I am just wondering, how are you guys managing your backups?
I have recently thought about getting a online solution for a off site backup, and are looking at Carbonite (http://www.carbonite.com/) which looks like a *to good to be true* offer, 55$ a year for unlimited storage.
Ive also been looking at Dropbox (https://www.dropbox.com/) and Ubuntu One (https://one.ubuntu.com/) too, but that is more like the Foldershare / windows live sync (http://www.foldershare.com/) crap from MS which is just file sync between computers, which is sort of backup, but not really off site.
Anyways, I just thought I'd make use of the collective intelligence of the community (read: Borg Collective) and hear what y'all think, and what you do.
i was actually thinking about the same thing for a while, but decided on local backup instead
So i bought a NAS box with 4 HDD slots, running continual backup of the important data on 2x1.5Tb mirror raid on the Nas.. 2 spare slots are used for 2x1tb media data storage
but this isnt a cheap solution
I'll just comment on a couple of things about Dropbox.
Dropbox can be used as a file syncing service - great. But it can also be used as a version related backup service too!
Basically, whenever a change is made to a file it of course syncs that to other PC's if you have them. However, it also keeps versions of files so if you edit a file and then save it it keeps the previous version for you. This is useful if you make a lot of changes to a file one time (or it gets corrupted somehow) because you can go back to a previous version.
It doesn't stop there as you go back numerous versions (I haven't tested to see how many). You can also retrieve deleted files in the same fashion. Delete a file in your Dropbox and later realise you need it? Then you can get it back. I'm pretty sure this versioning doesn't effect your storage limits either.
There are many other functional bits and bobs of Dropbox such as a MAC version, a Linux version and even an iPhone version!
Quote from: kregoron;297319i was actually thinking about the same thing for a while, but decided on local backup instead
So i bought a NAS box with 4 HDD slots, running continual backup of the important data on 2x1.5Tb mirror raid on the Nas.. 2 spare slots are used for 2x1tb media data storage
but this isnt a cheap solution
Not cheap and isn't an off-site backup which a lot of businesses require these days (just in case of theft/vandalism/fire etc.
I've used carbonite in the past and it worked very well. Now however, all my important stuff is on email which is stored remotely and files I just use a NAS device with mirrored HDD.
Just to make the point that both Dropbox and Ubuntu One store your files on their servers as well as sync them between multiple machines. However I'm not sure if Ubuntu One works on a Windows box or does versions like Dropbox?
i usaly dont take backup of my stuff, since i have never experienced a dead disk.
but this can be done alot cheaper.
i do have something simmelar to dropbox, tho its my own solution, and i dont have a folder i have a drive.
due to the my company im running, i need to get access to my files, databases, invoices etc etc etc from annyware annytime.
now i do have a virtual winxp running on my master server wich i do all my buissness related stuff, such as support programming and so on,
that virtual pc has a drive that is on a virtual NAS (freenas) and wich is hooked up to my main storage area, wich are there where all images are loaded from
my nas is mounted as a network drive on all my pcÃ,´s and my mac, where all devices are hooked up to my drive trought a secure tunnel, even my iphone.
incase i need my calendar witch is important aswell, then im dumping calendar shares, contact and even my emails on my drive (i have more than one drive, but a bit of structure 1 drive is enought)
where my mail clients can sync from, also using the same tunnel.
this is on a much bigger scale that you need, but in the theory its the same
if you have questions feal free to ask.
- claw
Quote from: Othbarty;297314I am just wondering, how are you guys managing your backups?
I have a home server with folder duplication to separate physical drives, which provides me with a redundant copy should one of the disks fail. In addition, I bring a copy on an external drive home to store at my old folks' house a couple of times a year or something, which covers the all-hell-breaks-loose cases.
I have pondered about paying for some off-site solution such as the ones you mention, but I've found that I really don't have that much data which is a total catastrophe to loose, so my current way of doing it works just fine :)
Quote from: Claw;297433i usaly dont take backup of my stuff, since i have never experienced a dead disk.
Was that meant as a joke of some kind...?
Quote from: Bob;297442Was that meant as a joke of some kind...?
no bob, i still have my first ide disk witch is retired due to its capasity but it sill runs like a champ.
mine sata discs that i am using for system are 2 years old now, and still running like chaps. and do 150meg/sec
<--------edited by Penfold-------->
- claw
Both Dropbox and Ubuntu One give 2 gig free space, so if you have both then you obviously get four gig of online space that can be synced with multiple machines for free. That's my basic set-up.
