Disaster Recovery Plans

[grahamfitter]

What will you do if your computer or hard disk drive (HDD) in it fails?

Last December my 2 year old iMac started experiencing the spinning wheel of death. It appeared to be a case of HDD failure but the Apple store diagnosed a case full of dust causing overheating after a thorough internal cleaning they promised me all was well. The total downtime was around two weeks. Two months later its happened again and I think either the HDD or its cooling fan really has died this time, I suspect because of some lingering affects from before. Its OK, I'm prepared for this kind of thing.

My disaster recovery (DR) plan is reasonably simple: Firstly, the builtin Time Machine software automatically backs the internal HDD to an external HDD. Secondly, another bootable external drive has a reasonably recent image of the internal one. Between the two I have several options to get going again. Most usefully, If the HDD fails I can boot the computer off the external bootable HDD, restore user accounts from the Time Machine backup, then do anything that needs to be done before the computer gets admitted to the Apple store to get fixed.

So far this plan has worked for me, although restoring from Time Machine isn't as easy as it should be. The only major limitation is I don't have a second Mac but fortunately I do have an ASUS EEE PC for surfing the expoweb!

I'm interested to see how others plan to recover from Mac, Linux and even PC data loss.

Cheers,
Graham

 

[PhulesAU]

1 TB external with Black Moon back-up Sware and Mozy. AND 2 other lap-tops.:victory: I can overcome my screw-ups.

 

[Michael Slade]

I'm interested to see how others plan to recover from Mac, Linux and even PC data loss.

My answer is that I am no longer entirely relying on digital media to store my data. Since my data is usually in the form of images I am switching my workflow and materials to film for the very reason that I can no longer trust 1's and 0's. Digital media, by design, is destined to fail. When and where is the loaded gun that everyone that uses a computer has held to their head.

For my digital data that I *do* want backed-up, I have external hard-drives that I back up to frequently. I do not have any formula or software, I just know what folders I have worked on recently and rely on memory to know what to back-up. That system has failed me in the past, but I haven't had enough of a reason to change yet.

 

[Backwoods Rambler]

I just bought a 1TB backup HDD and use allway sync. I shouldn't run into any space issues since my laptop HDD is only 320GB. I've never had a backup before, so I've been really lucky for the last 8 years :Wow1: I figure my time is up, so the backup HDD was a must.

I will probably backup twice a month.

What's this about creating an "image" of my laptop? What does that mean, how can I do it, and can I do that onto my backup HDD?

 

[evldave]

I use synctoy from MS

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...36-98e0-4ee9-a7c5-98d0592d8c52&displaylang=en

I have it syncing folders from my laptop, my wife's and daughters to a central backup HD on my server. I have task scheduler set to sync at 3am every night, or when the laptop is next turned on...that way they can load their pics to their 'normal' pics folder and it will back up in the background (so they don't have to think about it). This way everyone has access to everyone else's pictures but don't have to work at it.

Then the server HDD syncs to a separate external HD using this:
http://www.amazon.com/Thermaltake-BlacX-Portable-External-ST0014U/dp/B002MUYOLW

If there was ever a fire, etc...once I know the kids and wife are safe (and the dog too, but not the cat, I can't stand the cat ) I can easily reach and grab the drive and run...we have thousands of pictures that would be horrible to lose, so it was worth the $150 to get an extra drive and holder and spend the 20 minutes to set up all the syncs...if one drive crashes there is at least 2 other backups, that are likely no more than a couple days old...luckily right now we've never had a HD crash, but I think we're reasonably well prepared

 

[brained]

Daily Unison to sync data files/documents across the Windows/Linux/Macdesktops.

Monthly ntfsclone to image the Windows clients (don't bother with images for Mac/Linux)

 

[MotoDave]

I set up a dual drive external hard drive, that's connected to my home network (NAS). It has 2 500GB hard drives, each being a copy of the other, in case one of them fails. I keep all the important stuff there, unless I need to take the laptop with me for some reason. I also have a spare external hard drive to which I back up the files on the NAS once a month or so, and keep at my office.

