Backup + Worst Nightmare

[DIRTYDAVE]

I know this a favorite topic of you kman, so let's get the ball rolling brother!

Let's talk about backup and also if you have ever had a nightmare scenario where a hard drive crashed and you lost some or all of your data for good.

Do you backup your computer data? I know this may seem a crazy question, but there is an alarming rate of people in the world who don't or ever think that a hard drive is going to crash on them. Is one backup good enough for you? Do you backup the backup? Do you keep a backup of your data off site? Do you...blah blah blah.

I currently have around 4 copies of my data on external hard drives. I have always talked about keeping a drive off-site but never have gotten around to it until this post. Tomorrow I will be making a backup of my data and placing it in my brother's 2 ton gun safe that is fire resistant for 10yrs...LOL! Just my way of saying it is big, safe and quite fire resistant, that is what spending around $1500.00 on a gun safe will do for you.

By data I am referring in my own case, to all of my documents and photos that have been scanned thepast few years...just about 90% done digitizing my entire life. My music tracks that I have recorded over the years and also my home movies that have been digitized. All of this info is close to about 150GB of storage.

On now to my nightmare. I have only ever had one hard drive crash and that was about 1 year ago. It was a Western Digital 500GB firewire HD by the way...may as well make note of the company to blame for my anguish. I did have some photos, video and documents that were lost forever, but what can you do. It was the only backup I had of the material and I had been meaning to back it up on to another external hard drive for a few months but never got around to it. One day I plugged the drive into my computer and the "clicking" sound started...and I am sure most of you know what that means...if not then it means you are SCREWED!!! I tried all methods of data recovery including freezing it in my freezer for a day but nothing would save the data. The cost of data recovery is only for those with money to burn and I am not one of those people. So, the dead drive still sits in my storage box as a constant reminder to me to backup.

I still use Western Digital drives by the way. I currently own 9 external/internal ones and oh...1 VERY DEAD ONE!

So, what is your story and your backup method?

[Cracker]

When I was running a website and a forum I regularly made an backup on an external harddisk.
I did this because I had some encounters with funhackers (turkish, arab and chinese hackers that completely destroy all your info and leave a message on your site). Most of them didn't manage to get the site down (well protected) but 1 managed to get through.


Simply buy a external harddisk docking station (to plug in your USB port) for about $10 and plug in an old harddisk, and make a back up (daily, weekly.. etc.. that's your own choice) and simply disconnect the usb everytime when your done saving the back up..

Your safe for about $10.. that's really worth it. And if your running something really important, you could burn it on a CD or DVD aswell once in a while.

[Dekard]

I've found the Western Digital (WD) hard drives to be above average in reliability - however your mileage may vary.
I've also found that the Toshiba and Sony drives seem to be pretty reliable as well.

Typically, new HDs are rated around a million hours between failures, but I've had more than my fair share of bad experiences with Seagate and Maxtor. More than a few have failed on me for my liking.

DDave - you don't say whether or not your failed WD can spin up. If it doesn't, then the fix I have may not work for you. If the the disk spins but you can't mount it, you may be able to recover the partition tables and access it. Try this utility, it saved me when I accidentally crashed a back up HD by unplugging it from a Mac before ejecting it.

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk (test disk - it's command line)

With plug and play/hot swap enabled on a PC, you can simply unplug the usb cable when you are done. Not so on a Mac. You have to make sure you eject the drive or it will get corrupted. In this instance, I broke my own rule of only having photos on 1 external HD before a backup. So, when I crashed the USB drive it had my only backups of some precious photos. I also broke another rule of mine, never erase the camera SD card before backing data up on 2 separate HDs and the laptop.

If your WD won't spin up, try this trick. place the HD in a large ziploc bag with some packets of silica gel. If you don't have any laying around, rice in a sock will do. Place the HD in your freezer overnight. Next prepare your PC with a working external drive. Remove the failed HD from the freezer and plug it into your PC asap. If the drive spins up and you are able to mount it, IMMEDIATELY copy the contents to the the new source.

The trick here is to copy as much data as you can before the drive fails again.