Quote from: Claw;297445no bob, i still have my first ide disk witch is retired due to its capasity but it sill runs like a champ.
mine sata discs that i am using for system are 2 years old now, and still running like chaps. and do 150meg/sec
so whats your point?
- claw
If there is nothing on your PC that you care about then fine but if there is, then you should be backing up the things you wouldn't want to lose. Hard disks do fail and sometimes they fail in a big way (no way you'll get the data back). :)
Quote from: Whitey;297466If there is nothing on your PC that you care about then fine but if there is, then you should be backing up the things you wouldn't want to lose. Hard disks do fail and sometimes they fail in a big way (no way you'll get the data back). :)
heh, no offence mate but no i dont do backups never did never will.
drives dont "just" fail.i kinda dont care if you have experienced something else with your drives, the reason of your drives die and mine dossent are propedly becuse my drives has an excilet enviroment and the drives are high quality drives.
(no WD raptor or velasiaptor are not quality drives)drives lifetime is limited by the enviroment, if your drives are 60c celcius then no they will die.
i have been listening to peoples whine about their drives and how they died.
if you buy a good drives, and you take good care of your drives then they dont just die on you.
in the last 5 years i have been running with the same discs for my system drive in same raid array just other systems and i had never ever experienced anny issues with them
now in not a normal user, im an end user and maybe more than that unfortinetly i dont waste money on cheap disks and there for i do save time and money in the last end.
in the last 5 years of my OC career i have met a guy who has studdied harddrives and storrage in more than 10 years, and his point of view is that people do **** whit their pcÃ,´s and the peace of hardware that takes the lagest beating is the HDD.
since its realy the only peace of hardware in there that has a "moving" peace, and makes the head and plate open for damage.
i have sevaral disks that have been covered with dryice, ln2 or even water, the only thing that it has been done to them is they have been whiped with a towel and they have worked ever since.
so i **** you not, buy crap brand disks and you will need that backup, treat your hardware as ****, and you will need that backup...
-claw
I think you seem to be way off the beaten track here.
Quote from: Clawdrives dont "just" fail
Speaking as someone for whom drives have "just" failed (see my current signature for more info) I can tell you that they *do* just fail. My most recent experience saw the following happened within 48 hours of each other:
-a WD Special Edition HDD fail (it was 15 months old and kept in a server rack in an air conditioned dust-free room)
-a Seagate Maxtor HDD fail (it was 18 months old and kept in an air conditioned room
-a WD Special Edition HDD fail (it was 20 months old and kept in an air-conditioned room)
-a WD Passport HDD fail (it was 1yr 10 days old and was working the week before and had just been sat on my desk for that previous week)
Quote from: Clawif you buy a good drives, and you take good care of your drives then they dont just die on you.
I'm sorry, but you are plain wrong on this point. Even the HDD manufacturers will tell you that you are wrong. They will happily admit that the product they provide is not perfect, they expect a certain percentage to 'just fail' even within any warranty period.
Quote from: Claw;297472so i **** you not, buy crap brand disks and you will need that backup, treat your hardware as ****, and you will need that backup...
Ignoring personal preference and the clear indication that perhaps my faith in the WD brand is misplaced, I do not think you could accuse me of buying 'crap brand disks' or 'treating my hardware as ****". However I have had 3 HDDs in 3 different systems 'just fail' on me in the last 2 months (4 drives if you include the Passport). None gave any warning, none showed any SMART errors, they just failed.
Quote from: Clawheh, no offence mate but no i dont do backups never did never will.
I still managed to lose all the digital photos I have ever taken, despite having what I thought was a pretty resilient backup process in place. Not taking backups practically guarantees you will lose something at some point, let's hope your nonchalent attitude to backups doesn't end up losing somethng too important to you.
TL:
as you see WD`s arent that good of a disc.
5 x 10000 rpm SCSI raid 0 MAXTOR running for 3rd year so far, without anny errors.
about SMART monitor well it has been proven several times that SMART does not work.
