Have you Proved Your Disaster Recovery Systems Works?

Where's the beef?

Was it ever tested it by having a fire drill? When?

Maybe we are too busy promoting and bragging about our favorite tools to do this?

It's a frightening thought, right, what if just suppose it fails and wipes us out big time worse than any malware ever conceived.

I stand to be proven wrong, bet no-one here ever did it since Y2K!!!

 

I tested everything in practice, except harddisk crashes, because I don't want to damage my hardware for that purpose, it's too expensive.
In theory it is possible that all my 3 harddisks crash at the same time, but I'm willing to take that risk, because that won't happen in practice.
The worst scenario I've tested was wiping out my internal harddisks (2) completely with a zero-tool and recover it with my Acronis Rescue CD and external harddisk.
FirstDefense-ISR is my second backup solution, if Acronis ever fails on me.
And of course I have daily backups of both internal harddisks, one backup file for each day of the week. One week = 7 days = 7 backup files per harddisk. It's almost impossible that 7 backup files will fail at the same time.
I'm not one of these users, who backup every day or every week and never did a restoration or are scared to do it.
So I consider my disaster recovery system as reliable, thoroughly tested and proven in practice during 6 months.
End of Arrogance.

 

Heh, talk about open invite to several peeples here Pete? E-A? Lbainbridge? silver?
Acadia?
Wilbertnl

et al... they have been trying to bust open evry "saviour" utility for months..

You are quite right to challenge the presumption that these tools will work first tiem out of the box, they all need testing.

Loyts of threads wrt recovery, well hashed over

We seemto have xplored evry possible option one way or another:
(possible exception online storage options?)

I: BING/IFW and FDISR: Have imaged and rstored from HD to external with BING and IFW: from Internal partitions to over write internal partitins and rejigged boot order NO problem, pulled files out of images and restored individual files
Have FDISR' d myself silly, frozen snapshots, import, export snapshots, import archives from external drives and more recently compressed snaps.

Have not actually had soft or HWare flame out for some time, but confident unless house burns down with all computer stuff in it I can recover with less than 24-48 hrs data loss.

Business stuff/mission critical duplicated on separate site gets/ and has had same treatment, and same or less recovery time.

@Escalader you could take a cruise through the FDISR forum for lots of threads re recovery or the "alternative to true image" by now MEGA thread.

 

My DR works fine and has been tested on several occasions. The most severe test was using a backup to get my data onto a new PC, and that worked fine. So I can be happy knowing that it has been tested in a real situation and works.

I have never tested it against anything worse than full data recovery (and PC loss too, I guess) because my office is at my house and I live in my house, so if the house were destroyed in a earthquake or hit by a meteorite, I'd also be destroyed along with the PC...

 

"Have you Proved Your Disaster Recovery Systems Works?"

This means to me in the event of HDD failure. If my disaster recovery procedure works for this. It'll work for anything.

I have 2 plans.

I've tested my image from my 40GB HDD to my 80GB HDD. Works.

And I've cloned backed & forth between the 2 flawlessly many, many times.

 

Hello,
Important data saved to multiple cds / dvds always works. Everything else is easily reproducable.
Mrk

 

Mrkvonic:

With all due respect sir you haven't proved anything have you until you have done a full restore and tested your assumptions.

Regards

 

Not to be disagreeable. But Mrkvonic has proved he has a solution. And it works for him.

Not my solution. Not your solution. But Mrkvonic's. Each to their own.

 

I used Mrkvonic's solution until 2006.01.01, but I was sick and tired of re-installing my computer from scratch or CD's. I couldn't write on DVD's on my old computer.
Acronis + external harddisk = very convenient.

 

I have never tried my system recovery software yet. FDisr has been enough so far. If Acronis fails me I have everything on DVD anyway. I can fully restore my system in about an hour and fifteen minutes. So if it fails it is not a total catastrophe.

 

I have to say I had tested everything short of HD crash with both ATI and FD-ISR over the past 6 months or so with wiped HD and no probs.
About six weeks ago I had the opportunity !!! to test it all for real when my primary Samsung HD decided to suddenly die on me.
ATI 9 came through for bare metal restore with new (non-Samsung) HD and with all FD-ISR snapshots and I was able to get up and working with my daily FD-ISR snapshot in about 2 hours total from start to finish.
Not sure I want to do it again in a hurry.... but it worked.
Now only need to destroy my laptop HD and I'll find out if Rollback comes through!!!!

 

Glad everybody is enjoying my deliberate post to provoke people to TEST!

Waiting for a disaster to prove your DR works or not may be too late!

Some or your excellent posts prove the point.

For what it worth I too use an external hard drive for backup media.

Another way to view it is just backup data, you have all the software on CD's right?


Good night all

 

Saw your provokes in various threads you opened. Lets give you a title. Suggestions?

 

I already got an external hard drive ready to backup my PC hard drive. However, should the PC get swiped right now, I would not lose any personal information nor be "out in the cold". Never rely on a machine to run your life.

 

and when will you be paying up that wager

For me - proven on HDD failures as they happen, once every few years; or on HDD swaps/installs on occasion; and so on. Nothing lost to date, not planning on obsessing over it, my own plan (Acronis TI/external USB HHD/ability to boot from either of 2 separate XP installs on different physical devices/install sources available with all key codes ready to go if needed/desired) works fine for me.

