Computer backup strategies

D365 · 6 Jan 2020

Following on from this discussion:

ajs1981 said:
Related to this is making sure that, when possible, the backup locations are not permanently connected to each other. Encryption viruses can spread through connections. Equally an incorrectly run delete command can do the same. There is a famous story, I don't know if it's true, of a company having it's backup storage linked to the main system and someone ran a command that is equivalent to delete all and deleted their main system and backup.

Yep I've heard this story too, I wouldn't be surprised if this has happened at multiple different companies.

malc-c said:
I guess it all boils down to what form of backup you are after. If its simply having duplicates of the data so that should the main location fail or you accidentally delete a file then using an external drive, be that attached to the network, or plugged in when needed is OK. If the data is more valuable then some form of remote back up is needed. These days you can get USB sticks that have 512GB or more capacity so you could always get one of these and keep that in your car. However a backup is only as good as the last time the data was backed up, so if you forget to bring it in and run the backup software then it somewhat defeats the object.

To continue on from the post above: I'm not sure how many people here have come across the "3-2-1 backup rule"; I would definitely recommend following this strategy.

If you have six minutes spare, this video explains it rather nicely.

As for software, have a look at Macrim reflect https://www.macrium.com/reflectfree the free version is ideal for making drive images, both full, incremental or differential

Thanks for the recommendation, up till now I've mostly been a Mac user but am in need of an easy Windows backup solution.

RailUK Forums

GRALISTAIR · 6 Jan 2020

I am obsessive about backups. Continually do to flash drives etc. I DO NOT USE THE CLOUD!!

Puffing Devil · 6 Jan 2020

D365 said:
Thanks for the recommendation, up till now I've mostly been a Mac user but am in need of an easy Windows backup solution.

Macrium is a good tool, it can be a little hard to master for casual users and disk imaging may be too much.

I use Syncback (https://www.2brightsparks.com/syncback/compare-simple.html) the free version is enough for most people.

GRALISTAIR said:
I am obsessive about backups. Continually do to flash drives etc. I DO NOT USE THE CLOUD!!

FlashDrives are not a reliable back-up medium - they are OK as one copy, though I would not want to stick with them as the only backup location. They suffer from a higher failure rate than other devices.

One of the cheapest and "fit and forget" cloud solutions is Backblaze: https://www.backblaze.com/best-online-backup-service.html $110 for 2 years unlimited service. This compares well with Google and DropBox pricing - though both provide invisible PC drive copies.

Ideally, following the 321 model you would use a drive to drive copy from your main machine then a cloud copy for your offsite copy. I also have a NAS backup device away from my computers, which is a halfway house.

Finally - if you're prepared to allow Google into your life, it's worth having the free photo storage syncing service. You don't get full quality images, though nice to have those memories saved in another location and easy to search and share from.

ajs1981 · 6 Jan 2020

So far I've avoided cloud as I'm wary of security attacks on the providers and, with some providers, I suspect they would use it for marketing analysis. My photos e.t.c. are my files, nothing to do with anyone else. I know it's, theoretically possible, to hack a home router but it's far less of an interesting target than a major online hosting platform.

My next step is buying a network storage unit (NAS), I'm just in the process of investigating which one to buy.

I would tend to agree that usb memory sticks aren't that reliable. USB drives may be more reliable, I don't know as I've not used them much. I probably will use a usb drive to backup the NAS, assuming I buy one, at some point.

I've heard the idea behind the 321 model before but not that name for it. It's quite a good way to remember it.

GRALISTAIR · 6 Jan 2020

So I have hard drive in USA and backed up by hard drive in the UK. I have thumb/flash drives too and then I have an Iomega external hard drive. I have multiple flash/thumb drives in multiple locations in UK and USA. I still refuse to use the cloud.

Puffing Devil · 6 Jan 2020

Backblaze provide encryption on many levels for those concerned about cloud data security, also Two Factor Authentication for logons.

I haven't researched Google or Dropbox encryption, both offer 2FA.

malc-c · 7 Jan 2020

Puffing Devil said:
FlashDrives are not a reliable back-up medium - they are OK as one copy, though I would not want to stick with them as the only backup location. They suffer from a higher failure rate than other devices.

One option which might be worth considering is the newer Nvme SSD enclosures. Whilst not having the same speeds of a direct connection Nvme drive, they are still fast and offer the convenience of a USB stick, with the reliability of a solid state drive.