QuoteIgnoring personal preference and the clear indication that perhaps my faith in the WD brand is misplaced, I do not think you could accuse me of buying 'crap brand disks' or 'treating my hardware as ****". However I have had 3 HDDs in 3 different systems 'just fail' on me in the last 2 months (4 drives if you include the Passport). None gave any warning, none showed any SMART errors, they just failed.
i dident but dident you just have what 3 WDÃ,´s die on you?.
aircondition cant help you here you know that, due to the air thatÃ,´s inside your rack case is still hotter than the enviroment air due to hardware.
- claw
p.s next time you edit my post, atleast you can do is tell me your doint it, instead of just doing it. it p***** me off! thank you
ok ok already mr grumpy chops. Try not to wear out the swear filter eh :flirty:
I've occasionally had HDD's failing on me and I'm sure it's because I don't look after them right - naughty Pen.
If people want to back up their information (which can only be a sensible thing imo) then so be it.
Anyway, in answer to Oth's original question, I do mine thus:
I keep all my data on a separate HDD which makes it easy - as I can copy the whole drive.
I have use live sync to copy my pertinent files between the office, my home and my laptop. So I reckon that's the information duplicated in 3 locations. I also have an small external HDD which I copy the whole drive to weekly and, for good measure, I have a large 1TB NAS drive that I backup the work files to once a month (which then gives me the last 6 months worth - @ 150gb per time).
In addition, for clients, I have set them up with 100GB dropbox accounts where I upload their photo galleries and press releases etc. My reckoning is that if I get run over by a bus then at least they can get their image banks relatively easily.
Quote from: Claw;297495p.s next time you edit my post, atleast you can do is tell me your doint it, instead of just doing it. it p***** me off! thank you
And so does constant swearing where none is needed. Grow up a bit and drop the swearing. For the record though, nobody edited your post. Our forum software automatically deletes/removes offending words.
As to your reply, if you seriously believe drives do not fail then go ahead and cross your fingers. All we're saying is that blindly putting your head in the sand and ignoring the fact that HDDs do fail is pretty daft. In fact, running 5xHDDs in a nice fast Raid0 means you are precisely 5 times more likely to see a failure than running it on a single drive.
As for blandly stating WD are not a good brand, well there's a lengthy thread on the forum about it if you want to look for it. Most brands take a hammering from someone, including your Seagate, so it's pretty much pot luck. What is universally accepted is that WD is a major brand and unlikely to be completely pants as it would otherwise be out of business remarkably quickly.
Backing up is your own decision, but don't deride people for doing it or blame them for 'mistreating their disks' when clearly that has nothing to do with it.
I still have the HDD from a 1994 Gateway P90. Hasn't been used for a few years now, but I hooked it up a few months ago and it still works fine. So does every drive I still have from the desktop machines I've had over the years. They've survived sitting in dusty cupboards, moving house at least 4 times, with nothing but an antistatic bag for protection. :)
Oh yeah - every one of them is a Western Digital drive. They're the only drives I buy or recommend now because I've never seen one fail, and I can't say that of any other manufacturer.
Having disks that have run for 2-3 years doesn't say to me that they're good disks. I would expect at *least* double if not triple that time from any disk I buy - get back to me and let me know if your Maxtors are still running after 10 years.
Quotedrives dont "just" fail.
i kinda dont care if you have experienced something else with your drives, the reason of your drives die and mine dossent are propedly becuse my drives has an excilet enviroment and the drives are high quality drives.
It is a plain fact that hard drives do "just" fail, and actually a much more likely reason that both you and I have never had a drive die is that we are
very lucky. Hard drives can and do die at any time for a number of reasons regardless of their environment. A good environment might reduce the chances of a failure but it is still a matter of time before it happens. The storage expert guy you met would be able to confirm this, as would anyone who has worked in IT infrastructure.
That said - I don't do backups either but this is purely because I have no data that I care that much about. :)
I am also a memeber of the WD club and now the Samsung, due to 3 Maxtors dying on me.
I wont go near them and I wont recommend them.
Quote from: Claw;297472drives dont "just" fail.
i kinda dont care if you have experienced something else with your drives, the reason of your drives die and mine dossent are propedly becuse my drives has an excilet enviroment and the drives are high quality drives.
(no WD raptor or velasiaptor are not quality drives)
drives lifetime is limited by the enviroment, if your drives are 60c celcius then no they will die.
