Backups? 🛟

[Melooon]

In this next entry in general computer life threads - let's talk about backups! How do you backup your stuff? Do you back it up?

For my websites and all of my other projects, I keep local copies on my computer at all times (1TB); I also have some overflow storage that has video clips Iv recorded or sound recordings etc (2TB).

Everything on my main computer is backed up using Time Machine (built-in mac backup tool) to a 6TB hard drive - so I have individual file versions of every file going back about 2 years. My external overflow drives are also backed up to the 6TB drive using Carbon Copy Cloner, so I have at least one extra copy of those files.

Recently I also set up a script that gathers all my really important project files (about 200GB); encrypts them and uploads them to Amazon Glacier Storage, which is a super cheap very esoteric storage service. So in the event that all my computers were lost, Id still be able to recover most of my work 

That's a process that took me a few years to put together; Iv trying to get it right for about 3 years now and Im finally really happy with it! 

[Cobra!]

I use GitLab to version and backup projects I’m working on.

I use Filen for everything else. I backup songs I ripped from CD or digitised from tape or vinyl, any DVDs and Blu-Ray I have ripped media from, all game mods and patches I need to get all my games working on my daily driver and even some straight up full game backups. I have a 5TB subscription, so that should hopefully last me a while.

I also download Youtube videos and Spotify songs to put onto tape, and I backup the downloaded files on that same cloud service.

I actually want to look into magnetic tape backups. I’m very into doing things in an old-fashioned way, and tapes seem to be the defacto method back in the 90s. Might be worth looking into to have full backups in case in the inevitable event that I need to upgrade my OS.

[Cele]

I have some versions of my websites backed up on my computer, though they're not up-to-date at all times. My writings are typically in cloud like Outlook. I don't have anything backing up my computers. My most precious possession which is the dictionary for my conlang, that has copies of it online and offline, can't afford to lose that.

[brisray]

I back up my computers on 2Tb drives. Each computer gets a backup of the current files in it's own diretory structure, then those are copied to a backup of everything I've done since the computer was last cleared. The entire drive is then copied to another.

To do this I use a batch file that uses RoboCopy, so I can use the switches to only copy the files that have changed.

One day, I'll get round to writing a Powershell script as some ofthe commandlets are supposed to be faster.

Here's the script I'm using if anyone wants to play with it. The first part simply checks I've got the correct drives connected:

@echo off
setlocal EnableDelayedExpansion
set bkp1drv=""
set bkp2drv=""
set bkpname=brisray-laptop
set BkpVol1=RayBackup3a
set BkpVol2=RayBackup3b
set n=0
set ltrs=ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

For %%A in (%BkpVol1% %BkpVol2%) do call :fnddrv %%A

goto :eof

:fnddrv
   set n=0   
   set volName=%1
   :Loop
   call set ltr=%%ltrs:~%n%,1%%
     set /a n +=1
     vol %ltr%: 2>nul|find /i " %volName%">nul||if %n% lss 26 (goto :loop)
   if %n% equ 26 (goto error)
   if %1==%BkpVol1% (
      set bkp1drv=%ltr%
      goto eof)      
   if %1==%BkpVol2% (
      set bkp2drv=%ltr%
      goto work)

:error
   echo Cannot find %1 volume
   set n=0
   echo Insert correct drive and run again
   pause
   exit

