One second: The time it takes to wipe 3 years of work

[rsvr85]

skydrive.live.com is a good place to store images online, free 25gb of storage from MS.

i agree it's a brilliant service from MS and that it's become invaluable to me. However, when it comes down to it, how heavily are you prepared to rely on MS's Google's etc. servers' for your hardcore backup needs.
With MS's & T-mobile's recent mobile phone blunder it'll be more difficult for MS to convince people to do just that.

 

[jay817]

Makes me think more about getting an external hard drive
especially as I'm doing computer tech couse at college they dont take lost/corrupted data as a reason for your coursework not being on time (and I only want to do it once)

 

[Night Hawk]

I've heard it said that it's not really backed up till it's in two places.

skydrive.live.com is a good place to store images online, free 25gb of storage from MS.

I use SkyDrive for storing files mainly freewares where I can no longer locate the original site they were found on or have been replaced by others. But 25-30gb online won't cover over 400gb seen on just one drive alone here.

For optical media that can also pose a problem for permanent storage there as well. Even with more then one disk is burned containing the exact same files/data you can lose things there when some if not all files are inaccessible when going to get on the next build. Somehow the disks may become unreadable.

Even when backing files up locally to more then one storage drive you can lose a few files along the way simply copying them back and forth. On occasion some files will lose a degree of integrity making them unusable. But it still safe guards against a possible 100% loss by not taking any steps.

 

[Zen00]

Well, you could always pay for an online back up service, like Carbonite.

 

[Night Hawk]

Don't laugh but businesses do that all the time! But for the typical average user the regular monthly fees may be a bit too steep for the actual amount of files and data seen on the home pc compared to everything any business would require.

WLM is free however while still being limited in capacity "until" note you actually start uploading files to SkyDrive! I already am well past the 35gb mark let alone the 25gb with files in custom folders created there!

 

[fgdn17]

October 20th, 2009

One second: The time it takes to wipe three years of work

Posted by Zack Whittaker @ 5:43 pm

It only takes a single second, some would argue a micro-second, to wipe an entire hard drive. Without the need for electromagnetic pulses or an industrial liquidiser, all it takes is a single spark of electricity to cause havoc with your entire electronic life.
How do I know? Because last night I hit the realisation that I lost everything in a blink of an eye. Here’s how, kids.

Two days ago, I was in my home office working on my degree work for the week. Just as I finish writing up a seminar, I stretch my legs, kicking out the all important power cable at the back of my machine. It’s not the first time I’ve done it, so I was annoyed at potentially losing what I had been working on but not particularly fussed.

I restarted the machine and with an element of surprise, the POST took a while longer than per usual and it stopped, not before asking me to insert boot media. At this point, I thought the master boot record used to boot up Windows was corrupted. No big deal, but the Windows 7 disk I needed was in my office on campus - over a mile away, and this was 11pm.

So I trail my way up to campus and get the almighty powerful disk I thought needed to fix my master boot record. Instead of trailing all the way back home, I decided to pull an all-nighter and get some work done. To say that I felt a little delicate the next day would have been a massive understatement.

Once I finally got home, I slam the disk in and with a little persuasion begin Windows setup to recover the drive. After a while it dawned on me that not only can Windows setup not find my drive but neither can BIOS. At this point I realise that I am in deep trouble.

More at: One second: The time it takes to wipe three years of work | iGeneration | ZDNet.com

Even frequent backups on a spare ide or isata drive(internal, external makes no difference) is a good preventative measure to avoid loss due to an unrecoverable disaster of some kind.

it's only a perception...there is nothing that important...if it is ask yourself...what did I do before computers...I moved on and everything was fine....dishearting...earth shattering no...move on...IMO

 

[rsvr85]

it's only a perception...there is nothing that important...if it is ask yourself...what did I do before computers...I moved on and everything was fine....dishearting...earth shattering no...move on...IMO

