FileSlinger™ Backup Reminder 04-28-06: Back Up Sagaciously

Apologies for the late reminder message. On the fourth Friday of every month I go to the Bay Area Consultants Network meeting in San Rafael, and I have to leave here at 6:45 AM. I'm a morning person, but not enough so that I can necessarily write and send this reminder before I go out.

Our main speaker today was Ed Correia of Sagacent Technologies, Inc. His topic was mobile connectivity and productivity, but the subject of backups inevitably arose. Sagacent is called in to fix a couple of hard drives every month, and more than once Ed has seen cases where the backup drive and the main drive both failed at the same time.

Ed is less fond of external hard drives as backup systems than I am. I agree with him that if your internal drive can fail, your external drive certainly can, and hard drives, what with their moving parts, are at risk of failure.

On the other hand, every backup medium is at risk of failure. DVDs and CDs can get scratched. Tapes can get tangled up. Flash drives get re-set. Paper printouts can get burned or shredded. Anything at all can be stolen. That’s why the answer to the question “How many backups do you really need?” is “Just one more.”

Ed backs his personal data up onto DVD each week and puts the DVDs in the safe-deposit box, and I think that’s as good a strategy as any. I haven’t developed that discipline yet (first I need a safe-deposit box), but I endorse it. I do make year-end backups not only of my Quicken data but of all my client data, and keep them outside my office.

For enterprise backups, Ed recommends reputable online backup services, the kind that use solid equipment in secure data centers and back their own servers up to other servers. A single drive “server” isn’t really sufficient for a company’s critical data; better to have a RAID system where the drives are mirrored. (Of course, there are disadvantages to that, too: any errors in the data on the first disk will simply be duplicated on all the rest of them.)

And speaking of data, Ed made an interesting point about how much data you carry along with you. He keeps his laptop clean of data except for the presentations that he’s giving with it. For anything else he needs, he connects back to his office computer using GoToMyPC, or relies on his Palm Treo smartphone.

This led to some wag (not me, honest!) asking how he backs up the Treo. His answer: Sprite Backup, about which I’ve seen a few press releases. For about $30 you get a downloadable backup program for your Pocket PC or smartphone. You can make manual or scheduled backups to the flash memory card in your device. Ed Correia has a 1 GB flash memory card, which holds his backups and then some.

After listening to him make his point about what would happen to you if your laptop with all your confidential data got swiped, I couldn’t resist asking what would happen if he lost his flash memory card. “Then I’d be crying in my coffee,” he admitted, though he does sometimes take that card and copy all the information to his desktop machine back in the office. (He also only syncs the Treo to the desktop machine, not to the data-free laptop.)

This demonstrates just how difficult it is not to keep vulnerable data with you if you’re actually going to be productive when you’re out and about. Even if you didn’t bring it with you, you’re likely to create it if you’re out for very long. And whether or not there are security implications, just not having that data (I’m thinking of the numbers in my non-smart cell phone) is a setback.

I have to admit that the password on my secondary laptop (the one I was taking notes on) wouldn’t be too hard to crack. (Really confidential information goes into encrypted files, though any skilled hacker could break into that, too.) I’ve been planning to reinstall Star now that Enna is successfully up and running, and I think keeping her drive empty of anything but what I need when I take her out is a fine idea.

One of the phrases we kept coming back to this morning was Einstein’s line about how things should be as simple as possible, but no simpler. You can set yourself up for trouble by trying to keep things too easy. If you have more than one computer or device, you need to back up each of them.

The extra steps involved in backing up to more than one medium and keeping backups in more than one location can seem like an unnecessary pain. The first time your office or home is broken into, you’ll learn why it was you were supposed to keep data backups offsite, and why it can be worth the monthly fee for the online data service.

As I said to a colleague after the presentation was over, any backup is better than no backup. There is such a thing as a point of diminishing returns. Even so, it’s worth taking a look at your current systems to see whether there’s something you can do which gives you an extra layer of protection against theft, fire, or the failure of your backup hard drive.

FileSlinger™ Backup Reminder 04-21-06: Not-So-Stupid Drive Tricks

Now that you’ve all got your tax returns safely backed up (you do, don’t you?), we can return to something like our regularly scheduled program.

Have I mentioned lately how nice it is to have USB 2.0 Hi-Speed? I just had to reboot my machine after removing the pesky Windows update KB908531 (which garnered itself the headline “On the other hand, the crashed system is very secure”), and it’s wonderful to watch Replicator flicker through copying the 520+ megs of my Outlook PST file to my XHD so quickly.

Speaking of external hard drives, the Ur-Guru just bought one to bring when he comes to visit in June. Like me, he got a new laptop recently, and since he’s going to be here for 6 weeks and working some of that time, he’ll need to make backups while he’s here.