Hard Drives contain moving parts, which renders them vulnerable to wear & tear - regardless of how well you look after them.
If your theory were true, then I wouldn't have to bother with expensive RAID setups in my servers. I could just buy "quality" drives and forget about it... then get fired when one of them keels over and wipes out a Directors mailbox.
Even Hard Drive manufaturers know and admit that all drives will fail eventually regardless of quality, that's why they provide MTTF (Mean Time To Fail) figures.
<--------edited by Penfold-------->
Back on-topic, Acronis (http://www.acronis.com) do some very nice local-backup products using disk-images. I would reccomend them.
Quote from: TeaLeaf;297503And so does constant swearing where none is needed. Grow up a bit and drop the swearing. For the record though, nobody edited your post. Our forum software automatically deletes/removes offending words.
As to your reply, if you seriously believe drives do not fail then go ahead and cross your fingers. All we're saying is that blindly putting your head in the sand and ignoring the fact that HDDs do fail is pretty daft. In fact, running 5xHDDs in a nice fast Raid0 means you are precisely 5 times more likely to see a failure than running it on a single drive.
Backing up is your own decision, but don't deride people for doing it or blame them for 'mistreating their disks' when clearly that has nothing to do with it.
<--------edited by Penfold-------->
but the thing is, i have told
MY EXPERIENCE about the drives i have had for years, in controlled and uncontrolled enviroments. now if
YOUR DRIVE dies, it does not effecy my statistics and i feal sorry for your data loss, it sucks. i do not say im perfect i have whiped few raid arrays by accident, but that does not effect that my drives lives...
and to be on the topic i even provided him with a faily solution.
<--------edited by Penfold-------->
<--------edited by Penfold-------->
<--------edited by Penfold-------->
- claw
Disk drives die, it is a mathematical fact, simple as stated drives are mechanical and therefor with time they will die and fail period..
There exist no such thing as a fail free drive, ask any hdd manufacturer.
over the ages ive had around 10 disks die on me within the first two years of their lifetime, (and i buy around 10-14 new disks a year) and in my book thats a fairly good rate, and yeah my disks run in a perfect inviroment, dust free, stable 18degree temp around the disks at all times, and mounted in shock/vibration mounts.
I had a talk with a WD tech a few years back at a conference in Berlin, and we talked a lot about disk failure rate, and he told about 40% of the disk they get back from failures (and this is across their whole production line cheap ones to top dogs) is due to a single dust grain getting into the disk in the manufacturing process, which is nothing your computer enviroment can do anything about AT ALL. rest is often due to reading pins touching the platters at some point and disk dies simple.
Btw there is no maxtor, maxtor is dead.. finally..
On topic: After talking with oth the other night, i know its offsite backup he wants, no home storage
For long while i used idrives (http://www.idrive.com/) service, its not hte cheapest i know, but their service was awsome, best part was, that back then you could negotiate with em, example i didnt need their 500gb in the family package, but still wanted the service for multiple puters, so i sent em a mail with my wishes and they sent me instantly a price estimate back, fair price with a bit of discount :) but again they werent the cheapest afaik
Quote from: kregoron;297539Btw there is no maxtor, maxtor is dead.. finally..
what do you have against maxtor?
- claw
I just use DropBox. Even if I for some reason should end up deleting my locally stored backup files, and thus activating the sync to the online DropBox folder, thus removing them from the DropBox S3-based storage, I can always go online and restore any deleted file for up to 30 days.
And, even if that fails, for some odd technical reason, they are kind and helpful in restoring your data manually.
I am still surprised that even the 2-5GB versions are free.
Quote from: Claw;297540what do you have against maxtor?
- claw
That they were crap, but if werent aware, maxtor is no more, and havent been for a while, they are now all Seagate
http://www.maxtor.com/home-en-us.html
But Lets stop going OT and answer Oths question
Quote from: Claw;297472drives dont "just" fail.
i kinda dont care if you have experienced something else with your drives, the reason of your drives die and mine dossent are propedly becuse my drives has an excilet enviroment and the drives are high quality drives.
(no WD raptor or velasiaptor are not quality drives)
drives lifetime is limited by the enviroment, if your drives are 60c celcius then no they will die.