A lot of people recommend dropbox / onedrive etc, which is OK for storing backup of smaller files or folders, but if you need to store a back up image of a complete system drive then the practical aspects make this somewhat impractical. Most ISP's offer poor upload speeds, and backing up my video drive which contains all my railway videos - 791GB of data would take forever. Granted online storage is becoming cheaper, and many 3-5TB plans average around £10 pm, but until ISP's provide at least 1:4 or less upload speeds it makes using these service clunky to use IMO.

My network extends to a purpose built "shed" at the end of the garden (houses a telescope) and housing the NAS in the "warm room" side if the observatory gives me the security of an "off site" backup solution. With options of running Ethernet over mains wiring you don't need a dedicated cat 5/6/7 network and could store the NAS in the garden shed provided there is power there. Not that it would be high priority in the event of a house fire, but if the main PC was damaged in such circumstances, when the time came to rebuild the replacement PC it would only take an hour to restore the images to the drives and be back up and running.

TrafficEng · 7 Jan 2020

ajs1981 said:
I would tend to agree that usb memory sticks aren't that reliable. USB drives may be more reliable, I don't know as I've not used them much.

I've had two bad experiences with USB connected hard drives. The first (using a USB enclosure with a PATA disk) corrupted the contents so badly that none of the free data recovery programs were able to do anything with it. The second was a friend's device from a reputable supplier. One day when they needed to recover some backed up files W10 refused to recognise the USB device. In both examples I suspect cheap electronics were used in the USB<->(x)ATA converter and that was the weak link.

Thereafter I've never relied on anything that involves conversion from one interface to another. USB memory sticks may have reliability issues, but are low cost and compact, so it is feasible to back up critical files on more than one device (ideally from different manufacturers) which negates the reliability issue.

For desktop users who are willing to open the case, one of the cleanest solutions is to plug a standard SATA drive into a spare SATA connector, copy the data, then unplug it again.

GRALISTAIR said:
I am obsessive about backups....

Obsessive? Some years ago my obsession went as far as writing a Basic/Batch file process that scanned a server data drive for any files modified in the last 30 mins and copied them to a new timestamped directory (and in the correct sub-directories) on a separate HDD. That way I could go back to any version of the file as it existed in 30 min timeslots anything up to a month previously. The IT department were apoplectic when they heard a rumour about it.

GRALISTAIR said:
So I have hard drive in USA and backed up by hard drive in the UK. I have thumb/flash drives too and then I have an Iomega external hard drive. I have multiple flash/thumb drives in multiple locations in UK and USA. I still refuse to use the cloud.

I fully agree with your views on the cloud. Not only do I not want to share some of my information with the world, I also don't want to rely on that service working as previously promised in the event I need to use it. Multiple devices in multiple locations removes the reliance on someone else doing what they say they will, and limits the risk of data being shared with people I don't want to share it with. (in my case it is nothing more interesting/sensitive than family history research and banking data)

malc-c said:
My network extends to a purpose built "shed" at the end of the garden (houses a telescope) and housing the NAS in the "warm room" side if the observatory gives me the security of an "off site" backup solution.

I like the "shed" approach. Mine is simpler (I have less data) - a couple of USB sticks with critical files inside a sealed plastic bag inside a jam jar. That's as "off site" as I think I need.

najaB · 7 Jan 2020

GRALISTAIR said:
So I have hard drive in USA and backed up by hard drive in the UK. I have thumb/flash drives too and then I have an Iomega external hard drive. I have multiple flash/thumb drives in multiple locations in UK and USA. I still refuse to use the cloud.

You are using the cloud, just one that you manage yourself (with consequent lower availability and higher likelihood of failure).

najaB · 7 Jan 2020

TrafficEng said:
I like the "shed" approach. Mine is simpler (I have less data) - a couple of USB sticks with critical files inside a sealed plastic bag inside a jam jar. That's as "off site" as I think I need.

USB drives are a really bad idea for long-term data storage - the bits will self-flip at some point. I strongly advise against using this as your long-term strategy.

TrafficEng · 7 Jan 2020

najaB said:
USB drives are a really bad idea for long-term data storage - the bits will self-flip at some point. I strongly advise against using this as your long-term strategy.

