When Your Hard Drive Comes Knocking... A Cautionary Tale

re: When Your Hard Drive Comes Knocking... A Cautionary Tale

John Paul Cook — Wed, 28 May 2008 22:47:50 GMT

My neighbor uses Gmail and writing is part of her job. None of her content is confidential. I had her open a Hotmail account and create a folder named Backup. A filter rule was created to send any email with a subject line of "backup" to the Backup folder. Whenever she creates a document worth saving, she emails it from Gmail to Hotmail. That means she actually has two backups of every important file, one in Gmail Sent Items, and another in Hotmail.

re: When Your Hard Drive Comes Knocking... A Cautionary Tale

Adam Machanic — Wed, 28 May 2008 23:16:42 GMT

Hi John Paul,

I do the same thing with a lot of documents, in my Gmail account. Works quite well! And since Gmail automatically saves all of the e-mails I send, I have a record of every document I've sent out over the past 3+ years. But for every one of those documents there are a few more that I didn't think to back up... Painful!

re: When Your Hard Drive Comes Knocking... A Cautionary Tale

KKline — Wed, 28 May 2008 23:51:35 GMT

Ugh! That's just awful!

That happened to me a few years ago and although I didn't lose any important work data, I lost a ton of important family pictures that I'd downloaded to my laptop. I still have the hard disk in case I scrap together an extra $500 to get the disk rebuilt.

Are all of your presentations still safe? Even the new one(s) for TechEd?

-Kev

re: When Your Hard Drive Comes Knocking... A Cautionary Tale

Denis Gobo — Thu, 29 May 2008 00:00:41 GMT

There is always spinrite from Steve Gibson :-)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpinRite

re: When Your Hard Drive Comes Knocking... A Cautionary Tale

Paul Nielsen — Thu, 29 May 2008 04:02:30 GMT

Hey Adam, Good thing you blogged or published your best writing!

-Paul

re: When Your Hard Drive Comes Knocking... A Cautionary Tale

TiborKaraszi — Thu, 29 May 2008 10:19:57 GMT

Ouch... Whenever you hear that noise, you get this feeling that ... something important is going to happen.

I wrote my own backup sw a fre years ago, after two disk crashes in a row. The app cnnects to a SQL Server read where and what to backup and then connects to my NAS to create a new folder for the backup. Since I'm only about 200 MB or so (the documents to backup, that is) this work great. And I wipe everything which is more than 5 days old, expect for folder created 1st day of month. Only downside is that I have to separate large stuff to its own folder, but since large stuff tend to be more static this isn't a big deal...

re: When Your Hard Drive Comes Knocking... A Cautionary Tale

Scott Whigham — Thu, 29 May 2008 10:46:34 GMT

Adam -

I'll suggest how to automate this so you don't even have to think about it. You need a few things:

(1) a command-line ZIP tool, (2) batch files, and (3) Scheduled Tasks in Windows.

1) I use WinZip's command line tool

2) A batch file looks something like the code at the end

3) Schedule the task to execute the batch file nightly. You also have the option of executing it manually at any time.

Here's the basic idea of my batch file. Mine is actually much larger and includes all of the folders that I want to ensure that I have backed up:

==================================

rem This takes a backup of several key folders and stores it in a folder titled with todays date/time

@Echo off

Set yyyy=%DATE:~10,4%

Set mm=%Date:~4,2%

Set dd=%Date:~7,2%

Set DateStamp=%yyyy%%mm%%dd%

IF "%TIME:~0,1%"==" " (SET hh=0%TIME:~1,1%) ELSE (SET hh=%TIME:~0,2%)

Set min=%TIME:~3,2%

Set sec=%TIME:~6,2%

Set TimeStamp=%hh%%min%%sec%

Set backupFolder=d:\Backups\LearnItFirst Websites and Databases\LIF Backups - %DateStamp%_%TimeStamp%

Set remotedir=\\Duke\shared\Backups\LearnItFirst Websites and Databases\LIF Backups - %DateStamp%_%TimeStamp%