I look after a Datacentre with hundreds of drives ranging from SATA to Fibre Attached 15k high end drives. Due to the large quantity of drives we use, we get failures on a regular basis (every month or two) and they are housed in computer rooms with climate control and filtered power from a UPS.
Drives do "just" fail but it's your risk, I was just trying to be helpfull. :)
Dropbox - I would like to add, that you can up the 2GB to 5GB quite easily for free - and that the 50GB solution is like $10 a month, so no biggie - especially with the greenback being dirt cheap atm.
Might I remind people to stay on topic - and that includes you, Claw. Do a new topic if you fancy discussing disk failure rates.
Quote from: kregoron;297544That they were crap, but if werent aware, maxtor is no more, and havent been for a while, they are now all Seagate
http://www.maxtor.com/home-en-us.html
But Lets stop going OT and answer Oths question
<--------edited by Penfold-------->
QuoteDrives do "just" fail but it's your risk, I was just trying to be helpfull.
i know we all are, but unfortinetly someone has something agains me and my posts. so i do just think that il just go...
Quote from: Claw;297548mine maxtor in my rack works just fine...
crap? maxtor made some good cheap discs, you got what you paid for.
and if your buying 10-14 discs a year (wich i doubt you do, and its not all what i doubdt about you)
<--------edited by Penfold-------->
Quote from: kregoron;297549Well gratz, your the first member of this community to make a fair discussion personal.
but then again, dont really care for what you may think
:roflmao:
then don't bring it up..
- claw
/offtopic
In terms of reliability, Samsung is far the best, we hardly see them, the worst is probably Seagate, once the most reliable is now the most unreliable, although the Maxtor brand is sort of still around, but still essentially a Seagate, Maxtor drives had both reliable and unreliable models, depends on the model numbers. Although barring in mind that there are more Seagate drives out in the market than any other manufacturer :)
Quote from: Snokio;297552/offtopic
In terms of reliability, Samsung is far the best, we hardly see them, the worst is probably Seagate, once the most reliable is now the most unreliable, although the Maxtor brand is sort of still around, but still essentially a Seagate, Maxtor drives had both reliable and unreliable models, depends on the model numbers. Although barring in mind that there are more Seagate drives out in the market than any other manufacturer :)
i have some good experience with Samsung Spinpoint F3 drives, (500GB) since they have a 16mb buffer and are single plated.
- claw
I forgot my on topic bit :doh:
For home use, I have a raid 5 (3 HDD's) and also an external hdd. My previous system didn't have any back ups and was running on a IBM deskstar, aka deathstar :blink: I was running that for years and never failed!
By the way, if you don't have a backup plan, then you are potentially heading for disaster.
Hard drives do fail regardless of personal experiance.
In any case the last page or two of this thread has focussed on hard drive failures/non failures in relation to backups and the need for them.
There are however, other reasons you should have a backup strategy. Hard drive failure is just one. How about theft of equipment? How about data corruption caused by viruses or bad shut down of PC? How about fire or other disaster such as water damage? The list I'm sure goes on.
Seriously, if you don't take backups simply because 'I've never had the problem before' then you are way off the track.
I think the majority of us here know that you MUST have backups of data that you would be sorry to lose - simple, end of story.
On another point - on site backups are fine but to be really sure off-site backups are a must. Which brings things back to Dropbox and other solutions already mentioned.
Quote from: Claw;297472drives dont "just" fail.i kinda dont care if you have experienced something else with your drives, the reason of your drives die and mine dossent are propedly becuse my drives has an excilet enviroment and the drives are high quality drives.
Statements like that is the same as saying something like "People don't get hit by buses, just look at me, I'm still here!" and are plainly wrong (sorry to iterate this, but it's just wrong...).
Quote from: kregoron;297539After talking with oth the other night, i know its offsite backup he wants, no home storage
For long while i used idrives (http://www.idrive.com/) service, its not hte cheapest i know, but their service was awsome, best part was, that back then you could negotiate with em, example i didnt need their 500gb in the family package, but still wanted the service for multiple puters, so i sent em a mail with my wishes and they sent me instantly a price estimate back, fair price with a bit of discount :) but again they werent the cheapest afaik
Yep :) I want a off site backup solution in case of a hell-freezes-over situation (as bob most elegantly put it :D).