Fortunately it isn't my long-term strategy and isn't the whole of my strategy. What is on the USB sticks in the shed are copies of files that are also held in other formats, the only difference being the others are all kept indoors and could potentially be destroyed in a house fire.

The two 'outdoors' USB sticks are from different manufacturers and are wiped and the data recopied every three or four months. Before wiping I do a (binary) file comparison against a version on one of each of the other formats to make sure there is still consistency* between them all.

If my house has burned down utterly destroying all the contents I would consider myself most unlucky if I were to open the jam jar and discover that both USB sticks had degraded in such a way as to make any one (or all) of the files unrecoverable. But to be honest in that scenario I think I'd have other things of greater concern to me.

(*This is an important and sometimes overlooked part of a backup strategy - there is no point taking regular backups of your drives if you don't first check the source drive(s) still contain what they are supposed to contain.)

trainmania100 · 7 Jan 2020

My mother's tablet broke down the other week (my fault all I did was use ultra power saving mode on the Samsung Galaxy Tab E and it went blank) now it gets stuck on the samsung logo on startup. Shes lost all her pictures and videos unless she takes it somewhere she can get it fixed. Ive tried the android rescue mode but resetting will only lose them even more.

For my personal backup strategy at home, I use an external 500GB hard drive for my old videos instead of storing them on my computer. Even now im even more avoiding storing them on my computer because I bought a new laptop the other week and it has SSD, and SSds tend not to last as long as HDD.

But for railway photos and videos these days, I dont use my camera, instead i use my google pixel 2XL smartphone, which comes with unlimited Google Photos storage. So im shooting in 4K 30fps, back up to google photos, and then choose the option to Free Space which wipes it from my phone storage but it is still accessible any time through Google Photos. I just press Download to Phone and there it is again.

I prefer using my phone now because my camcorder used to have memory card problems and I was always seeing rare things at stations and worry, wondering if my camcorder SD card would retain the data. But now with my google pixel 2xl its not so much of a problem and is very worry free.

Most modern computers that use windows 10 expect you to have a OneDrive account, which is quite good when it comes to backing up documents and photos to the cloud, 30GB is quite reasonable but when it comes to high resolution photos and videos, 30GB is nothing.

I would recommend an external HDD and not flash storage.

najaB · 7 Jan 2020

TrafficEng said:
What is on the USB sticks in the shed are copies of files that are also held in other formats, the only difference being the others are all kept indoors and could potentially be destroyed in a house fire.

Fair enough.

Personally for me it's enough to use two cloud providers both of whom support source encryption.

Crossover · 7 Jan 2020

trainmania100 said:
Even now im even more avoiding storing them on my computer because I bought a new laptop the other week and it has SSD, and SSds tend not to last as long as HDD

I'm not sure that is necessarily the case. They can be smaller (though price per GB is reducing constantly). The only thing I have heard said of SSD's is that they fail big style rather than progressively as a hard drive may do - not that I have had an SSD fail on me yet (and I work with plenty)

Crossover · 7 Jan 2020

Puffing Devil said:
One of the cheapest and "fit and forget" cloud solutions is Backblaze: https://www.backblaze.com/best-online-backup-service.html $110 for 2 years unlimited service. This compares well with Google and DropBox pricing - though both provide invisible PC drive copies.

Thanks for that link - I will take a look at that later!

Puffing Devil said:
Backblaze provide encryption on many levels for those concerned about cloud data security, also Two Factor Authentication for logons.

I haven't researched Google or Dropbox encryption, both offer 2FA.

The general "buzzphrase" is encrypted in transit and at rest

TrafficEng · 7 Jan 2020

trainmania100 said:
Most modern computers that use windows 10 expect you to have a OneDrive account, which is quite good when it comes to backing up documents and photos to the cloud...

But it becomes a disadvantage when the computer involved doesn't have an internet connection.

Although as the whole concept of W10 seems to be based on having access to the internet 24/7/365 it probably means anyone who doesn't (or doesn't want to do so) should probably look elsewhere for their operating system.

najaB said:
Fair enough.

Personally for me it's enough to use two cloud providers both of whom support source encryption.

Doesn't having two providers also double your risk of your data being hacked?

More seriously, the important thing is people use an effective backup strategy that suits them and that they use. For someone not so concerned about security, automatic backups to the cloud is probably less risky than relying on (but forgetting to do) backups to physical media.

