Any Hard Drive Can Fail..........

Buy as many disks as it takes to make you feel comfortable.

 

It's a shame how few people do full backups. They may backup some of their data like photos, but from my experience, people rarely have an image they can restore from in case of hard drive failure, which is a real shame.

This is something I have been guilty of in the past too, but these days I do image backups. While I don't believe in ever restoring from an image to fix problems or infections - I'd always rather actually fix the problem, it is nice to know I've got a backup to get me up and running again quickly if my hard drive fails.

 

I sort of agree. I agree 100% that every user should have a current backup of any data they don't want to lose. But that does not mean every user needs a "full" backup or even an "image" backup. They do need, however, a means to reinstall Windows without hassle.

The problem with full or image backups is they may include a backup of the problem. And then you restore the problem, along with all your data.

I create an image disk once Windows is installed, updated and fully setup on my new builds. But after that, I only keep regular backups of my data files - which are worth WAY MORE to me than Windows or all my hardware.

Another problem with full or image backups is they also contain the drivers and configuration settings for the computer the backup was created on. If you lose your motherboard and try to restore your important files to another computer/motherboard, there is a good chance the full/image backup will fail.

So I agree it is a "shame" all users don't backup their "data" on a regular basis, and that as you noted, a full or image backup is great when a hard drive fails - but have to disagree that full or image backups are the only "shameless" options.

That said, computer makers (especially notebook makers) complicate the issue by not providing genuine Microsoft Windows installation disks with their computers. I understand the logistics of auditing, buying, storing, and providing genuine disks with each computer adds significantly to the cost of each machine, but I think the process of creating viable, and official installation/recovery disks should be much simpler, intuitive, and perhaps automatic with every new computer that does not come with real disks. But that's a pet peeve for another discussion.

 

True.Good idea but be advised an external drive can fail too. Happened to me last year with an Iomega. They were clearly selling defective products and they knew it from the amount of negative feedback about the issue on its forum. Failed after 8 months. The only advice that Iomega support was giving was to send it somewhere to try and get the data off of the drive

 

I have 7 different disks backing up my data daily, and another 3 backing up data periodically, including internal, external, onsite, and offsite.
Mrk

 

Yeah, this is true.. Right now, I have all data backed up on and external usb drive, fortunately it's been ok now for several years. But just in case, I also have stuff burned on DVD's as well. I suppose even those can get flakey or flawed with time, I don't know. I should probably get another usb drive just for the heck of it too...

 

There are some imaging products which are designed to work around that, for memory I think Paragon produces such a product. However, Windows these days does seem to do a pretty good job of handling different hardware. for example I took my harddrive from one model Thinkpad to a different model, and it booted without issues. Also a few days ago buy mistake I instead of putting the new hard drive which I had just cloned the current failing drive into a Dell laptop I put a hard drive from a HP laptop and it also booted fine - and as soon as Windows started it went about trying to get the new drivers it needed online (with no success since the wifi driver was missing so there was no internet connection). In both those cases Windows 7 was the OS, I remember back in the days of XP, having to do a repair install by booting from the Windows CD after changing motherboards.

No I don't think that images are the only "shamless" option, but the benefit of a full backup is that nothing needs to be reinstalled - all the users programs, data and favourites etc are already there.

 

Yes, current versions of Windows have a huge host of "generic" drivers built-in so swapping drives often results in a working system with minimal user intervention, but not always. But we have to remember when swapping drives as you noted, if the Windows installation on that hard drive is an OEM license (and the vast majority of Windows licenses are OEM/System Builders licenses), then putting that drive into another computer is an illegal use of the license! The same applies when restoring a backup image to a different computer/motherboard. A different computer requires a different license. Not just for the OS, but for many installed programs too. So we must be careful when imaging more than just our personal data files.

NO DOUBT a current image backup is the simplest means for recovery for many people. But it is not the only viable method and for that reason, I reject the "shame" reference.

I do agree, however, that having no backup is a real shame if you have ANY data on your computer you don't want to lose.

 

Several years ago someone said that they had a USB hard drive which was making a clicking sound and they could not longer access it. They said that they had backed up all of their family photos to that USB hard drive. I told them that I would immediately go out and buy another USB hard drive and transfer all of their family photos from their PC to the newly purchased USB hard drive. They said that they could not do that because the malfunctioning USB hard drive was their backup and that they had transferred all of their family photos from the PC to the USB hard drive. I was shocked that they did not understand the concept of 'backing up'. They just 'moved' all of the files that they wanted to 'backup' to another hard drive rather than copying the files.

 

Just proves it is all about education, huh? While I am not a fan of "cloud storage" (I am not convinced their security is better than mine), even cloud storage would be better than nothing.

But a backup generally means a "second" or a redundant source of data. A backup that is the ONLY copy, is not a backup.

 

I keep a mirror image set of OS and file backups on two separate Sans Digital TR4Us.
As of now, I have a pair of 1TB HDDs holding DVD backups that are about 85% full. As I plan to keep adding to those collections and don't want to span multiple drives for added capacity, I'm looking for (so far unsuccessfully) a pair of 2TB 3.5" drives that have high user ratings. My main source for HDD ratings is Newegg and for most of the 2TB drives, the ratings are pretty bad.
Failure rate seems to have accelerated since the floods in Thailand and the mad rush to get the factories back into operation. I wonder if quality control was overlooked in order to resume manufacturing asap.

 

I conduct a relatively simple backup schedule on my personal systems.

1- I image the main disk entirely every 6-8 months or so.
2- I filesync (or manually copy) the rapidly changing user data every few weeks.

I've been operating like this for +15 years. And the few times I've messed up a system about 10 times due to experiments and doing risque' stuff or the two or three mal-ware infections I somehow picked up; I've always been able to instantly restore the complete system, with all applications already in place.

That is a real time saver. All your settings, all your personalizations, all your applications are back to the way they were before.

I don't care what anyone says, fixing mal-ware is a tedious time consuming task. I'd rather restore and go about my business rather than dick with obscure utilities and watch progress bars.

 

Totally agree 100% with you on that one.. There's nothing like an image. I'd never try to fix a system again after it's been hit with malware, of any kind.

 

It depends on how big your image file is. It is much quicker for me to fix an infection than restore a 500gb image. Plus there is the extra time in reinstalling softere you installed since you made the last image. I'm continually installing new software.

 

For me there is also always the doubt factor. If I did try to fix a mess, I'd never feel 100% sure that I got it all cleaned.

 

If there is no evidence to suggest that the system is infected and scans come up clean, then I always assume the system is clean. There have been some sytems over the years I encoutnred which have been very hard to clean - but I've eventually cleaned them, and I have never had any doubts about the system being clean.