The two solutions I have so far seen is carbonite and idrives. I will have a look at idrive, but by the looks of it, it looks like carbonite offers a cheaper solution (unlimited storage for $55 a year is great!).
Don misunderstand me, dropbox/ubuntu one is great for their uses, I just don't personally like it as a backup solution. File syncing between multiple computers is a whole different story all together :)
I feel a bit sorry for you TL, loosing all your pictures like that... This is one of the reasons I want a off site backup solution
that I don't manage myself (if I do something stupid on one server, I'll probably do it on all the servers I set up...).
Thanks for all the constructive feedback :) keep it coming! :woot2:
Quote from: Othbarty;297564Statements like that is the same as saying something like "People don't get hit by buses, just look at me, I'm still here!" and are plainly wrong (sorry to iterate this, but it's just wrong...).
im saying drives "just" dont die, there is a reason for its death, you dont "just" die, you might die in a bus accsident.
- claw
If that's the way you meant it Claw then there is probably a big problem with the translation to English of what you originally posted as I do not think that was what the majority here believed you meant. Apologies if we misunderstood you, but the way it was written it meant something else.
TeaLeaf you probably have the worst luck of all, sorry to hear that. I haven't had any problems with my HDD's ever, so I am quite waiting for it to happen anytime soon. But due to students budget I only use an external drive where I put only the most important stuff, like photos and documents. And this backing up one interesting thing as you basically can't do enough of it ever. So Oth you just need to find the suitable cost/space solution for you :)
I am a bit skeptic about the offsite backup as who can see the files and where are they located. Cheap can't buy you good in this case right ?
Using a NAS will be probably the best solution for me but it depends a lot from what are you to backup. And even if you have backups in 5 different locations there is still a change they will all crash at the same time. Probabilities...
I used a Raid5 NAS which backed up to a diff PC, copied to another non-raid NAS in a different geographic location and then had an additional copy on a portable drive (the WD Passport). All the HDDs went within 48 hours.
I have since added Dropbox and Carbonite and will include these in my 'new' backup system.
Quote from: Lexander;297598I am a bit skeptic about the offsite backup as who can see the files and where are they located.
Thats is one of the great things with idisk and Carbonite, both encrypts your files with YOUR key prior to transferring them to the off site server, thus leaving all your files encrypted with only YOUR key. Your the only guys that can see the content of your backup.
TL, let me know how Carbonite works out for you, I will be adding the trial just to see at home, just annoying that I have to set up a windows virtual machine to handle the backup from my server :P
/Flame retardant pants on.
I've gone through this thread and have removed the personal, the irrelevant and the Inane from this otherwise interesting thread.
If you can't post something constructive without making it personal then don't. It's really not that hard :angry:.
Just had to use the Versioning feature in Dropbox.
Here's the situation and what happened. Please note, there was no hard drive failure, no fire that destroyed the PC, no theft of equipment etc.
As some of you may no I do website design and such like. One of my first customers likes to edit dates and times on his website himself rather than troubling me to do it.
Whenever he makes a change he fires off an email to me so I know there is a change and of course so I can download that change just in case there is anything I need to work on (we are therefore working from the same files and it acts like a backup of course! :)
About a week ago he made such a change and let me know.
I downloaded the site and put it in my Dropbox>Current Work>sitename folder>htdocs
Dropbox did it's stuff
Checked my emails this morning and saw a panicked email from the guy. He had made another 'small' change and uploaded it and when he viewed it the site was all over the place! Code everywhere and no pretty front page that he is used to!
Ok here is where it gets complicated but please stick with me a moment. :blink:
I thought, no problem, I'll download the site again, check it over and if I can't fix it quickly, I will. If I can't, all I'll do is upload the file I had a week ago and make the small change for him that he was going to make! Easy!
So I opened up my FTP program, navigated to folders etc and prior to downloading the htdocs folder I renamed my copy (within my FTP program) of htdocs to "htdocs 22112009" (fair enough I hear you say).
I then downloaded the folder.
Went into explorer and to my horror "htdocs 22112009" did not exist! Only the new htdocs folder! Oh crap what's happened I said! (or something like that :norty:).