But as per my reply to trainmania100, one of the issues for me is that the cloud is utterly useless to me as a backup method for the PC I have which is never connected to the internet.

42626 · 7 Jan 2020

I have three levels of backup:

Level 1: Time Machine (Mac) to local external HDD

Pros: local and quickly accessible; 'continual' backup means this is the most up to date.
Cons: always connected means it is susceptible to encryption ransom attack; on site in case of fire/burglary

Level 2a: Rotated set of local clones of my Main HDD and also my data drive using Carbon Copy Cloner

Pros: bootable in case of main HDD failure; rotated set means backup/father/grandfather history in case of failure of current
Cons: on site in case of fire/burglary - I should really rotate one off-site

Level 2b: Periodic automatic sync of important data to a NAS box

Pros: automatic - at best a day old; RAID protection on NAS for data
Cons: always connected means it is susceptible to encryption ransom attack; on site in case of fire/burglary

Level 3: Backblaze

Pros: encrypted; off-site; 'continual' means as up to date as TM; files available from other devices
Cons: additional ongoing cost that some may not want; slow initial backup for some (not too bad for me as I have 20Mbit upload); full restore from backup either involves a big download or having it sent on HDD, although this would only be required if levels 1, 2a and 2b had failed.

I have found that most people start backing up properly after a loss. In my case this was an 800MB (yes MB, not GB) HDD back in the early 90s.

jmh59 · 7 Jan 2020

One other thing to remember when using offsite storage of any kind (cloud, ftp to somewhere, etc) or any form of encryption is to ensure you can remember any passwords you need, and also back up any encryption keys (or whatever) you may need to re-gain access to said offsite storage after your PC explodes (this may well be via access credentials but is not always the case so check the software). It's all very well encrypting files on a PC until you lose the key you need to decrypt the files... or your access credentials needed to access Google or whatever. Make sure you can get back in.

najaB · 7 Jan 2020

TrafficEng said:
Doesn't having two providers also double your risk of your data being hacked?

In theory, yes. But good luck trying to recover my data without the keys.

dgl · 7 Jan 2020

jmh59 said:
One other thing to remember when using offsite storage of any kind (cloud, ftp to somewhere, etc) or any form of encryption is to ensure you can remember any passwords you need, and also back up any encryption keys (or whatever) you may need to re-gain access to said offsite storage after your PC explodes (this may well be via access credentials but is not always the case so check the software). It's all very well encrypting files on a PC until you lose the key you need to decrypt the files... or your access credentials needed to access Google or whatever. Make sure you can get back in.

That's one thing that's good about bitlocker on windows, the keys are saved to your Microsoft account so easy to reobtain keys if the computer is dead but the HDD is fine, or you upgrade the drive and keep the old one as a backup.

Another relatively cheap/compact backup option is to use a USB-SATA adaptor cable and the HDD of your choice. Have a few on rotation and unplug when not in use. USB3-SATA (with USB SCSI for better throughput) cables are about £10

Aictos · 7 Jan 2020

I use OneDrive and External HDDs to back up.

Bevan Price · 7 Jan 2020

I understand that one cause of USB memory card failures is repeated writing and rewriting; personally I just use them as temporary storage for transferring files between computers.

Whilst I don't personally use cloud storage, it may have uses as one of your several backup locations - but never use the cloud as your only backup option. The trouble is that you are always at the mercy of someone else. They could do a "fotopic" and disappear almost overnight, or they could make big increases in their data storage charges, or reduce the amount of free storage that you can use.

JohnMcL7 · 7 Jan 2020

Crossover said:
I'm not sure that is necessarily the case. They can be smaller (though price per GB is reducing constantly). The only thing I have heard said of SSD's is that they fail big style rather than progressively as a hard drive may do - not that I have had an SSD fail on me yet (and I work with plenty)

I find the cause of a hard drive failure is often because it's had a mechanical impact which is enough to damage part of the platter, it's often possible to get data retrieved through software working around the damaged area. If a hard drive has a component failure it will usually be completely dead although it data recovery is still possible from a specialist data recovery firm reading the platters where a dead SSD is not, I find in reality physical data recovery is too expensive for home users to consider.

It's difficult separating the types of failure for hard drives but in general for machines that haven't had physical impacts I don't find hard drive reliability that bad, I just replaced a 40GB IDE drive that had failed after goodness knows how many hours running. I've seen a few SSD failures which have just died completely with no warning although with SSD's being comparatively new I've not had a chance to see how they handle old age.