Whilst i understand & appreciate what you're saying. I think you're taking fore-granted, just how much people rely on PC's. Sure, if you're a hippy, this materialistic conversation would be laughed out of the canal boat. Most people, loosing thousands of family & friends pictures, years of paperwork, emails, contacts, all time best music collection, favourite movies, etc. would experience a little more than disheartenment. Sheer panic is the first emotion. Not, oh well......i wonder what's for dinner tonight!
What if SevenForum's servers went down tonight because of a catastrophic hardware failure (God forbid that ever happens). I hardly think the reactions of the Admin team will be that of calm.....................or maybe it's just me

 

[Night Hawk]

Point taken! But the one thing I'm a little more sure of is that the administration has much better preparations for disaster recovery then the typical novice even average user! I suspect it wouldn't take long to see things going here again real soon!

As far as simply "moving on and not worrying" I would expect to hear something like that from someone who doesn't have any serious concerns to worry about like loss of unreplacable personal data and other things as well as facing the down time especially for those who work at home, bring work home, or are in school where any losses could easily be a major setback!

Just think of your boss saying something like: "where the .... is that report you are supposed to have?! GGrrrrr...." or how about those final exams for the sememster and seeing all that go up in a puff of ESD! The article there does bring up the concept of "real world" preparation just in case...

 

[jimbo45]

Hi all
I can't add to the problems encountered here -- but only to add :

It's been repeated AD NAUSEAM -- take ADEQUATE Backup and preferably always have a copy OFF SITE - even if it's only in your Office desk at work or your Grandma's house.

Not only Computer errors / glitches / hardware failures can cause loss of data.

Other things such as Natural Disasters - Flood, storms, fire.

Don't forget loss or damage by burglary, malicious damage etc etc.

If possible backup to 2 different types of media.


Loads of youngsters (and not so youngsters) today can't do anything without having some sort of "music" playing. These Music collections can be very large and unless you are an oldie like me who can re-create the collection by re-ripping (what an enormous cost of time that would be) 100's or even 1000's of CD's the collections are usually irreplaceable if lost or damaged - especially with the electronically downloaded stuff from Itunes and the like.

Whilst backing up a computer might be a hard concept to get across -- explaining to a youngster that they could lose their entire music collection if they don't back it up might have more effect.

I also tend to backup DVD Movies to disk drives these days -- save's space -- if I need to play a DVD on a dvd player I just burn it again on a RW DVD and play it.

Collection is easier to manage as well.

A 1.5 TB disc costs almost nothing these days. (1TB = 1000GB).
2 of these should serve as adequate backup for most people for a reasonable while.

Really critical data such as legal documents etc can be backed up to DVD-RAM -- this has a lifetime of over 300 years and is often used by commercial libraries for long term permanent archive.

(Another issue - but there IS a BIG difference between Archive and Backup).

For individuals I'm not really sure about online backup - especially if you are talking > 50 GB.

Reasons

1) Upload speed of typical ISP's is usually appalling. Download speeds are fine.

2) Your connection might not (probably won't) be available when you need to get a particular file etc.

3) some of the servers are located in countries who'se record of handing out confidential data to "third parties" for peanuts aren't good. Recent cases in the UK who is a HUGE user of Indian off shored facilities have shown Banks details, / credit card pin numbers etc being readily available in Mumbai, Bangalore etc etc for around 3 USD per 100 accounts / pin numbers. - BBC undercover reporters have made several shows on how easy it is to get this info.

Now I'm not saying its that easy but I tend to trust the BBC even if I don't always like what they report. So beware of what you load up on to these type of servers.


Cheers

jimbo

 

[rsvr85]

but I tend to trust the BBC

 

[bigmck]

To many user don't take the time or find it not that important to back up their data. A cheap USB drive can save your life. Also creating restore points is another frequently overlook item. Nice post to remind us of the risk that is taken if not done. Fabe

I have been among the worst as far as backing up. I have done it sometimes, but not enough to really help. A few months ago I saw this ad for an online backup. It was Mozy. It backsup automatically each night. The best part is that it only cost $5 a month. You don't have to bother with backups ever again and it is cheap, can't beat it.

