rescue (again)

[DannyRaphael]

Many years ago I discovered what just about everyone has (or will) discover: Hard drives fail (eventually). After the exceptional pain, hassle and inconvenience of the first incident (for me) I implemented a simple backup procedure for my own situation.

My still Win XP PC has two internal drives (C, D). I copy two mirror images of each daily (starting at 3 am) to four external HDs using scheduled tasks and a simple backup application, "Backup Magic" from Moon Software.

When the internal C drive failed a few days ago it was very comforting to know that "everything was safe" times two. Yes, I know the external HDs will fail eventually and if there is a fire or earthquake or other unexpected major disaster down the road, external HDs won't matter much.

Recovery and getting back to normal is disruptive and not particularly fun, but it's a whole lot better knowing years of data and images will be available in a few days once the applications are reinstalled.

BOTTOM LINE: Food for thought...
* If you have a backup plan in place, have you checked lately to be sure what you think is being backed up is really being backed up? Have you printed hard copy instructions/info you may need while putting things back together?
* If you don't have a backup/recovery plan, NOW is the time to take action. Don't wait until you need one and then wish you had one in place.

There are many options for data backup/recovery. Find one that meets your needs and put it into practice. Someday, if not already, you will be very glad you did.

Avoid the pain and inconvenience of data loss. Don't be a victim of ignorance like I was the first time. Look out for your precious images and very important data.

[Tony W]

A very good post and a timely reminder for me to check the integrity of some of my old archives and organise my backups a little better.

Good to hear that your backup stratergy worked and saved the day

[plugsnpixels]

I use a combination of externals drives and data DVDs to archive images, etc. as well as working projects. In fact, my main working drive is an external which I back up to each local computer I use (home/office) as well as to other external drives.

I too have seen drives fail (when they start clicking, that's bad...) so yes, it does and will happen.

[Jerryb]

hi,
I learned the hardway myself a long time ago and do a hd back and I do a dvd data backup, using good quality dvd's and not the cheapo's ....

in addition, again from the school of hard knocks learning, smiling, when i do a data dvd backup of my images..... afterwards to verify for sure a good burn.. I'll setup in myviewer program, that has a slide show mode, I'' tag all the images, and set fo 1 sec display and let it go... if there any any issue on retrieving/corruption/displaying a file it will tell me...

and a little true story about backups. A friend mine work at this company and they always made 3 hard drive backup of thier data ... one day they had crash and lost all thiere primary hd.... the first backup was bad, the 2n backup was bad.. fortuately the 3rd was good... smiling.... bottom line doesn't hurt to havemore than one backup..!

[Doug Nelson]

I do multiple backups to 3 external drives (I've had too much trouble with external drives to trust just one). I keep a brand new, unopened drive handy in case one starts misbehaving. I've learned to avoid Western Digital drives, not because they're bad but because they have a problem with waking up when attached to a Windows system. So I'm slowly phasing in Seagates. Of course, 5 years ago Seagates were the ones with problems and Western Digital was better. So read reviews and don't buy last year's models.