   Never try to install a new drive when half asleep!
  Okay--you'd think I would know better by now but just to remind myself in the future and anyone else never ever try to install a new drive when you are half asleep!I just wiped out 400GB which included my code accidently thinking I was backing up my stuff to a ghost image when I was really doing a clone!Now I gotta spend the rest of my day using easy recovery pro to get my data back!Hopefully...   
  I always back up my important files another machine on the network who's only function is file storage, there is no monitor or keyboard attached to it even, so there is no chance of accidental deletion.Its a cheep solution anyone can do to protect then selves from data loss.Build a machine from spare parts or use an old computer you were going to discard. Install a couple of large hardrives, in this case two 500GB seagates.(separate form the boot drive) Then install a backup utility that automatically runs backing up the data from one drive to the other. (This is better than RAID, because RAID only protects from hardware failure, A backup will protect against file system corruption, accidental deletion, accidental formatting of the entire drive AND hardware failure)Then all you have to do is share the primary drive and map the share as a network dive on your regular computer and store all you data there. Whey I have to reinstall MY OS I don't even worry about backing things up because there isn't anything on it in the first place.   ;Quote:Original post by GrainThen all you have to do is share the primary drive and map the share as a network dive on your regular computer and store all you data there. Whey I have to reinstall MY OS I don't even worry about backing things up because there isn't anything on it in the first place.What happens if a lightning bolt runs through your server?   ;  MY absolute most critical files are also backed up to an 8GB flash drive on a separate computer.No backup solution is 100% secure, but what I have adds a great deal of reliability for not much cost: The computer it self I consider free since it was going to be discarded any way. All I had to do was add in a couple of hard drives($109 each) and a Gigabit NIC ($20)   ;  Something similar happened to me a last week, actually. One of our Linux dev machines had a HDD that was starting to show a rapidly increasing number of bad sectors. So I thought, oh well, I'll just clone it right away instead of waiting for the stupid IT guys to butcher it up. Ahem.The OS HDD is /dev/sda. The failing HDD is the data drive, /dev/sdb. So I get an empty spare drive. SATA should be hotpluggable, right ? I plug it in, and behold, Linux actually recognizes it as /dev/sdc. So I do "dd if=/dev/sdb of=/dev/sdc bs=64k conv=sync,noerror". Some weird error of not being able to access block device sdc. I check on the net, and it seems the version of Linux we are running still has trouble with hotplugged SATA drives. OK, whatever. I reboot with the spare drive plugged in, go to a terminal, dd if=/dev/sdb of=/dev/sdc, dum dee dum... (dd is slow)...Suddendly I see a few desktop icons that were linked to a file on /dev/sdb doing strange things. Wait I minute - OH FUCK ! Ctrl-c, Ctrl-c...When rebooting, Linux reordered the devices, so that the spare drive was now /dev/sdb and the failing drive /dev/sdc... Apparently fstab defined the mount points based on HDD-serial number instead of fixed devices.I spent the rest of the day restoring backups [sad]   ;  My backup setup involves Windows Home Server. Every day from 6 to 10 am it automatically turns on all my machines and does a full backup to the server. It only stores data once, so files that don't change over time or are the same across multiple machines aren't duplicated in backups. This means I can keep 20 full backups of each machine without wasting a ton of space. After backup is done the machines automatically go back to sleep.These backups allow you to restore both individual files and entire machines. The latter scenario even works if your hard drive dies and you buy a replacement drive of different size.I also store files on shares on the server. WHS duplicates those across two physical drives, so I can lose a server drive without any data loss.As for backing up the server itself, I'm waiting for the Jungle Disk plugin for Windows Home Server.[Edited by - mutex on August 16, 2008 7:49:24 PM];Quote:Original post by mutexMy backup setup involves Windows Home Server. Every day from 6 to 10 am it automatically turns on all my machines and does a full backup to the server. It only stores data once, so files that don't change over time or are the same across multiple machines aren't duplicated in backups. This means I can keep 20 full backups of each machine without wasting a ton of space. After backup is done the machines automatically go back to sleep.These backups allow you to restore both individual files and entire machines. The latter scenario even works if your hard drive dies and you buy a replacement drive of different size.I also store files on shares on the server. WHS duplicates those across two partitions, so I can lose a server drive without any data loss.As for backing up the server itself, I'm waiting for the Jungle Disk plugin for Windows Home Server.same here. a cheap old computer (some celeron) is now my home server (actually in a vm so i can move the home server to another machine later).haven't thought about the jungledisk yet.. we'll see :)but it's at least great to not have to care about the rest of the families systems anymore :)and the shares are great, too. home server really is a great concept.   ;  I couldn't bear losing any code.SVN helps me sleep at night. I use it for even the smallest of projects.Get yourself some webspace if you haven't already, and setup an SVN or CVS server. It's useful for a more things than just backups.As for the already happened fate of your harddisk, good luck getting it back. Easy Recovery Pro is pretty good, you should be OK with a bit of effort and a lot of coffee.