JohnMcL7 · 7 Jan 2020

The post at the start of the topic makes a good point and it's one I see frequently misunderstood especially with RAID 1, people assume their data is safe because if one drive fails their data is still safe. However it's not a backup because what happens to one drive also happens to the other so accidental deletions, corruptions, encrypting malware, electronic failures etc. can take out both copies of the data. Some units aren't good at detecting drive failures either so one drive can fail silently but the array still seems normal until the second drive also fails and the data is lost.

I have a fairly simple backup strategy up home backing up to an additional internal drive, a NAS unit, a powered down USB hard drive (just powered up for backups) and a backup to another USB hard drive which is kept away from the house. I would like to use cloud storage but files are so big these days I'd need a really fast connection to make it viable which unfortunately I don't, I would lose some data if the house burnt down or robbed but at least I wouldn't lose everything.

TrafficEng · 7 Jan 2020

JohnMcL7 said:
I find the cause of a hard drive failure is often because it's had a mechanical impact which is enough to damage part of the platter, it's often possible to get data retrieved through software working around the damaged area. If a hard drive has a component failure it will usually be completely dead although it data recovery is still possible from a specialist data recovery firm reading the platters where a dead SSD is not, I find in reality physical data recovery is too expensive for home users to consider.

That's my experience (with mechanical drives) too. If free/cheap software isn't capable of recovering data then a professional service is cost prohibitive. The only possible exception to that is if the failure is on the external controller circuit board which can be swapped without the need to open the drive. I've not done it myself, but I have seen someone swap the circuitboard from an identical make/model/revision drive that allowed the data to be copied off the one that had failed. For that reason I went through a phase of always purchasing drives in identical pairs, but dropped that habit when the cost/capacity equation reached the point that having multiple copies of all data became feasible.

I understand it is possible for specialists to do partial data recovery on SSDs, and linked to that there is interesting information around detailing the techniques used to recover data from solid state flight recorders. What it comes down to is how important the data is, and how much you are able to pay.

najaB · 7 Jan 2020

TrafficEng said:
I've not done it myself, but I have seen someone swap the circuitboard from an identical make/model/revision drive that allowed the data to be copied off the one that had failed

You're very lucky if that works because the mapping of bad sectors, etc is stored in the drive electronics - that's why you don't have to low level format drives any more. So there's every chance that swapping won't work.

JohnMcL7 · 7 Jan 2020

najaB said:
You're very lucky if that works because the mapping of bad sectors, etc is stored in the drive electronics - that's why you don't have to low level format drives any more. So there's every chance that swapping won't work.

Lucky if what works?

najaB · 7 Jan 2020

JohnMcL7 said:
Lucky if what works?

Swapping controllers between drives.

johntea · 8 Jan 2020

I work in IT and have the joy of dealing with backups and redundancy, in terms of the redundancy in particular over the years it is absolutely incredible how many 'failproof' solutions I have witnessed that have in testing during implementation worked great, but of course as soon as there was an actual issue that required failover they don't work!

Backups are important but even more important is then testing you can actually read them and retrieve data from them! What I really really hate though is when a user gets in touch saying they've lost a file...from 3 months ago as tape backups might be an air tight solution but they're not exactly the fastest things in the world to restore from!

TrafficEng · 8 Jan 2020

johntea said:
Backups are important but even more important is then testing you can actually read them and retrieve data from them! What I really really hate though is when a user gets in touch saying they've lost a file...from 3 months ago as tape backups might be an air tight solution but they're not exactly the fastest things in the world to restore from!

I feel your pain. The last time I was personally responsible for backing up a work server it had a 4Gb drive and was backing up to DDS-3 tapes. It took most of the night to do a full backup and verify, and my first job in the morning was to check it had worked, which I could never be sure of.

Now copying 4Gb onto a USB stick (or disk to disk) would be a trivial task.

Computer backup strategies

Veteran Member

RailUK Forums

Established Member

Established Member

Member

Established Member

Established Member

Member

Member

Veteran Member

Veteran Member

Member

Established Member

Veteran Member

Established Member

Established Member

Member

Member

Member

Veteran Member

Established Member

Established Member

Established Member

Member

Member

Member

Veteran Member

Member

Veteran Member

Established Member

Member