Backup onto internal IDE or external USB..???

[leoblob]

Let's say you have a desktop computer with two IDE hard drives. One drive (C) has all your stuff on it. The other drive (D) is just along for the ride.

You want to back up C by cloning it onto another drive. The obvious target drive would be D (since it's not being used anyway). But what if something catastrophic (like a power supply failure) wipes out both hard drives? Aren't you better off cloning C to an external USB-connected hard drive? Once the cloning is done, you simply unplug the (cloned) drive, and it has no physical connection to the computer at all.

Or am I just being too cautious/paranoid??

[rkawakami]

Best of all backup techniques is to use an external drive (like the USB drive you mention) and then store the backup "off-site", meaning physically away from the original system. This way if your entire system were to be lost/damaged, you would still have your data. Depending upon how often your data gets changed, and thus, how often you need to create a backup, you could store the backup in a secure location like a bank safe deposit box (going to an extreme) or in a fire-proof box at home (probably more realistic).

[Kyocera]

Ray is right on, for some of our stuff at work I use a smart drive, clone the OS on one partition and use the rest of the partition for backing up historical paper files we are trying to shred. If the original PC drive fails, I can install the clone and have the files in the free space. Our server of course uses a tape drive but I still don't trust those a whole lot.

[leoblob]

Thanks! Looks like I'm not being paranoid after all!

[rkawakami]

I'll be the first to admit that I, myself, don't practice entirely safe backup procedures with my systems at home. For the irreplaceable data like digital photos, I've burned at least two copies on CD, in addition to keeping them on assorted flash cards, but they are still located in the same room in my house . It's been a couple of years since I backed up my wife's Gateway computer and the other Gateway tower system I have at home. The Thinkpads are in slightly better backup condition as I've cloned my main T23 onto a backup system. But again, at night, they are about five feet from each other . I don't think I've backed up my younger daughter's 600X system this year. My older daughter in L.A. was given two extra drives, Ultrabay adapters, port replicators and floppy drives so she can backup her two T23s (her's and her boyfriend's). She probably has more recent backups for her systems that I do since she has had a couple of virus infections and hard drive crashes in the last few years.

With the systems that I am responsible for at work (two Sun Ultra 5s), I use an external tape drive (Seagate SCSI DDS-3 drive) to backup the disks, but again, I keep the tapes in the same building (in my cube but it's far enough away from the test floor, I think...).

It all gets back to how important is the data to you and how hard it would be to re-create it if it's lost.

[leoblob]

I do back up data onto CDs and put them in my safe deposit box... but I only seem do that about once a year. (And besides, I'd rather clone the whole drive than have to re-install the OS and the applications)

But, even though my bank is half a mile from my house... you think about something like Hurricane Katrina, and you realize even taking measures like that may not be enough in certain tragic situations (not that my data is all that valuable...)