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I have a home computer with 80GB hard drive. Its seperated into two logical drives one just with data (which is 50 GB)

i have it backed up to an external hard drive daily (external hd has 500 GB)

is there any other risks that i might be missing in terms of losing my data?

5 Answers 5

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I'm using Windows Home Server and loving it. All backups are differential, but restores are complete. Duplicate files across multiple computers are only backed up once. Good health monitoring.

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  • Love the WHS solution, but be sure to add an offsite backup add-in for Home Server such as Jungledisk backup to S3 in case of fire. See: whsaddins.com
    – cpuguru
    May 2, 2009 at 17:54
  • but how do you back up the data that is on windows home server?
    – leora
    May 3, 2009 at 3:42
  • I don't bother backing up the Home Server. I figure the chances of both the server and a workstation going down at the same time are pretty small.
    – Scott
    May 3, 2009 at 17:16
  • @Scott - what if your house catches fire? Or a freak power-surge takes out the PSUs and drives on both?
    – Lazlow
    Aug 10, 2009 at 19:53
  • Those are definitely possibilities, but I think the probability is fairly low.
    – Scott
    Aug 11, 2009 at 15:15
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Sure, your house could catch on fire and you'd lose your primary drive and your backup drive.

You should look into some kind of offsite backup.

See this blog post:

http://www.shahine.com/omar/OffsiteBackup.aspx

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Your data backup strategy should try to solve the problem of:

  • any changes, no matter how small. This should happen daily, and account for files added/updated, or deleted. This solution should ask you whether to track them all, or a specific filetype. (documents, music, video, pictures)
  • recovery time. Not only should it be easy to mass recover an entire drive, but also just ONE file that was changed/erased accidentally. Online solutions will be a long process for when your disk dies and you need to fill in the new one.
  • offsite backups. This could range from burning DVDs with static content (movies that are done and won't change) and keeping them at Grandma's house in the basement. We all have heard the stories from people on the news whose house has burned down that they've lost everything. Consider an online solution whereby you have an account that will do the synching for you as well. Cost becomes a factor.

The value you place in backups is typically your deciding factor. The online solutions typically cost money, and it's up to you to determine the value of that service. Otherwise, consider burning a few DVDs and storing offsite every 6 months. Perhaps a second removable HDD will work in a rotating fashion; go to Grandma's house and swap out the old HDD for the new one; repeat every 6 months. That will ensure your offsite backup is fresh enough in case of a theft or fire.

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An online service like Mozy is always worth considering.

When you consider your backup strategy you should think of things like:

  • What happens if I delete a file accidentally and afterwards need that file. Do I need some sort of diff strategy where old copies are also backed up (like Apple's time machine or WHS)

  • What happens if there is some sort of error in my backup script? Is all my data (backup and real connected to the same physical machine?), Do I need to backup the same data more than once to account for this kind of stuff?

  • What happens if someone breaks in to my house and steals my computer and backup (do I need an offsite backup?)

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Are you testing that you can restore from your backups?

If the worst comes to the worst, and you lose you data, you don't want to find out then that you're missing something.

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