How often to back up?

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kuma · #1 Post by **kuma** » Wed May 10, 2006 12:13 pm

How often should I have the R&R back up?

smids · #2 Post by **smids** » Wed May 10, 2006 12:43 pm

Only you can answer that - how often does your data change, how important is the new data, can you afford to lose it, what are the chances of failure from one day to the next. No-one can answer this for you I'm afraid. Some backup every week, others every 2 weeks, others every month.

krma-thkpds · #3 Post by **krma-thkpds** » Wed May 10, 2006 5:45 pm

After I lost some of my valuable data due to disk failure I back up every day.

#4 Post by **GomJabbar** » Wed May 10, 2006 6:18 pm

A comprehensive backup strategy includes several aspects which will vary according to needs. Below is one possible stategy.

Generally speaking, if you are busy typing in a lot of information, you may want to back that up to external medium several times a day. In the past this would have been a floppy disk. Today USB keys are good for this.

You should probably back up other data from once a day to once a week. Again this depends upon how much work it would take to reenter the data, should it be lost.

At least once a month, you should back up your entire hard drive to external media. Ideally this should be stored off-site, meaning not in the same building as the computer. If your home was to burn down along with your computer, you may need this backup to restore the bulk of your data to another computer. Some users may choose to do this once per week, or even every day. If you can backup your computer data over a network to another location, this is the ideal setup.

Raid 1 is also good for having a mirror copy of your hard disk, should your hard disk fail. I have this on my home PC, and it has already saved my tail.

These are just my thoughts, including some of what I have read regarding backup strategy. YMMV

christopher_wolf · #5 Post by **christopher_wolf** » Wed May 10, 2006 7:04 pm

In general, the more important your data is divided by the frequency you change it multiplied by the number of times it has to be purely read-accessed only gives you a good number that is directly proportional to the number of backups you should make per unit time; divide that by the periodicity you wish to make backups at and you get a number that is a good indication of how often you should make backups, the closer to one it is...the better. Rough formula, I know, but I go by it and it actually worked several times when I really needed it to.

It only makes sense, however, for backups of data that is very important only in a given time span and only then decreases exponentially over time. If, however, the data is of the type where it is basic for continued development of the program/task/job and loss of it would constitute inoperability, then the formula would diverge as the desired periodicity of the backups approaches zero.

HTH

XCoalMiner · #6 Post by **XCoalMiner** » Fri May 12, 2006 1:08 am

For reference, typical practice in corporate data centers is to do backups on a daily/weekly/monthly basis,

- on the first Saturday of the month, do a complete backup of all files on a harddrive.
- on all other Saturday's, backup all files that have been modified since the previous Saturday.
- Sunday-Friday, backup all files that have been modified since the previous days backup.

Preserve 12 complete months of these, so you have 12 months of complete backups, and one month in process. Overwrite after the 13th month. Also typical is regular exercise of the recovery function to make sure files can be recovered from the backup media.

The complete backup of an entire harddrive on the first Saturday is not intended to restore the operating system, if one exists on the disk, it's for file backup purposes. Also, windows operating systems already have a tool to do this, in Start > Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Backup. Very useful IMO.

#7 Post by **bill bolton** » Fri May 12, 2006 2:46 am

A backup up is like a spare tyre.... don't go far without one!

A general rule of thumb is to backup no less frequently than the value of work (however you determine value) you can afford to redo.

Cheers,

Bill

#8 Post by **underclocker** » Fri May 12, 2006 8:43 am

I back up Quicken, and other critical data, every time it changes - to a home server/network drive.

All other data, monthly.

System (Windows) and apps., never.

jsteele · #9 Post by **jsteele** » Fri May 12, 2006 10:46 am

I have a multi-level backup strategy for my Thinkpad since it is my home and office machine and I do custom software development as well as my personal activities on it.

I have R&R set to run every day at 00:30. Since the current version of R&R no longer wakes the machine for the backup this one occasionally misses if I quit earlier than that. It prompts to run the next time the machine is started but sometimes I skip it if I'm busy because it really loads down the machine for the half hour or so tha [censored] takes to run.

In addition I use a program called "Second Copy" to backup selected datasets (Quicken, the various current developments, etc) to network strorage at the office and at home at selected times. It runs "in the background" so the overhead is low and it provides a fairly reliable backup. In addition, there is a "pull" backup running at the office that copies the home network storage on a weekly basis. (all the home to/from office stuff is done over a VPN)

On a one-two week basis I also do a full disk-disk sopy to a second hard drive using Acronis. This also gives me a bootable hard drive for physical recovery or use on another machine if need be.

#10 Post by **GomJabbar** » Fri May 12, 2006 11:34 am

jsteele wrote:I have R&R set to run every day at 00:30. Since the current version of R&R no longer wakes the machine for the backup this one occasionally misses if I quit earlier than that. It prompts to run the next time the machine is started but sometimes I skip it if I'm busy because it really loads down the machine for the half hour or so tha [censored] takes to run.

I read the above, and thought you might be interested in the following:

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=15733

ThinkVantage Away Manager

Away Manager readme wrote:The package provides an autonomic feature that utilizes the unused
computing power on your system to perform a variety of maintenance
tasks. You can select the tasks you want the Away Manager to perform,
and configure it to keep these tasks up-to-date without affecting the
system performance when you are using the computer.

Performing these maintenance tasks on a regular basis helps to ensure
that your computer operates at peak performance. The Away Manager
tasks improve performance by increasing your available hard drive
space, making more memory space available, increasing processing
speed, and checking for viruses.

The tasks available through the Away Manager program include:

- Runtime AntiVirus scan
- Norton AntiVirus scan
- Disk Defragment operation
- Disk Cleanup operation
- Disk Backup operation
- ThinkVantage Rescue and Recovery backup operation

jsteele · #11 Post by **jsteele** » Fri May 12, 2006 11:53 am

Thanks, I'll take a look at it.

I also find that R&R is now at version 3.01 and I hade been using a late 2.X version so I'm thinking about upgrading

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