My FTP program had somehow messed things up and overwritten my local copy of htdocs which if you have been following this post was the latest copy take a week ago and which had the file I was going to restore the website to if I couldn't find a quick fix :(
I didn't have a recent enough copy of the file in question so I resigned myself trying to fix the file. Dreamweaver reported about a 1000 errors :(:(
Then I thought! Dropbox Versions! Yay!
And sure enough, popped on to Dropbox website, logged in, found the file and restored to the previous version of a week ago!
Hey presto I had a decent and recent file to work with, made the small change he had been planning and all was well.
All this since reading his email and writing this post has taken 40 minutes.
Big vote for Dropbox versioning. :thumbsup:
Quote from: Jabbs;297761Big vote for Dropbox versioning. :thumbsup:
Well I installed dropbox to see what the fuss was about and tbh I haven't used it yet.:g:
I may have to give this a go since I tend to have random files kicking around which could easily get lost. Not a huge problem since most of my projects are in Subversion, but Dropbox would be nice for keeping other stuff tidy.
As a side note, while it's not really a backup solution (although it would work as such), anything that can be defined as a 'project' gets stuck into Subversion for me. I can't recommend it enough as it integrates with my development tools and means I have instant access to a current copy of my projects wherever I happen to be working. Strict version control keeps everything in order and it can automatically manage production/test/developemnt branches of any code.
I run Dropbox too and it is a great little app to backup and share across several computers.
I also installed Carbonite recently and at the end of the trial decided to subscribe. Google for a Carbonite Offer Code and you'll find a 20% off one that works pretty easily. $75 for 2 years of unlimited storage. Worth the piece of mind in my book.
Carbonite works on one PC only, not like Dropbox which ripples across several. However for your main PC or data box it is not a bad option. Whereas Dropbox monitors only the things you put into the Dropbox folder, Carbonite adds an option to the context menu of a file or folder so you can right-click it and select to back up that particular file or folder.
Carbonite has worked real well for me so far, well enough to make me decide to subscribe and the cost is pretty low, working out at about Ã,£20 per year for 'unlimited' online backups.
I decided I liked the flexibility of Carbonite to choose what I backed up without having to put everything into a single Dropbox folder (like my COD4 profile for example) and the unlimited storage aspect. So Carbonite gets my subscription.
Carbonite gets :thumbsup: from me.
I still use Dropbox, but I am using it only for the things I want access to from multiple machines and obviously I continue to use the free version so am limiting myself to 2GB storage in Dropbox.
However, I am still waiting for the Gdrive to appear, Google's version of the online backup system which is likely to start with synching online docs and other Gdata. It's been rumoured for 3.5 years now and I'd love to see what it is capable of doing seeing how well the current Gpackage is integrated.
Quote from: b00n;297882As a side note, while it's not really a backup solution (although it would work as such), anything that can be defined as a 'project' gets stuck into Subversion for me. I can't recommend it enough as it integrates with my development tools and means I have instant access to a current copy of my projects wherever I happen to be working. Strict version control keeps everything in order and it can automatically manage production/test/developemnt branches of any code.
Use git. It's subversion but without the suck :P Also their system for creating branches and versioning and then merging those changes back into the trunk repo is *far* better than subversion's.
Quote from: Carr0t;298116Use git. It's subversion but without the suck :P Also their system for creating branches and versioning and then merging those changes back into the trunk repo is *far* better than subversion's.
I don't really like its distributed nature. It always struck me as an unnecessary over-complication and an easy way to introduce confusion. I guess I never saw the problem in having a central repository. :)
Yay to Carbonite.
Missed it on my first sweep of online storage.
Just trialling it now but so far looks great for backing up my data drive. 90% I'm subscribe to that.
I have a few dropbox accounts - couple of 50gb paid for ones for clients and a free 10gb one for myself but it's more for stuff I want across different machines and locations.
Quote from: b00n;298123I don't really like its distributed nature. It always struck me as an unnecessary over-complication and an easy way to introduce confusion. I guess I never saw the problem in having a central repository. :)
I guess if you're the only one working on the project it's not really a problem. Git still has a central 'master' repository. It deals *much* better than subversion when, say, 3 developers all check out copies of a project, edit it, and then all try to commit back to trunk. It also allows for very easy proper forking of projects and then re-merging of the fork back into trunk without excessive faffing. Once again if you're the only dev you're unlikely to be doing much forking for extra functionality or whatever.
