Remember to Backup your PC

[davidimurray]

Grrrrrrrr - after having spent a great day finally back on the Chassis which is now 80% fully tig welded:) (compared to about 5% this morning), and watching Wales lose the rugby :mad: I turned the PC on. Hmmm refused to start time after time. Eventually disconnected everything in the PC and plugged it back in and finally got the thing going. Only problem is my D: with all my documents, data etc cannot be read :eek: tried a few things but no good so currently trying some data recovery software to see what can be recovered before I shell out on recovering the info. Haven't backed for about 8 months so if I can't get the stuff back I will loose all my Roadster pics (apart from facebook ones), drawings, sketches, info gathered etc.

So please backup your drives now !!!!!!

[gingea1pom]

Ah, a story that I remember.

Had everything, on an external hard drive about 2 years ago and the thing just wouldn’t work one day, it had all the kids pictures from birth and some pictures that could never be re-captured.

Ended up sending it off to some data recover place in Wales. They got the lot of for £400.:eek:

I now use two 500Gb hard drives and religiously back up every month. Not because I am clever but once bitten and all that.

Hope you get it sorted

Cheers Ginge

[davidimurray]

Currently running this software -
http://www.runtime.org/data-recovery-software.htm

Seem to be some good success stories out there and you can scan the drive for free and it will tell you what can be recovered - then you pay for the software to get the data back. Probably won't know until morning if I'm in luck - fingers crossed!

I like your idea of 2 hard drives - might have to do the same myself!!

[tkpm]

I run two 250gb onboard hard drives, one as a master and the other as a slave.
Then just back onto the slave ever few weeks

[AshG]

just run a raid array :D much less hassle than backing up

[Davey]

just run a raid array :D much less hassle than backing up

Till the RAID controller does one and screws up both your drives. Seen it done!

D.

[twinturbo]

And depending on the raid level, and the type of error it's no garuntee.

Nothing beets a full daily backup to offline storage, taken off site, and tested for recovery procedure.

I don't do Owt at home, I am 200% aware of the risk.

My servers at work are reslilaint, have a storage network with resilian tcontrolers. Backup to tape each night. But you can't recover what some t...t has deleted by accident in the last 15 mins....


Once a member of staff droped her laptop with 5 yrs of departmental work/planning on it... It took £1700 of PRO data recovery ( clean room disk rebuild) to salvage what was probably worth £60k of profesional time..

TT

[AshG]

i just run raid on my home server with a nightly backup to my nas. nothing more really needed. i have rebuilt plenty of raid arrays in my time there is more hope than a failed single drive

for customers they get raid, solid state backup drive and offsite remote backup. all workstation profiles, home areas, desktop, my docs etc are redirected to the server with no local copy. remote laptop users have to connect via vpn at logon for the laptop to work or they can log on to the sharepoint/rdp/owa via their home pc using a vasco key.

same as you twin turbo data recovery is expensive which = company IT policy change.

the fun bit is explaining to users why their internet radio the brought in from home wont work because 802.1x is enabled and the radio cant authenticate with the radius server to gain network access. (always gets a funny look)

all that fun is in the past now as im currently out of work. im so bored some days that i have started going through the ccie materials wondering if i should give it a shot.

[alga]

I would say the data loss can occur because of three main reasons:

1. Hard disk failure (hardware)
2. Filesystem corruption (software/memory bugs)
3. Accidental deletion (user error)

RAID only protects against the first problem, but boy does it gives a warm fuzzy feeling when a drive fails, and you replace it with no or minimal service interruption.

When we founded the company ~6 years ago we used generic desktop hardware for the office server (mail, web, svn, files), and set it all up on software RAID-1 with 2 drives and a "standby" drive on the shelf. I think we replaced one drive per year on average.

[twinturbo]

all that fun is in the past now as im currently out of work. im so bored some days that i have started going through the ccie materials wondering if i should give it a shot.