Though Rotterdam has a proliferation of custom-order computer shops (at least relative to El Cerrito), the range of choices in 2.5” hard drives was fairly small, so he ended up with a WD-80 (which, of course, made me think of the can of WD-40 I have in the trunk of my car, and is yet more apt because Western Digital does indeed make a 40 GB model of its portable drive.) So far he’s quite pleased with it: “It's a 5400 rpm model instead of LaCie's 4200 rpm and I think it is noticable. However, what strikes me as quite a feature... it hardly gets hot. In fact, it's been spinning for 2 hours doing backups and copies now and it's only just lukewarm at best. Very nice.”

Back when I got my own 80 GB external hard drive (a Toshiba), 80 GB was the maximum capacity for a drive of that size. Things are definitely changing, but the price difference between an 80 GB drive and a 100 GB drive may have something to do with why there are two 80 GB drives inside my new laptop rather than one larger-capacity drive.

As for the issue of RPMs: laptop drives are normally either 4200 or 5400 RPMs, whereas desktop drives are usually 7200 RPMs. The faster a drive spins, the hotter it gets, and you can’t put extensive cooling systems into a laptop. (The cooling fans the Ur-Guru needs for his systems mean that his office sounds approximately like an airport runway.)

Seagate is shipping its newest 15,000 RPM Cheetah perpendicular drive, which not only spins twice as fast as a standard drive, but can hold more data thanks to perpendicular technology (which is also what’s letting laptop drives grow in capacity). So you can get a very fast 300 GB hard drive—if you’re willing to pay for it and can actually keep it cool enough. The Ur-Guru has a stack of earlier model Cheetahs in a SCSI array, but most home users won’t need or want them.

Nor will most of us need the new 64 GB USB flash drive from Kanguru Solutions. That’s just as well, given its $2800 price tag. Think of all the data you could leave in your pocket and put through the laundry in that! Personally, I’ve found my 512 MB USB drive more than sufficient so far. Give it a few years, though, and the usual will happen: file size will bloat, prices will drop, and soon we’ll need 64 GB for a single Microsoft Word file.

Whether or not you own any flash drive at all, however, you do need to back up your computer. Fortunately, you don’t need to buy the very latest technology in order to do that. There are tons of options and no excuses. Back up. Now.

FileSlinger™ Backup Reminder 04-14-06: Back Up Your Taxes 2006

Yes, it’s that time of year again. Of course, you may be up to your eyeballs in your 1040s and Schedule Cs and too busy to read this today, but it’s not enough just to file (or even pay) your taxes. You have to make sure you keep backup copies of the returns to prove that you’ve done them.

A few weeks ago, the Dutch tax office deleted 100,000 tax returns filed by businesses. When they restored the data from their backups, they came up 35,000 returns short. That’s 35,000 companies, large and small, which have to file again. This is especially bad because businesses are required to file online and the tax office’s computers are still not working properly, which means that in addition to re-filing, many companies will have to pay late fees.

Just to make the situation worse, the Dutch tax office refuses to accept its own online confirmation as valid proof of e-filing. (The Ur-Guru’s words on this subject are unprintable.)

Makes me grateful for the good old IRS—whatever its failings, the Infernal Revenue Service isn’t that illogical. But this story is proof that you can’t count on the government to keep your records safe.

If you still do all your taxes on paper, keep photocopies of the forms and any money you send in, and keep the cancelled checks. For those who, like me, use software to prepare their taxes, keep digital copies as well as printouts.

I’ve used TurboTax Web by Intuit (I’m a Quicken user) to prepare my taxes every year since I became self-employed. Some people prefer the offline, buy-a-CD version because of concerns about internet security, but I haven’t had any problems with the online version and I figure it’s not really any riskier than most of the other commerce I conduct online. Probably less risky, in fact, even though my Social Security Number and EIN are on the tax forms, because none of my bank account or card numbers is on there.

But I digress.

After TurboTax leads you through all its questions and sends you digging through your records (and when will I learn to record my mileage on 1 January?), you get an opportunity to preview your taxes in PDF form. Likewise, after they are completed and filed, you get to print a PDF copy (and this one will say “copy”) on it.

Naturally you should print this, but you should also save a copy of the PDF, encrypt it, and put it onto a CD. The files aren’t large, so you could fit several years’ worth onto one CD, but there’s also something to be said for putting each year on a separate CD, labeling it, and then storing it in a safe place. I recommend encrypting the PDF file itself or putting it into a password-protected .zip file. Use a good-quality brand-name CD and keep it in a jewel case to protect it from dust and scratches.

And store your e-file receipt with it, just in case there’s a massive computer failure at the IRS headquarters.

FileSlinger™ Backup Reminder 04-07-06: The Limits of Drive Imaging

The Ur-Guru, as I may have mentioned, practically has a data center in his home office. I’ve lost track of how many different computers he has, and the fact that he’s got multiple hard drives with virtual machines installed on most of them so he can test new software only makes it more complicated. He’s starting to run out of names for them, and he could create a wall-sized display with his network map. There are businesses with 20 employees who don’t have as many computers or as much data to back up.

If you have more computers than you can count, you need a different backup strategy than people who have only one or two machines to worry about. For years my 80 GB 2.5” external hard drive has been more than sufficient to hold two or three Ghost images of my laptop’s drive (30 GB for Keramat and 20 GB for her temporary replacement, Astarte), plus software installation packages and file backups of my current working files.

