Backup hell and back!

Well what can I say I should practice what I preach about backups. I have always strongly encouraged my clients to backup their data however as for my data well I was always going to do it next week. So recently I had back to back disk failures. Not only did I have my main disk but also my recovery hard disk as well! No fun for sure so I thought I would blog about my experiences and perhaps some others might be saved some of the pain the I have been though.

Disk failures what can be done? Well generally there are two types of problems and both of them can be cause you heartache:
1) Physical hard disk failure. Physical hard disk failures are the type of failures in which something is physically wrong with the hard drive itself. Perhaps its making a clicking sound or the drive head scratched the platter. It’s very possible that the hard drive may not make any noise at all or that the computer doesn’t even acknowledge the hard drive’s existence.
2) Logical failure is the type of failure in which there’s nothing physically wrong with the drive itself and it working just fine. However, the information stored on the hard drive is in bad shape due to data corruption, cross linked files, bad blocks, etc.

Fist if you have a problem run the built-in tools that came with your computer for Macintosh OS X users that program is Disk Utility and older Windows users use ScanDisk or Check Disk. Windows XP users can run Check Disk by reading tech note # 315265 How to perform disk error checking in Windows XP. Sadly for most OS X users Disk Utility is not going to solve your disk problems other then repairing permissions. So far I haven't had great success with DiskWarrior or TechTool Pro. I do like Drive Genius and Data Rescue II. However some times even the best tools will not be able to save your bacon so your best off having a good backup plan.

What is a backup plan?

Well I could be very complex here but Ill make it very simple for the average user. You should have a local backup and an off site back up. Why do you need both? A local backup is great for quickly recovering a file you might have deleted. Whereas the off site backup is great in cause you suffer a natural disaster or computer theft.

What software should I use?

Well there are lots of options for sure but I am only going to cover some of the most common that I have used. 

Time Machine is great choice of any OS X 10.5 user as it's free and can be used with any USB or FireWire external hard disk. However Time Machine can be extreemly frustrating because if there is a problem your going to have a dificult time tracking down the problem and fixing it. If your interested in the gory details of how Time Machine works then I recomend reading Time Machine Exposed! by Matt Neuburg. Also if you have run into problems with your Time Capsule then check out Save the World, Save Time Machine. 

Backup 3 is not a bad choice if you are a .Mac user. Because with one click you can backup all or most of your data to your iDisk. However depending on the .Mac account you have then you have between 10-20GB of space and Apple is willing to sell you more. However to me this seems to be a pricy option if you plan to also backup your photos and music as I think you will go way over the default disk space.

EMC Retrospect Desktop Edition is a great choice for power users. Infact if you buy a hard disk from many vendors Retrospect Express is bundled with the hard disk for free. The Retrospect software comes with simple scripts and works with both Macintosh and Windows. if you are a power user then you can customized all your backup needs in detail. I like Retrospect and now use it rather then Time Machine.

What do you do if your want to also do off site backups and you don't want to have to think about it? Well there are some very interesting cross platform solutions such as Mozy, CrashPlan, steekup.  Mozy has been my choice because they give you 2GB of storage space for Free! Folks free is hard to beat! Now if you need unlimited space then Mozy cost around $4.95 a month. Steekup seems to be the cheap at around a $1.45 a month but I have not used this service myself as I have been using Mozy and while it's no speed demon it does the job.

 Important note if you have lots of data and you don't plan on sending it to your chosen offsite service (if they offer such an option) then remember it's going to take a very long time to copy all of your data up to their server so plan for that and do keep making your local backups and if at all possible make a copy of your data and keep it in your bank safety deposit box or at your parents house in a fireproof safe. Another thing you want to consider is not using any of the off site services if you ISP is Time Warner Cable as they are now using Internet metering and the cost of backing up could become very expensive for their customers.

I try to keep an open mind so if you want to post about your backup experience with local and remote (off site) cross platform backup solutions Id love to hear about it.