Backup Learnings

[morgandawn]

 My backup learnings

1.  I have been diligent backing up all files from one external  drive to another. But the backup software settings (FBackup) for the vid files were set to 'default" which means when they backed  up the DVD video files they overlooked the .info and  .bup files that are necessary to make the DVDs playable. There are also some older non-std video files that they failed to backup.  So pay attention to the backup software settings. I use WinMerge, a free Windows software to do file by file bit (byte??) comparisons of the first initial backup to validate will  check once a month

2. Off-site backup is key.  Luckily for the video files and fanzines I already did a manual backup of these files to the cloud (incrementally adding new files along the way). This turned out to be important because around 10% of the  video files on the external drives were corrupted . And because the backup software failed to capture some of the older files/non-std files, the uploaded versions were key to restoring the files.

3.  For my personal files I am testing a 2 TB upload to Backblaze- I am hoping it will take less than the 1 month the upload calculators are saying it. Once uploaded it will go faster because it will be incremental.  Backblaze seems affordable and they also offer an option to mail you an external drive with all your files should you have a complete hard drive failure (ca $200). I am using a description key-phrase to encrypt the files

4. And finally - invest in an image restore  program. This saved me when the hard drive failed. I have so many custom software programs, profiles and plugins re-installing  them all would be crippling. I used a software called Macrium Reflect and it was amazing. It is no longer free but there are other image programs. But once I had a new SSD hard drive installed, loaded with Windows  I was able to conect an external drive to the computer, change the boot order  and launch Macrium  Restore and it did the rest. I now plan to do a weekly image file backup to a portable external drive. (I had been doing monthly)

Comments

[elf]

Sometime soon I need to have a long talk with you about backup options, because my current system of "eh every couple of years, buy a larger external drive and throw everything on that, and also something-something dropbox?" is not actually going to save me from a catastrophic drive failure.

(I also have an iDrive account. I need to take advantage of their annual "we'll ship you an actual drive; throw everything on that and we'll upload it when we get it back.")

...And I now have the income to pay for cloud storage; I just have to pick something. There's only like 5237 options available. Google will helpfully give me links to a dozen articles titled TOP TEN CLOUD STORAGE OPTIONS IN 2023. (thanks google; I am aware of both box and dropbox.)