I am slowly progressing towords a CCNA, with the intention of going down the CCNA-Voice route..

Although I am in work, and look after a veriety of systems. We are in a state of flux and there's no telling what will happen. I have a load of Cisco Routers and phones at home to help me. And a virutal server running Comunication Manager 6 VOIP.. :)

Hopefuly if things go bandy, or I get transfered to an outsourced company I will have new skills to get better opportunities.

TT

[twinturbo]

I would say the data loss can occur because of three main reasons:

1. Hard disk failure (hardware)
2. Filesystem corruption (software/memory bugs)
3. Accidental deletion (user error)

RAID only protects against the first problem, but boy does it gives a warm fuzzy feeling when a drive fails, and you replace it with no or minimal service interruption.

When we founded the company ~6 years ago we used generic desktop hardware for the office server (mail, web, svn, files), and set it all up on software RAID-1 with 2 drives and a "standby" drive on the shelf. I think we replaced one drive per year on average.

So long as the raid level is redundant.

No2 is the most problematic for us now, In 2k3 Our only server had 3 days of dodgy backups. Then an issue on the file system trashed eveything. It took 2 days and some very late nights for me to get the server rebuilt by peicing to gether best bits from backups. The machine never had a major problem again. But it did wake the management up and the machine was suplemented by 2 more. We now have effectivly 25 servers althoug 15 of them are virtual on a resiliant VMware cluster.. My only worry at the moment is that the tape unit is in the same room as the SAN, And there's no scope for removing tapes to the fire safe..

TT

[Bonzo]

I have just read all of this thread & now I have brain ache :eek:

Bit like watching the Red Arrows really .............. All those techno terms flyng straight over my head :D :D

Me ..... I just keep my valuable data on pen drives & SD cards ..... not very secure I know, it's the best I can manage :o

[twinturbo]

AAARARAGAGAG NOOOOOOO!!!!!!

We see people in tears ever week when the interface controler on the USB stick goes bandy.. We can somtimes fix ones that have had the plug cracked of the board, but half workign devices are usualy total toast.

If you have valuable info you can't loose then keep more than one copy in more than one place. Online reposotories are good.



What tecno terms?

Our ESX cluster is controled by the VIC ( Virtual Center Controller ) That backs up the ISCSI SAN to the ISCSI TBU ( which is a LTO3 Autoloader ) the SAN has redundant Controllers each on it's own VLAN and seperate VLANS for the TBU and General DATA. This also happens across a 2 mile BT FEES circuit running at 100Mb

Makes perfect sense :D :D

TT

[AshG]

tt stop it your make bonzos head explode lol.

[twinturbo]

Forgot to mention both the WLANC and VOIP are on seperate VLANS too, as is the IP CCTV. The VOIP is a CISCO CUCM6 Call manager subscriber and publisher, and a Unity Messaging server. The Cisco is mainly SCCP Althouth some Phones A SIP, that is overlaid with the audio stream on RTP.

The CCM has a single gateway router with a ISDN30 Primary rate VWIC. that provides the 15 Voice timeslots and also the 20 DDI.

The unity and CCM backup to a Linux box using DRS to PUT the files on the linux box by SFTP. A linux agent is then used to back the files off to tape.









Anyone heard a big bang in BONZO land yet :D :D

TT

[Bonzo]

Anyone heard a big bang in BONZO land yet

TT

Funny you should mention that TT

There actually was quite a big bang in Bonzo land today !!??

Spent the afternoon disposing of some redundant Pyrotechnic compositions .... Well it would be rude not to put them to good use after all of the time and expense making them ;)

I'll just put it this way ........... My bloody ears are still ringing :D :D


As for data storage I have duplicate copies ... fortunately, I have no data that I would be devestated to loose ;)

[twinturbo]

We had to get rid of some little pyroflashes a year back. We piled about 5 batches of 5 together.. That was fun on a small scale ;)

TT