You have to test your backup

Recently I saw a posting from a person, who had backup in the cloud and it had failed when he needed it. Of cause the backup company should make sure this does not happen, but they got some data corruption.

When having a backup, you must know, that you can only rely on yourself. Trust no one. That is the whole point of a backup.

If you want to be sure that you can restore you backup, you have to try it! How often depends on how much time you have and how much you love your backup, but you can only rely on yourself to test that your backup will work and that others have not made a mistake.

Another idear: Just as you might have the data on 2 harddrives, you might have it in 2 backup providers. They have crashes and they do go bankrupt.

Yet another harddrive crash

A couple of days ago, my laptop died. Fortunately, I had external backup, so no worries about the data. It was more the money for a new one, finding the right one and getting it up and running.
Fortunately I could remove the harddrive and read it via a SATA USB adapter. But knowing my data was pretty safe, was nice.
I say pretty safe, because remember, that data you don't have in two copies does not exist. If the online backup provider had went bankrupt while I downloaded my data, it would be gone too. There is no 100% safe solution, so make sure to make multiple copies of your most important data.

Sådan kan cloud fejle: Stol ikke på Microsoft

Microsoft har for nyelig introduceret deres cloud storage: SkyDrive. Det er, som fx DropBox, et lager på internettet, hvor man kan lægge sine filer, fx til backup.

Der har dog været en sag fremme i pressen hvor en bruger fik slettet alle sine filer:

http://www.comon.dk/art/205276/microsofts-dropbox-konkurrent-blokerer-dine-erotiske-billeder

Årsagen var, at han havde helt lovlige billeder af letpåklædte billeder liggende. Dem havde Microsoft kigget i og besluttet at lukke hans konto. SkyDrive er ikke en hjemmeside, alt indholdet er privat, men alligevel synes Microsoft de vil blande sig i hvad man bruger det til.

Der er altså en måde mere cloud kan fejle på, nemlig at leverandøren får lyst til at slette sine filer.

RAID is not backup

As I have written in other postings, a RAID setup consists of 2 or more harddrives, which are mirrors or contains the same data. It is done in a way, that if 1 disk fails, no data is lost and the system will continue running.

But why do I say that RAID is not backup, then?

1. RAID 1-5 can save your data if 1 harddrive fails. If another disk fails before you can replace the bad disk and the data can be mirrord, you have lost all of your data.
2. RAID only protects against drive failure. Theft, water damage, virus, accidential deletion etc. will still cause you to lose data.
3. RAID does not protect against RAID failure. If the controller, the hardware which manages the disks, fails you will lose all of your data. And trust me: They do fail. Even the very expensive ones.

Note that RAID 6 will allow you to have 2 drives fail before data loss, but: You are still not fully protected.

All in all: RAID will let your server or computer run without interruption if a harddrive fails, but it will not protect you as a backup should do.

My backup setup 4

In a previous posting I defined my 3 kinds of data. In this posting I will tell how I back it up:

1. Okay to loose.
   (see a previous posting)
2. Harder to replace.
   (see previous posting)
3. Ireplaceable.
   This data I store on my NAS and I back it up over the Internet to an off site location. The cheapest solution would be a NAS friendship but I don't know anybody who would need a similar solution, so I use a commercial solution.
   The service I use is Crash Plan (consumer version). It comes with a backup program (which is free) and that program makes it easy to do backup to any medium. It will only cost money if you (as me) choose to buy their backup over the internet service. Currently I pay $60 for a year and then I can backup a single computer but an unlimited amount of data. Currently that is 460GB !!! They also have a family plan, which removes the 1 computer limit too and a commercial plan.
   The Crash Plan program runs on my computer, which I have to leave running when I have new data (a photo shoot easily produces 10-15 GB of data).

See also: How does it fail: Online backup.

My backup setup 3

In a previous posting I defined my 3 kinds of data. In this posting I will tell how I back it up:

1. Okay to loose.
   (see previous posting)
2. Harder to replace.
   Nothing exists without at least 2 copies at different locations, which is also true for this data. I have one copy at home on 4 small harddrives and a single encrypted harddrive at work with the same data. When I make an update to the one at home (which is not often) I will bring the one at work home and update that one. In this case I am protected against fire etc. and in some degree protected against drive failure. Because I don't check them often, there is still a significant risk that I might loose everything some day.
   For that reason, I ought to have it on a NAS at home, but then I'll have to buy another NAS and two harddrives.
3. Ireplaceable.
   (see next posting)

My backup setup 2

In the previous posting I defined my 3 kinds of data. In this posting I will tell how I back it up:

1. Okay to loose.
   This data I store on my NAS - see previous postings about a NAS. It protects me resonably from drive crash, but theft, fire, flood, human error etc. is not covered. However, it is still a very cheap way to have copies of a lot of data on two drives which is often updated.
2. Harder to replace.
   (see next post)
3. Ireplaceable.
   (see future post)