 

[Alchemyguy]

I'm responsible for data integrity both at home (2 laptops, desktop) work (where our data is our job) and the local search and rescue organization (also data intensive).

The big thing I would add to the conversation is that the maxim "if you haven't used it, it doesn't exist" applies; that is to say, if you've never actually tried to restore from backups, they may or may not exist in the manner that you believe they do. Also, doing what are called Bare Metal Restores (that is, with a brand new computer) isn't usually as easy as accessing your disk image on the new machine and you're back in business; hardware isn't identical, drivers change and so on. These are issues to be aware of, and I would strongly suggest everybody actually *try* doing a restore from their method before declaring them adequate.

Another thing, I suppose, is to keep something offsite. If your house burns down, I'm 100% certain you're not going to grab that backup drive off your desk on your way out the door; disasters don't leave time for much action beyond escape. Internet based backups are good, but rely on you having access to the internet; if you're in a major disaster (ice storm, Katrina, etc) that's not a given. Keeping a drive at another location (your buddies house, family, whatever) at least proofs you from loss of data in personal disasters, unless the whole town is flattened.

In summary, if this was tl;dr:

1) don't believe the claims of the system unless you've actually tried it yourself.
2) rebuilding a computer from a new machine isn't going to be brainless.
3) offsite storage, preferably in 2 ways (network and physical) is very strong, especially if you can create geographic distance.
4) don't assume you're going to do anything to save your data in a disaster; you're going to be busy saving yourself and your family.

Edit: 5) you need to make sure those backups are updated regularly. A 6 month old backup isn't going to be nearly as useful as you'd like.

 

[Backwoods Rambler]

I'm responsible for data integrity both at home (2 laptops, desktop) work (where our data is our job) and the local search and rescue organization (also data intensive).

Is that Alchemy as in "Open Text / Captaris"?

 

[off-roader]

I'm interested to see how others plan to recover from Mac, Linux and even PC data loss.

Cheers,
Graham

Graham,

I have 2 strategies actually. First is for disaster recovery from a dead HD where nothing works on the drive. Simple... I have a clone of that drive on an external HD.

Edit: I should add that a clone of your system is not the same as a complete backup and has it's advantages/disadvantages but for me the biggest advantage is it takes less than 20 minutes to clone my system/applications drive ("drive C:"). It's essentially a copied exact replica of the drive. Once you have this clone, you can recover from a disaster in a matter of minutes (under 20 for me) whereas it may take easily over an hour to recover from a backup.

With that clone, recoveries are usually much quicker. In my case, I can simply replace the bad drive with a new drive, copy the clone to the new drive (under 20 min for me) and I'm immediately back up and running!

I always keep my data, and the clone (OS & Apps) in at least 2 places (on a primary backup drive and a secondary backup drive) as a general rule. In my case, they're stored on two 1TB external drives (copies on both but technically not mirrored). One I keep at my place and another I keep at my sister's. Whenever I update mine, I bring it to my sister and swap with hers then update the 2nd one.

Storing another backup of your data in the 'cloud' (online) is the next level IMHO and can be doable assuming you have enough bandwidth especially for photo's or video's. I'd verify your sustained upload speed/performance prior to selecting this route.

 

[762X39]

I am not the most computer savy guy but I do mirror my hard drive every 2 weeks (it may be a toughbook but sh&% happens) and I back up my documents on weeks opposite the mirror.I also set restore points every time I am about to change or add software and this alone has saved me a couple of times (like yesterday).The most important thing though is to see if your backups actually work before you need to recover from a catastrophic failure

 

[Alchemyguy]

Is that Alchemy as in "Open Text / Captaris"?

It's Alchemy in the sense that I've got a degree in Chemistry.