Set localFolder=nothing

Set zipFileName=nothing

Set localFile=nothing

Set localfile=nothing

rem Prep-work: Create the folder to store all backups in

md "%backupFolder%"

If ErrorLevel 1 Goto ErrMsg

md "%remotedir%"

If ErrorLevel 1 Goto ErrMsg

rem Step 1: SSIS Packages

Set localFolder=d:\My Companies\LearnItFirst.com - Business Admin\Integration Services Projects

Set zipFileName=SSIS

Set localfile="%backupFolder%\%zipFileName%_Backups.zip"

"c:\program files\winzip\wzzip.exe" %localfile% "%localFolder%\*.*" -p -r -u

If ErrorLevel 1 Goto ErrMsg

xcopy %localfile% "%remotedir%\"

If ErrorLevel 1 Echo Unable to copy file to external backup: "%backupFolder%\%zipFileName%_Backups.zip"

rem Step 2: OneNote

Set localFolder=d:\OneNote

Set zipFileName=OneNote

Set localfile="%backupFolder%\%zipFileName%_Backups.zip"

"c:\program files\winzip\wzzip.exe" %localfile% "%localFolder%\*.*" -p -r -u

If ErrorLevel 1 Goto ErrMsg

xcopy %localfile% "%remotedir%\"

If ErrorLevel 1 Echo Unable to copy file to external backup: "%backupFolder%\%zipFileName%_Backups.zip"

Goto Exit

:ErrMsg

Echo ***SERIOUS ERROR DETECTED***

:Exit

==================================

Hope this helps!

re: When Your Hard Drive Comes Knocking... A Cautionary Tale

jerryhung — Thu, 29 May 2008 14:58:51 GMT

Ouch, I would've

1. shut down desktop

2. find an external HDD

3. turn on desktop, start backup right away

4. when it reaches that "bad sector", it'll probably die either way, but at least now I have everything BEFORE that point

Now my backup plan is

** www.syncback.com - best Sync/Backup FREEWARE ever **

1. Use SyncBack to sync my desktop to File Server (software RAID5 in Windows 2000) nightly

2. Use SyncBack to weekly backup from File Server to external HDD

Note: I can't bother to backup onto DVD b/c I have ~1TB of stuff

re: When Your Hard Drive Comes Knocking... A Cautionary Tale

Denis Gobo — Thu, 29 May 2008 15:06:12 GMT

Adam check out JungleDisk

http://jungledisk.com/

I heard some good things about it, it stores your data on Amazon S3

They have pricing info on the site and it is cheaper than a Drive (you can always write it off anyway)

re: When Your Hard Drive Comes Knocking... A Cautionary Tale

Jonathan Kehayias — Thu, 29 May 2008 20:07:38 GMT

Thanks to you and Kimberly Tripp, I won't be posting my own blog message about a crashed drive and no backups.

http://www.sqlskills.com/blogs/kimberly/2008/05/09/ WhenDidYouLastBackupYourHomepersonallesscriticalSystemIsItReallyLesscritical.aspx

She has gone through more drives this year than I think I have in the last 10. I hope that your luck is not about to follow hers.

re: When Your Hard Drive Comes Knocking... A Cautionary Tale

Saggj Neumann — Thu, 29 May 2008 20:29:27 GMT

Hey Adam,

You're in good company with Kalen, Kimberly and Paul all blogging about personal HD disasters...

I highly recommend using microsoft's FolderShare (http://www.foldershare.com) to automatically synchronize your important folders between a bunch of computers. I don't really like the whole "backup in the cloud" idea... It hasn't earned my trust yet. However, Synchronizing my files between my laptop and two desktops (in different locations) means I can work on any of the computers, and the online backup is a really nice bonus...

