HDD died - recovery ?

[Clive George]

Have you tried any of the tools? Ignore the "nothing seen" bit, give it a go. Data Rescue PC would be a first try.

[Clive George]

That's why I use CrashPlan - can't be having anything which involves manual steps.

We definitely don't. Laptops/desktop images are disposable, people get told that nothing on a local disk is backed up. Some servers get their SAN disks backed up, others get files backed up and the for them recovery is build new, copy files. Whatever we do has to be automated and not require downtime - too big to have anything else.

So I don't think storing OS images is necessarily appropriate.

[Clive George]

Takes ages for the first sync, yes - potentially weeks. But you only need to do that once - sensible differential backup software works well.

[whisky-dave]

One way to go and it's always worth keeping a local backup. depending on how much data you have it can take quite a while downloading GBs if not TBs of data.

And it'll be just your luck the intenet will be down when you want to recov er.

[GB]

A lot of ISPs filter the stuff out. There are around 30 spams in my gmail account spam box, just for today. Gmail sorts them automatically. Hopefully, nothing I need.

[Bob Eager]

My mail server rejected about 850 emails yesterday. I have had oen of the domains for 24 years.

[The Natural Philosopher]

It recreates files and directory structures, which is dead handy if you blow a file away while working in it: At least last nights copy is still there!

Between linux systems it preserves file ownerships and permissions too. If run as root anyway.

[Mike Clarke]

Not available on Windows but for those with an OS that supports it ZFS is the way to go.

It provides the ability to make very quick low overhead snapshots so you can easily recover earlier versions of files or even quickly roll back the entire filesystem. On my FreeBSD system I have hourly snapshots for the day, daily for the last week, weekly for the last month and a couple of monthly snapshots, all managed from cron scripts without any manual intervention.

I have a duplicate of my filesystem on an external drive which I sync with the internal hard drive every day in less than 5 minutes by sending just the newer snapshots. In the event of total disaster I could boot directly off the external drive and have the the original system up and running with its full snapshot history, though I'd be safer to boot of a live CD and then copy the backup across to the replacement drive.

[Bob Eager]

I don't know the inner workings of ZFS, but I suspect the snapshots use the same technique as FFS/UFS. That is, snapshots share the same blocks for unchnaged parts of the file system. So bad blocks will screw ALL copies of a file. It guards well against user error, though.

I do nightly backups to a backup server.

None of this is any good if the house catches fire/is burgled. All copies might be gone. I keep recent (but not totally up to date) backups at a storage unit ten miles away.

And (works particularly well on FreeBSD as it was developed by a FreeBSD person, who also did portsnap etc.) I back up vital stuff using tarsnap, which is a nice, cheap off-site backup.

[Mike Clarke]

Agreed, but for this domestic setup it seems the best compromise of convenience versus protection. Overall I reckon my backup strategy is orders of magnitude better than the average home PC that seldom if ever gets backed up.

If I had a business depending on my PC then I'd probably backup over the network to remote backup server.

[Bob Eager]

It's convenient enough. I visit the unit periodically, and it's only about a 40 minute round trip. That's why they're not totally up to date!

I have a load of stuff I'd be loath to lose (and SWMBO's files; imagine if they were lost).

tarsnap is a good cheap way of doing 'cloud' backup for the most vital files.

[damduck-egg]

Hey you, there's a song about that.

G.harman

[James Wilkinson]

After trying all sorts of stuff like that at a previous job, I advised t= hem if they had =A3300 they could try a recovery company. The company f= ailed to get anything. I forget what had happened, I think the disk had= gone faulty in some way and the heads kept crashing. The company had b= oldly stated they could recover files from a laptop that had fallen into= the sea.

-- =

A man goes into a library and asks for a book on suicide. The librarian says, "Fuck off, you won't bring it back!"

[Clive George]

Not helpful for the whole disk recovery thing, but VSS is the way to do earlier version recovery on windows.

[Mike Tomlinson]

En el artículo , rick escribió:

You're using 100Mbps Ethernet. Install gigabit cards and switches for a

10-fold increase in speed.

I use Bvckup to backup important stuff to a NAS nightly. All automated. It's very, very fast.

[Bod]

Oh dear.

[The Natural Philosopher]

You have to think 'If my house burned down, would loss of the family photos be the thing uppermost in my mind'

Anyway, you can do a mutual backup with a friend.

[Bob Eager]

Of course. But that doesn't make it an issue. I don't personally care about photos, but years of work (and contacts) might be more of an issue.

You can. However, friends can and do change.

[Huge]

The last time I saw the figures, my final employer ($VERYLARGEBANK) was dropping about 13,000,000 emails a day.

[whisky-dave]

But teh same applies for some photos are important for others it might be a diary, emails or some digital drawings.

So does data but which changes more often most of my friends I've know for 20+ years. My parents ghouse hasn;lt moved since they brought it in 1960, so that's where one of my time machine backups is and a clone of my HD from about 6 months ago. I use Time machine on the Mac but don;t leave it on all the time where it backs up every hour.