Blue

 

Hello,
I DO have imaging software, but I'm not really worried if it works or not.
If it doesn't, in the worst case it's a couple of hours of installation - I do 3-4 hours every week anyhow, in various testings.
The important thing is that personal data is safe - and nothing beats the simplicity of a few cd / dvds.
Mrk

 

I also use PAPER as backup media to save serial numbers, screenshots with settings, received emails, links, remarks, etc. In other words, I have a complete installation file for each important software, just in case I have to re-install my computer manually from scratch. Paper doesn't have any technical failures.

 

ErikAlbert:

I like paper too! But having had 3 floods in the basment in the last 3 years it gives one pause as to where to store the magic sheets?

Also I remember a government computer a few years back with large set of servers on top floor of super secure building. July heat wave hit triggered fire sprinklers over computer then their cpu's got wiped out, and their paper files near machine.

But their computer was secure from theft! Oh their fireretardant chemical gases also deployed.

Not good to temp mother nature.

 

This is something to follow the serious beta testers on, really, where disaster is more the rule than the exception.

I use Acronis True Image nearly exclusively (for disaster recovery, anyway), and it has yet to fail me (except maybe once in beta testing True Image). I've done a whole lot of restoring partitions and disks, cloning disks, and so on, as long as you've got images on another drive you should be OK. I still do separate backups of important files, as things can happen to files that wouldn't warrant a full restore (such as your email or browser profile getting corrupted). Even when your drive does become unbootable, however, you can still usually pull data from it by either slaving it or putting it in an external enclosure. Although that is no substitute for proper backups, you don't have to be obsessive about it. I keep most of my regular (as in frequent) disk images on another partition, then occassionally copy a full backup to external media (DVD and/or an external drive).

With the features that True Image is starting to introduce in the latest version, I'm beginning to see less and less use for any other software to go with it (such as regular backup software or things like FSDIR, but part of that is just my own opinion that paying $80 for a piece of software that will save me a couple mins, at most, per restore is just not worth it). One additional piece of software that I can always whole heartedly recommend, however, is Mozy, as off-site backup is always a good idea.

That's how I do it, anyway. Others will have other solutions for various reasons. I personally just don't see any reason to have something like FSDIR if you've already got Acronis True Image, but others may have reasons. Point is that these things really do work. My personal best advice would be to get software such as this, develop a good backup strategy, then format, make an image when you've got only the very most important things installed, then make regular incremental or differential backups after that. You'll still eventually have to reformat, but doing this can help cut down on time when you do. If you are making your first image from a 2 yr old install of Windows after having trialed a million apps, that original image will serve well for disaster recovery, but it will leave you needing to format at some point when you decide on your next favorite software that conflicts with something leftover from an uninstall you did a year ago.

 

Notok,
Acronis is a bit too slow as a recovery tool and quite boring compared with FDISR, which allows you to create different work environments for permanent usage and for test usage. I can't do that with Acronis.
Acronis is a MUST, while FDISR is pure LUXURY. FDISR is fast in recovering daily problems, inside or outside Windows. FDISR recovers most problems in just one reboot-time. Acronis will never be able to do it that fast.
If I ever have to make a choice between both, I keep Acronis and ditch FDISR without hesitation.

 

I did a recovery test with my imaging software before I bought it. I have messed up my system three or four times these last three months and recovered (external USB disc) just fine. I did my latest recovery a couple of days ago. I have stopped counting how many times my snapshot software as a first layer instant recovery tool saved my but

 

The speed just isn't an issue for me, ATI only usually takes 5 to maybe 15 mins, depending on whether I have any games installed (which doesn't apply to my test machines), BUT the other features you mention do intrigue me a bit. Since testing is no longer just a pasttime, perhaps I should look into it a bit. Thanks, EA. I do have some other tricks up my sleeve, however, such as Altiris Software Virtualization and VMWare/Parallels. My only problem is setting up snapshots for everything I need to.. that'll take a good dedicated weekend, and sometimes it just seems easier to install and restore images/snapshots as needed, and I don't think FSDIR will cure that kind of laziness

 

Tis an intriguing post

Notok: give it a go, you will be amazed by what FDISR can do. You are obviously doing a lot of testing: you are right, setting up some snapshots may take some time: just make a blank snapshot; install your XP
( http://www.raxco.com/support/windows/fdisr/fdisr_faqs.cfm#13 ) and one or two extras then copy this as many times as you want: install whatever you want into any of the snapshots; if space is an issue export snapshots or archives, effectively you can have, umpteen "set-ups" to boot into configured as you like on the go or saved and used on rotation, subject to "only" 10 snapshots on primary disc at once.
you probably already know of this.

You will never feel lazy again lol

Regards

 

Hello
Notok you must have pretty small partitions to backup if it takes only that little.
My average run is about 30 min for 15GB. Or a super dooper 4x4 core.
Mrk

 

Yes, I have a Recovery Plan in place should anything happen. I've done it many times and it works. The plan consists of all the information I need in case of a system failure. My backups are all stored on stacks of CD-Rs.