Cheers,

S. Neumann

re: When Your Hard Drive Comes Knocking... A Cautionary Tale

Saggi Neumann — Fri, 30 May 2008 05:27:33 GMT

My mistake - Kalen didn't blog about HD disasters (knock on wood...) :)

re: When Your Hard Drive Comes Knocking... A Cautionary Tale

andyleonard — Fri, 30 May 2008 13:31:17 GMT

Hi Adam,

I am sorry to hear about your old HD (may it rest in peace).

I colleague recommended Carbonite (www.carbonite.com) a few months back and I installed it. I was tempting fate with a laptop that was over a year old.

I opted for the 2-year plan at $90 USD. All plans allow unlimited storage and retrieval so far as I know. I'm storing about 30 G out there. The documentation states it is all encrypted (twice, I believe).

It took a couple days (literally) to remotely backup the directories I specified.

One nice thing is the client runs in the system tray and automatically updates anything I change / add / delete from the marked folders.

Another nice thing is it was very easy to get all the information back on my new laptop without really thinking about it. I installed the client, logged in, was prompted to migrate my subscription from my old machine to the new, and allowed it to do its thing for a day or so. All marked directories were downloaded to my new machine automagically. Pretty cool in itself, absolutely necessary for DR, and not too expensive (imo).

:{> Andy

re: When Your Hard Drive Comes Knocking... A Cautionary Tale

Adam Machanic — Fri, 30 May 2008 13:38:24 GMT

Hi all,

Thanks for the great suggestions! I will certainly take some into account (Carbonite being one of the top contenders, since I'm lazy and would rather let them handle it <g>). It's probably a good lesson for me in practicing what I preach. Now I can tell my customers that I actually know the -pain- they will suffer if they don't back up!

re: When Your Hard Drive Comes Knocking... A Cautionary Tale

Kalen Delaney — Fri, 30 May 2008 15:57:36 GMT

Saggi.... I read that and thought that maybe you knew something I didn't!

I do backups of critical stuff every week.. and my current writing is written to a USB drive or Passport, whatever is handy, at least twice a day.

I have also done the 'email to myself' trick when I needed to make sure some file was safe, and didn't have anything external to copy to.

~Kalen

re: When Your Hard Drive Comes Knocking... A Cautionary Tale

Patrick Jackman — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 00:36:09 GMT

Sorry for your troubles Adam. I had a similar experience a couple of months ago.

So I installed an HP Windows Home Server in the attic with 2 500 MB drives. Windows Backup jobs are scheduled every evening at 8:00 PM: daily, weekly and monthly.

Once a month I also use Acronis 9.1 to make an image of my PGP Whole Disk Encrypted drive to a Lacie USB disk.

So I think I'm covered against my next drive crash and any bad guys that break into the house. I don't have a fire protection plan though.

BTW, I really enjoyed reading your book.

Patrick.

re: When Your Hard Drive Comes Knocking... A Cautionary Tale

Mark Allison — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 16:39:50 GMT

Hi Adam,

I have a Linux server at home which I use for backups among other things. There's a great little utility on there called BackupPC which backups up all machines on my home network, but the great thing about it is it compresses the files when they are backed up, and if the file already exists on the backup server it creates a reference to it instead of copying the file again. This way you can get hundreds of gigs of backups in much less space. It's really impressive, and has a web GUI which can be accessed from any machine at home. http://backuppc.sourceforge.net

Mark

Solution for the "LIKE vs. ?" Puzzle

Adam Machanic — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 19:43:05 GMT

In late April, I posted a puzzle to test readers' knowledge of SQL Server query processing internals

re: When Your Hard Drive Comes Knocking... A Cautionary Tale

Penlope — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 08:53:08 GMT

Oh Adam sorry to hear that.Well with me i prefer having backups online because to me they are safe.This prevents me from losing my files and it is cheaper to me than data recovery.I use http://www.safecopybackup.com

Here i only pay 50bucks per year for space of 200GB and inaddition they also offer a free unlimited 5GB trial version.This is so incredible to me.So incase my hard drive crashes am on a safer side.Now days i backup all my two Computers on one account.