Finally, I like how all the versions are stored, effectively, as diffs. I can quickly switch from version 300 to version 508 within the same directory with a simple git command, and make tags in the same way that can be easily checked out. The subversion method of effectively copying the project to a new directory to act as a tag always seemed to me to take up excessive disk space and just be a very clunky method of storing tags.
Each to their own I guess :) One of the major projects i'm working on is actually stored in subversion, and *mostly* it's fine. However that is 2 of us logging into the same copy of the repo on a development server and editing it there, rather than each checking out our own copy and running separate local dev servers. And even then we sometimes have really awkward inconsistency issues where we've had to make a very quick simple change on the live build to fix a simple bug (when dev had a lot of other unstable edits as well, so we couldn't just roll a new live version out) and then the next time we've tried to switch a tag over to live it's had a hissy fit. The problem wouldn't have occurred with git. It would have handled the merge fine.
Quote from: TeaLeaf;298104I also installed Carbonite recently and at the end of the trial decided to subscribe. Google for a Carbonite Offer Code and you'll find a 20% off one that works pretty easily. $75 for 2 years of unlimited storage. Worth the piece of mind in my book.
Nice one
If you give me your user name or whatever then I'll say you referred me which should give you 3 months free according to their referral scheme.
Quote from: Carr0t;298149However that is 2 of us logging into the same copy of the repo on a development server and editing it there, rather than each checking out our own copy and running separate local dev servers. And even then we sometimes have really awkward inconsistency issues where we've had to make a very quick simple change on the live build to fix a simple bug (when dev had a lot of other unstable edits as well, so we couldn't just roll a new live version out) and then the next time we've tried to switch a tag over to live it's had a hissy fit. The problem wouldn't have occurred with git. It would have handled the merge fine.
Not sure about this, if it encountered a conflict while merging, it surely would have conflicted whether using svn or git? :g:
FWIW at work we have 7-8 developers in our team and god knows how many projects, and I can't imagine the chaos of trying to solve conflicts between 7-8 copies of the same branch, let alone trying to merge those branches (which ones? all? some? one?) back into the trunk.
Quote from: Penfold;298159If you give me your user name or whatever then I'll say you referred me which should give you 3 months free according to their referral scheme.
PM'd to you
Bumping this thread to provide some handy info as I just did an OS change & a C: drive change.
Had old C drive with XP Pro.
Have several additional HDDs in the case, D, E & F. All of which have bits of them backed up by Carbonite.
Bought new SSD and installed Win7 which became my new C drive.
D, E & F drives still there & unchanged.
Wanted to reinstall Carbonite to kick off my live backups again.
Spoke to Carbonite Support and they told me I would need to use the account manage page to:
-transfer subscription to new PC (new OS is treated as a new PC)
-then restore the files I had backed up to the system (but I saw that as pointless as D, E & F are still there and not changed).
Spent 30 mins discussing with a Carbonite Support rep. Her final solution was:
-use Account Management to do the Transfer to new PC
-when it asks to Restore select the 'No thanks I'll do it later' option
-then manually go and reselect the drives/folders/files you want backed up on Carbonite and it will upload them to back them up again
-after 30 days the old backups are purged if they are not restored.
So in essence this method gives you 30 days to re-backup files you already have.
BUT, in reality when I clicked the 'No thanks I'll do it later' Carbonite then immediately picked up D, E & F and gave me a green light against them confirming they were backed up already. So the only thing it is backing up now is the new C drive data (which it does by default).
Pretty awesome really, and seriously pleased I do not have to re-upload many GBs of data via my 1Mbps ADSL line!
Carbonite Support:
7/10 for the Carbonite Support for the helpful Live Chat facility and considerable time spent with me. But they lost marks for not having sufficient experience to answer my secondary drive question.
Carbonite:
10/10 for Carbonite itself which clearly has its algorithms sorted nicely as it recognised it already had the stuff on my D, E & F drives and did not need me to re-select it! Thus many hours of 256kbps uploading was avoided!
Highly recommended online backup service is Carbonite.
Reminder:
If you want to try Carbonite Online Backup then do TWO things:
-ask me for a referral code (I get an extra 3 months free storage if you sign up)
-Google for a Carbonite voucher code, it saves you about 20% and means unlimited online backups for 2 years is about $75.