 

[Night Hawk]

To many user don't take the time or find it not that important to back up their data. A cheap USB drive can save your life. Also creating restore points is another frequently overlook item. Nice post to remind us of the risk that is taken if not done. Fabe

I have been among the worst as far as backing up. I have done it sometimes, but not enough to really help. A few months ago I saw this ad for an online backup. It was Mozy. It backsup automatically each night. The best part is that it only cost $5 a month. You don't have to bother with backups ever again and it is cheap, can't beat it.

That would be something to pass along to those with laptops with all their data stored on the HDs there. I just heard from one laptop owner where the laptop simply cooked on him? Since it was still covered under warranty the laptop will be replaced while the data will be lost entirely unless placed in something like an external usb enclosue for backup to another machine before that has to be returned with the unit.

The big lesson there? frequent regular backups by whatever means is available such as external HDs, removable media, and even online storage. For those with Windows Live accounts the option for storage is seen there with the SkyDrive option.

 

[TechieJustin]

Remember these?
They were more durable than SSD jump drives. How many static discharges have you seen wipe the data from a magnetic disk?

Back in my undergrad days - we had a special 3.5" drive used to recover data from mutilated disks. Every semester during crunch weeks some poor soul wold come in on the brink of tears with a diskette that had been through the depths of Hell. Slap an 'S' on my chest because 9/10 times I was able to recover most, if not all of the documents.
I had somebody come in with their doctoral thesis on an old disk - it got wet.
Slapped it in the old drive - after multiple read fails, chkdsk commands and a pirated version of Norton Utilities; I recovered everything. The whole thing.
Who can say that about a 32GB jump drive that was hit by a static charge?
Or how about when somebody set off a static spark when they plug the drive in - everything plugged into the USB ports are now (potentially) fried - seen it happen.

 

[Night Hawk]

Sorry I didn't see the 3.5"ers until long after the tape drives, typing programming not clicking on any shortcut to start or load a program, and of course later the eventual 5.25"ers!

Win 3.1 is where I finally had to add in a 5.25" to 3.5" reducer bracket on an old IBM I386 boat anchor just to see 3.1 go on after dos of course! Later files were stored on 3.5"s due to having the 1.44mb capacity over the 1.2mb seen with the larger floppies!

It wasn't until getting past 95 and into 98 the cd writer and later first dvd burner was seen here! Besides MS Dos 6.0 on 3 floppies and 3.1 on a set of 6 I still have a few olden goldies even XP startup floppies still on disk. It wasn't until deciding to dual boot OSs the second drive became a standard item and now look! 5 sata HDs and still not enough room!

 

[Zen00]

I used to have the original Monkey Island game on floppies.

 

[Night Hawk]

I still have an original 8bit dos game I can run on the 64bit 7 even with a little DOSBox help that is!

 

[Dickstar]

I don't see what's wrong with using an on-line backup service. It looks like the safest way to go actually. If your house burns down, your backups on external HD's and DVD's won't help you very much.

 

[jimbo45]

Hi all.

C'mon guys
Online storage backup is totally impracticable for most HOME users.

1) Upload speeds of typical HOME (not WORK) ISP's are usually pretty abominable.

2) some users CAP bandwidth which renders this stuff totally impracticable.

3) If you take a typical users data these days - especially with Photos, MUSIC (particularly) and other data - maybe video as well this could even run to several hundred GB or even a few TB. (1TB = 1000GB for those not quite sure - and a lot of ISP's cap stuff to around 50 GB a month).

Uploading this stuff via a home ISP would probably take longer than the remaining estimated lifetime of our Sun -- around another 4 billion years. Even downloading on a fast ISP would take a while.

4) You might not be online when you need your data.

5) the Online service might be unavailable or gone bust.

6) Your Bank data has just been sold for 5 USD in a back street bazaar in Bangalore or similar.

With CHEEEEEEEEEEP usb drives just backup stuff at home and have done with it.

For really important data keep another set and store them in another location.

Cheers
jimbo