:work   
   echo Ready to Robocopy drive C: to drive %BkpVol1% (%bkp1drv%:) and then
   echo create backup of all files on %BkpVol1% (%bkp1drv%:) on %BkpVol2% (%bkp2drv%:).
   echo This process will take approx. 20 minutes.
   echo.
   pause
   echo.
   echo Creating copy of current files on %BkpVol1% (%bkp1drv%:)
   robocopy %USERPROFILE% %bkp1drv%:\%bkpname%-current /s /purge /XA:ST /r:0 /XF *.bak *.bkp *.tmp /XD temp* *recycle* /LOG:"%USERPROFILE%\Documents\backup.log"
   echo.
        echo Copying fonts to %BkpVol1% (%bkp1drv%:)
   robocopy %windir%\fonts %bkp1drv%:\%bkpname%-current\Windows\Fonts /s /XA:ST /r:0 /XF *.bak *.bkp *.tmp /LOG+:"%USERPROFILE%\Documents\backup.log"
   echo.
   echo Copying current files on %BkpVol1% (%bkp1drv%:) to main backup (%BkpVol1% (%bkp1drv%:))
   robocopy %bkp1drv%:\%bkpname%-current %bkp1drv%:\%bkpname% /s /XA:ST /r:0 /XF *.bak *.bkp *.tmp /XD AppData temp* *recycle* /LOG+:"%USERPROFILE%\Documents\backup.log"
   echo.
   echo Copying current AppData files on %BkpVol1% (%bkp1drv%:) to main backup (%BkpVol1% (%bkp1drv%:))
   robocopy %bkp1drv%:\%bkpname%-current\AppData %bkp1drv%:\%bkpname%\AppData /s /purge /XA:ST /r:0 /XF *.bak *.bkp *.tmp /XD temp* *recycle* /LOG+:"%USERPROFILE%\Documents\backup.log"
   echo.
   echo Creating backup of all files on %BkpVol1% (%bkp1drv%:) on %BkpVol2% (%bkp2drv%:)
   robocopy %bkp1drv%: %bkp2drv%: /MIR /r:0 /XF *.bak *.bkp *.tmp /XD temp* $recycle* Seagate* /A-:SH /LOG+:"%USERPROFILE%\Documents\backup.log"
:eof

[Inkerlink]

In this next entry in general computer life threads - let's talk about backups! How do you backup your stuff? Do you back it up?

Funnily enough, my boss at work has been pestering me to look up potential backup solutions as an alternative to what we have, AWS Glacier storage looks pretty good, I'm surprised I've never heard of it. Thanks Melon!

As far as personal backups go, I don't have a ton of super-ultra important data to backup, so anything like that I just have stored in OneDrive, which is also locally stored on every device I access it with as well so it's pretty well safe if anything goes down, even OneDrive itself.
I wouldn't really technically call it a 'backup', but my main PC at home stores all of it's major data on a 12TB RAID 1 array for redundancy. So if one drive ever dies, I just plop in a new one and I'm good to go. That array isn't backed up anywhere else though, I'm not too worried about losing any of that data. And the good thing about a basic RAID 1 is you can put the drive in any other PC and read it fine so don't have to worry about the RAID being attached to my specific controller or anything.
I've also got a 4TB external HDD which I use to store backups of all of my GOG games! It's really handy to just bring that around and plug it in whenever I want to install one of my games for someone. I've been buying most of my PC games from GOG since 2012 and at this point it's even bigger than my Steam library.  I'm just happy knowing if GOG or Steam ever dies, I won't be out all of my games. 
That's about it really, nothing fancy and it works for me. 

[brisray]

I use OneDrive at work as well. It really is easy once it's set up, everything just works in the background just like Google Drive sync.

One question I had for our IT was that if by some chance the computer gets infected by ransomware won't all the synced folders on OneDrive get encrypted as well. It is a possibility, but they seem confident our networks are well protected.

I'm still dubious about using synced cloud services and calling them a backup. Suppose I overwrite or delete a file, then the same thing happens on the synced drives. So it isn't really a backup. As they no longer let me buy boxes of external drives and because we've have loads of space, I created a copy of the files on OneDrive that is not synced.

Services like OneDrive and Google Drive are great but I still like having the assurance of having the physical backup drives not attached to the computers unless I need them.

[cybermage]

I backup my stuff in pen-drives and in cloud storage services like mediafire, mega and archive.org. I already lost count of how many mega accounts I have created so far.

[princemaggots]

I hate losing my data, so a lot of my (more important) stuff is backed up to varying degrees.

Currently my writing and (digital) art gets automatically synced to Google Drive - which is great not just as a backup tool but also provides me with the ability to work on writing projects on my other computers. All my schoolwork also gets stored in the Onedrive account provided by the university as well so that I can still work on any assignment if something were to happen to my laptop. For websites, I periodically push updates to my Github (as well as having them available on Neocities).

I also have a 1TB drive for my Sims 4 save + game data (since I pirated a lot of the DLC and it's easier to avoid redownloading), as well as some other game saves and a bundle + copy of my work repository (I work on a small team, so we don't have automated backups).

I also finally use both my main laptop and one of my other laptops as a way to backup some of my physical discs. All of my music cds are imported to my main laptop and saved there. This way, if Spotify removes a track I don't have to hunt a download of the album down online, I can just either pull it from my computer or pull from the disc directly. I also have ISOs of all my game discs stored on one of my other laptops - a couple of these I even uploaded to archive.org as they're older niche games.

