Your digital consultant » backup

Storage price war

Simon Robinson — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 05:21:08 +0000

Some of the larger chain stores like Dick Smith Power House, Big W and Office Works seem to be joining the digital storage price war. For external hard drives at least. Things have heated up so much that they are even out pricing MSY Technology the bargain shop frequented by any tech geek worth their salt all around the country.
All of this spells great news for the consumer. Except you can’t help but feel a little miffed when you see the same thing but cheaper in a junk mail catalogue 3 days later. In the fast paced world of technology however, you just have to suck that up and dive in.
If you haven’t got a current back up, now is a great time to get a big drive and copy all that data.

Backup strategies

Simon Robinson — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 03:44:58 +0000

Every man and his blog (See what I did? Get it?) has written something about backing up but I have been sparked into action. A colleague related her story to me the other day. She has 3 young children (twins plus one I think.) Anyway, they had been accumulating digital media of the family over the last 5 years or so as only a parent can and (you know where this is going)
next thing the hard drive in their home machine failed.
Insert sick feeling in the stomach here (if you have lost data you know what I’m talking about.) Not good.
They got most of their stuff back but needless to say they spent a bit of time and a lot more money in the process. So I decided that it’s such an important topic I shall add my voice to the crowd more importantly for my audience (who perhaps don’t cast the blog reading net so wide.)
Now I use OSX for all my mission critical stuff (apart from basketball stats) so the software solutions are for that side of the fence. I am twisting a colleagues arm to post some solutions for Windows. The strategies on both platforms are the same.

What I have

1Tb Maxtor One Touch NAS (network address storage)
160Gb HP USB Pocket Drive x2
SuperDuper from Shirt Pocket
Synk Pro from Decimus
Comparison of Synk versions here (includes SuperDuper!)

What I do

I follow a two pronged strategy. It may seem a bit hardcore but trust me, if you’re even come close to losing all your data nothing is too hardcore.
I synchronise my documents folder to the 1Tb NAS (network addressed storage) on my home network. This is done every couple of days or immediately if I have been in the “document creation zone”. I use Synk Pro for it’s powerful archive options. If I delete a file from my documents folder (to save on drive space say) then Synk can be told to move that file to an archive folder on the backup drive. I take a peek at the folder every 6 months or so, burn out to optical media if its worth keeping or delete permenantly. Nice.
I have bootable backups on each 160Gb HP Pocket Drives. (These were dead cheap from MSY. I don’t know how or where they got them from but it was a bargain!) One stays at work and the other at home. I update one of them at least once a week. SuperDuper does a great job creating the bootable backups and can do incremental updates, saving heaps of time. The first backup is always a you-know-what but after the initial pain its pretty good.

Why I do it?

Bootable backup on a portable HD means that I have very little downtime. I don’t have to build a new machine, install applications, type in licence codes, configure preferences etc. I just plug it in, hold down the option key when I start up the new machine and select it as the boot drive. Too easy. Having two gives me two different states that I can roll back to if necessary, offsite security and a little extra redundancy. I usually do these backups overnight.
The documents sync is easy. It can be done whenever I want either wirelessly or with cable (if I’m in a hurry or there are big changes) and usually happens pretty quickly. The inconvenience barrier is very low (vital for backing up) and my documents folder is by far the most active.

My little dream

I totally want a Drobo. It would be super sweet.

Nag, nag, nag

Simon Robinson — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 11:40:18 +0000

All the magazines tell you to do. Your IT support staff tell you to do it. Deep in your heart of hearts you know you should do it but somehow you never get around to it. You’re not sure how so you’d have to ask someone so it’s all a bit too difficult. Well hopefully a personal story will get you over the hump

It happened to me last Thursday. Laptop full of scanned photos. Colour corrected, touched up, cropped the lot. Ready to put together something special for the outlaws wedding anniversary and it happened.

Full HD (hard drive) failure. Machine froze and on reboot all I get is a grey screen with a question mark.

“Boot directory? I can’t find a boot directory?”

It gives you that sick empty feeling in your stomach. Like the insides have dropped out of you and you’re completely lifeless. An I had a recent backup! My problem was I was over 1000km away from my drive image backup and it was a week and a half old. No scanned photos in there baby.

It’s okay. We got by. I borrowed a machine from my brother, rescanned everything, touched it all up and got the project done. But it robbed me of time that could have been spent doing something else. Not to mention building a new machine when I got home

Back your stuff up. Now. Burn media to DVD’s, archive mailboxes, synchronise documents with servers. A wise man once said, “A document hasn’t truly been saved until it exist in two separate places”

Wise man.

If you don’t know what to do it’s worthwhile asking someone that question. Drop me a line. We’ll get that backup done.