But now, as I said last week, I have so much storage I don’t know what to do: my new laptop, Enheduanna, with *two* 80 GB hard drives. If I filled them both up (which the “95% rule” of storage says I eventually will), there’s no way I can back up Enna’s internal drives to my 80 GB XHD.

(Oh, and in case you’re wondering why I name my computers: so I can tell them apart. It’s easier than saying “The Enpower,” “The Dell,” “The HP widescreen.” If you’re wondering why I name my computers after figures from Near Eastern mythology and history, it’s because I actually have a lot more expertise in ancient civilizations and languages than I do in computers. As for why I give them nicknames—because I pick names that are too long. ;-))

Whether it’s my own two-laptop home office or the Ur-Guru’s mind-boggling crowd of machines, however, increased internal storage capacities require a new approach. Naturally he and I started discussing it as soon as I knew I was getting a new computer. Since he’s the one who has expanded his drive capacity so many times that he’s turned file storage into an art form, I thought I’d let him speak for himself. I’m compressing several messages exchanged over the course of a week or so, with a few edits for clarity.

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As the 160GB ‘fills up’ (to whatever degree) the Ghost images also increase by a lot making imaging a very inefficient system. For example, on my laptop I carry some demo data that I can copy back on it at any time, but the total load is like 4GB. If I were to have just one partition on the laptop every image would include that 4GB which is a waste of time and space. That's why I chopped the HD into two partitions. One with mostly ‘static’ data that I need to have around, one system partition that I can backup and image as needed (which includes work-data so that gets to be part of the image).

So you should separate data and system on the two disks so that not all the same stuff goes into each new image. Especially since those images would grow larger over time and as the disks fill up. I have this system where the data is divided into different categories (they may live on the same set of disks instead of separate ones, depending on the system):

- Static
- Dynamic
- Work
- On Hold
- Server
- System

Static is everything that I want on a machine, usually on at least two or three machines, and is data that *never* changes at all except that from time to time stuff gets added to it.
For example, my Deploy share that contains all the stuff I need to install various machines, drivers, apps, etc. and that's like 36GB (all archives and compressed, of course).

Every few months that set of data is updated with updates, new apps, etc. It makes no sense to make frequent backups or images so static data is simply synced and replicated to three machines so they all have the same stuff "handy".

Dynamic data is like static data except it changes more frequently and individual files/folders/hierarchies will change more often. Dynamic data is also treated as static, it's not part of any images and backups are done by archives and replication.

Work data is what I'm working on, current data, etc. This includes projects, source files, URLs, folders, the whole shebang. This is part of images, replication, and archiving and that data is backed up via a "paranoid" level system to ensure several backups exist of that data along with several backups back in time (about 1 month I can go back).
Work data is never backed up "as a whole". Some stuff gets backed up every week, some stuff every day, some stuff gets done twice a day automatically. Work data often gets to be dynamic data over time (as projects no longer get updated or files need to be kept handy but are not likely to change too much. Dynamic data, however, often becomes static data; this includes projects and stuff that need to be kept but will certainly not change anymore (or is very unlikely to change).

On Hold stuff is files that are on hold until I decide what to do. This is replicated on two machines only and data either gets deleted over time or backed up to DVDs for "keeping".

"Server" is data which is replicated between both servers so they can take over at any time when needed. This happens a few times a day, automatically, and once a day it gets collected and archived to another machine which acts as a "safe copy" of the server data, on a daily basis. These archives just keep adding and piling up until I delete the older ones manually.

And then of course there's the system, which is simply imaged. My C: partitions are all 50GB which is sufficient for all machines. Images are anywhere between 9GB and 40GB depending on the system.

I have completely moved away from Ghost these days except for one machine. Now with [True Image 9’s] file level backups and incremental stuff I think I might turn it into my "main" backup app (that is, apart from all my custom scripts that do sync copies on the network). I can’t use Ghost on some of my systems and I don't want to deal with Ghost images and True Image images, I'd want just one thing do "do ’em all", so True Image fits better in that respect. Other than that I do prefer Ghost running outside of the OS which True Image does not.

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I haven’t tried True Image yet, but may find myself using it in the future. In the meantime, I’m working toward an arrangement which will synchronize my working files between the C (system) and D (data) drives on Enna in addition to re-creating the system I had with Kera and Star, where I use Karen’s Replicator to copy my important documents and Outlook data onto the XHD every time I boot the machine and use Ghost for system snapshots.

As of this moment I have 14.4 GB free on my XHD and 57 GB filled on my C drive. That’s going to make storing a Ghost image on the X drive challenging, even with high compression. (As for copying the D drive—that’s what DVDs are for, until and unless I get one of those nice network attached storage devices. DVDs can be mailed elsewhere or stored in a safe deposit box, though.) But I already have the basic system installation and major applications saved in Ghost images, so it may be time to look at True Image and start going the incremental route.

I’ll let you know what happens.