This is another site I use that has saved my digital bacon on many occasions: http://www.thefreecountry.com/utilities ... very.shtml

Here are a few of my data backup protocols - feel free to use or ammend as you see fit.

1.) ALWAYS make sure PCs, HDs, etc are plugged into a good quality surge suppressor to avoid electrical gremlins.
2.) When backing up photos from a memory card, always download photos as soon possible (in case of theft or clumsiness) to your pc and to (2) external HDs. Eject, unplug and safely store away the external backups.
3.) Never erase or reformat the camera memory card until verifying your photo backups. I have about 6 memory cards that I rotate as needed. Each card is tagged with a letter such as "A" and date of purchase "6/09". Never carry all of your backup memory cards with you at the same time in case of theft. Get into the habit of swapping out memory the memory card after taking precious photos when away from home, e.g., weddings,vacation etc. Too often you hear of cameras being stolen from locked cars with precious photos gone forever.
4.) Optional: Invest in an Eyefi wireless memory card to store photos and automatically update to online or backup location over wifi
5.) Backup all your PC data on a regular basis. For those with Macs, setup time machine. For those with PCs, I recommend this free but efficient backup software with an external or network drive: http://www.karenware.com/powertools/ptreplicator.asp
6.) Backup your backup HD using the karenware utility and store both in a safe place after backup is complete
7.) Invest in an online backup service like Mozy or Carbonite and backup your PC and external HD

It may sound like overkill, but with this method I have flexibility. In the event of natural disaster and my home is wiped out or in case of theft, the online off-site backup has my data covered and can be accessed from wherever there is a broadband connection. It also provides me with redundancy as the service always has a current backup.

The external HDs are my backup to the online service and backups can be accessed if there is no broadband connection available.

I don't generally use DVDs for backup, tho I probably should. For me they are inconvenient for the amount of data stored (unless dual layer are used) and are fairly expensive per megabyte.

Hope these tips help.

[DIRTYDAVE]

Wow Dekard, that is a TON of great info there.

I use a Mac exclusively by the way, forgot to mention. Currently using a Mac Pro [Early 2008}. I am eagerly awaiting my 27" iMac Quad Core w/ i7 Intel procesor though...

When I plug in the damaged HD, it will not mount and it just starts clicking. I will try those tips you mentioned just for the heck of it. I am keeping the dead drive around hoping that one day it may just work.

I tried the freezer trick but did not put any silica packs or sock with a rice with it. I can try that again I guess as well.

Thanks for the helpful tips!

@ cracker, it is a shame that there are so many fucktards out there that want to waste everyone's time and screw up websites like that. Luckily you are a step ahead of them. Thanks for your input.

[Dekard]

...When I plug in the damaged HD, it will not mount and it just starts clicking. I will try those tips you mentioned just for the heck of it. I am keeping the dead drive around hoping that one day it may just work...

aargh. the dreaded click of death.

try tech tools for Mac. http://www.micromat.com/index.php?optio ... &Itemid=83
this is what comes with applecare

Last resort - Spinrite. You will need to use this from a PC and it is not free, but a far site cheaper than a real data recovery service. http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm

Best explanation on the click of death: http://www.sync-blog.com/sync/2009/03/h ... video.html

Also, stay away from seagate drives. I see that their quality issues have not gone away based on my personal experience and this writeup: http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/352816/seag ... k-of-death

[Cracker]

I can't give any tips on recovering, but my only important tip is to really take it out everytime your done, it's only 5 minutes per week..

Btw silica en rice are used to suck the moist away.. old silica is already saturated, so you should heat them up in the oven to remove the moist again (and let it cool down before you use it again)

The bad thing is that recovery tricks usually only work in 1-10% of the cases, and don't always fully work..
That's why having a back up from your important stuff (email contacts, emails, job items, important pictures/files) is essential.. the chance that it happens is very slim, but if it happens.. your pretty much screwed big time..

It's only a very small investment, and it certainly pays of when it happens..
I had a larger risk because of those 12 year old bored hacker kiddos that hadn't anything better to do, but if you have a lot of important files, like a forum or if you work at home, it's quite important.