[TYOMA !!]

I love me a good backup!!!!! Which is ironic because the past 5 years have involved me completely wiping my phones computers out of pure impulse and anguish. Note to self: save huge archives of photos you don't want to look through to a hard drive and give it to someone else to watch once you're ready to look at it.

Anywho - these days I don't have the GREATEST system for backups but it works well enough. I have my ENTIRE archive of art (and everything else in my Pictures folder) saved to MEGA, and a couple other things that I've decided I want to save. Other than that, I have my "important" files synced between all my PCs and the home server. That way, if one of my systems breaks down, at least the rest will be okay. I do periodic backups of the synced folders to SD cards and stuff. I was intending to save downloads of all my GOG games and Itch.io games to the home server, but I couldn't find a way to batch download so I gave up on doing it. Sigh....

[Y2KStardust]

I should do a backup of my site, but man... I always put these things off and then regret it. Maybe that'll be the next project I do, hehe! I'm pretty cautious, I have a bunch of misc. important things off on google drive or a physical 1tb that I got given YEARS ago now. I lost a lot last time my computer got busted, bc I hadn't backed it up in a while ;-;

[yatagarasu]

i usually just drop folders on external hard drives without a care. after years its a huge mess of duplicate files that i've cleaned up with duplicate removal programs, but i've changed my habits so it won't be a problem going forward.

[Icey!]

I don't keep backups, danger is my friend. 

[Memory]

Yes, I do make backups to prevent data loss. I back up my personal files which mainly consisting of artwork I've commissioned over the years, rare files I collected over the years, bash scripts I use, and anything else I want to keep for any number of reasons. I've also been making backups of my music collection recently, though I only have one currently setup instead of my normal three backups. I plan to rework my personal system for how I backup my data once I upgrade my X220's storage to a 2TB SSD.

I try to follow the 321 backup system, 3 backups, 2 mediums, 1 off-site.  The main issue for me though is that due to limited money I can only go for one medium for backing up my data, which in my case are USB drives.

[cinnamuff]

Oh absolutely! I have a couple backups of my art, writing projects along with worldbuilding writings and comic scripts,  and a ton of other stuff I've come across during my time online.

I keep everything within reach on an external 2TB SSD and they get backed up to an external 2TB hard drive and another that's 5TB. I've had a couple mishaps with older computers where I've lost everything so i usually don't keep anything stored on the computer itself, everything goes to my external SSD and gets backed up to the two HDDs I mentioned! 

I typically don't use cloud storage services but if I do it's for moving art I've done on my iPad to my computer haha.

[grubbyfox]

I keep backups of documents, photos, files in general on my PC.

I've got one 2tb storage strictly for watchable stuff like series, movies, etc.
Then I've got 3 discs that all basically have the same stuff, more or less.
I've made it so that one of them is 5tb and basically has EVERYTHING on it that I want saved. while the other two are uhh 1 or 2 tb and holds "important stuff" but not necessarily every single file ever on my PC, lol.

And out of the two that are the exact same, I have one that is never actually used except for having files saved onto it. I dont use it to open files, browse files etc. While the other one is used quite often, and I rummage around it at any time I want.
I decided to do it like this after reading a bit from datahoarders, where it seems some believe that filerot and other corruption can be caused by too frequent use, whilst others belief its not that at all.

I have a really old storage disk, only 500 gb, and needs a power supply and what not. This one basically holds all my "ancient" files. These files are also on the newer disks, but I keep it around as a fossil, just because you cant really rely on anything, haha so it's better to have a few copies around.

Some of my stuff is also burned on disks, and scattered on memory sticks (all hanging off a big ass key chain thing, so they're all together.)

I believe I've had filerot in some type of way, so now I'm really paranoid about these things.

I cant know for sure about the filerot, but I am missing an .xml file that I know I had (and had stored for a long time), and for some reason, other .xml files seemed to have been messed up somehow or, i dont know. I forget at the moment, but there was some oddity with these files that I could not make sense of, and I am 100% sure I am missing 1 of them, if not 2. It's a long story, lol. I just know that I did not delete them off any disk.

Oh and I keep my storages in those tight plastic boxes near my bed, so that I always know where they are - and maybe have a chance to pick them up if there is a housefire. Of course we can never know how one thinks in a situation like that, but I decided to at least give myself a chance to have it easier.

I'm also considering putting another copy in an actual safe and keep it in the basement or something.