Do you make backups?

[hiddentechsecrets63]

Hi,
I'm doing a post for my site and I was wondering do you make backups, and if yeah how often?
If you do or don't, it'd be great if you could vote on my poll here, and if you use a program then could you tell me here.
Thanks, Ed

P.S. This I think is sorta in the middle of Off Topic and Computers so if a mod wants to move it then that's fine

 

[Dead-i]

I make backups as soon as I am about to perform any level of maintenance on my site, and sometimes perform backups of important sections of my site every so often; especially on free hosting.

 

[hiddentechsecrets63]

*Sorry I meant for your computer and I didn't put that in the post

 

[essellar]

Always. Every data file is stored in at least two places, plus I do a full system backup weekly and daily incrementals using Acronis TrueImage Home to automate the process. It's an easy habit to get into -- after you've gone through the horrors of a complete system loss at least once.

 

[wongers]

if your looking for a serious back up system then id recommend RAID'ing some hard drives, make a RAID-1 which is a mirror, this takes 2 hard drives and ensures they are both identical when data is written. meaning, if one were to fall over, you have a back up. this is quite a practical idea now-a-days as most mobo's support the function and hard drives are getting ridiculously cheap!!

or, do what i do, back up only what is VITAL and put it on a external HDD or a DVD+RW. i have a 8GB flash pen that stores all my VITAL stuff that requires backing up. (i also keep most of my important stuff on my iphone as well)

 

[Dead-i]

I am definately going to have to change my answer for this one, since (as some people will know if they were on the IRC last night) I accidentally deleted everything in my /home/ folder on my VPS and I had barely any backups of it! I really wish I backed it up, and I'm definately going to backup more in future because of this absolute disaster!

Some configuration files got deleted in the process, meaning I'm running into quite a few problems on my VPS currently.

 

[poonakie43]

Some level of backup if you working with webdev is always needed. you should have yourself a folder in which you use strictly for your testing and one for the final production. if you wanted to get really intense into it a backup for every modifcation made haha comes in handy for larger productions but its all a personal thing i suppose for everyone and how they organize.

 

[Dead-i]

Some level of backup if you working with webdev is always needed. you should have yourself a folder in which you use strictly for your testing and one for the final production. if you wanted to get really intense into it a backup for every modifcation made haha comes in handy for larger productions but its all a personal thing i suppose for everyone and how they organize.

Yeah that's the thing: I only had my development on my computer and not most of my other work.
Anyway, I'm definately backing up from now on. Maybe I'll make myself a script that will run as a cron or something like that.

 

[supanut200042]

I did not make backups often. Since I migrated to Windows 7 back in 2010, I don't have to regularly make backups since Windows 7 is very stable, even more stable than Windows XP. The last time I have to make backups was back in June, where due to performance issues, I have to reinstall Windows 7.
Now I'm on a new PC with I5, the only thing I have to do is just copy over my files directly from the old PC, not from any backup locations like back in June.

 

[essellar]

It doesn't matter how stable your operating system is if your hard drive fails. And RAID is not backup, by the way -- there's no way to recover from an unintentional bad write (or a delete, if you're using a high-security deletion/overwrite method).

 

[Smith6612]

I make backups of a few of our PCs on a routine basis, however my own PCs don't have anything important on them that need backing up. It's all games or programs that can be re-downloaded from the Internet. They are not mission critical.

 

[cybrax]

3 - 2 - 1 Backup Statergy

THREE copies of data
TWO types of media (and verify your DVD/CD's after burning! )
ONE stored offsite

Memory sticks/ thumb drives are ideal for this sort of thing as well and there's a great little free package called "B-Cup" with some nice features. Able to update a mirror copy or create sequential snapshots of designated folders at startup/shutdown and timed intervals. External HDD's are also useful being highly portable in case of emergency and small enough to fit in a modest size firesafe for overnight safety.

 

[supanut200042]

It doesn't matter how stable your operating system is if your hard drive fails. And RAID is not backup, by the way -- there's no way to recover from an unintentional bad write (or a delete, if you're using a high-security deletion/overwrite method).

I agree. I had experienced hard drive failure in the fast where a black-out occurs, and it broke the hard drive, causing me to lose many stuffs. But now I have UPS I don't have to worry. But the most important thing that I have to make backup is my Firefox profile. It's very easy to backup, unlike that of IE. All of my downloads are also important, but I only back them up if necessary.