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You're not kidding. I had a box (large, cardboard) of floppies full of backed up stuff from school and work. When I got a CD writer, about a third of the floppies would no longer read. Fortunately, out of the 300-400 floppies, there were only a few that I really missed. The rest fit onto a single CD-R.
The only thing I use floppies for anymore are Windows Emergency Repair Disks.
"Think of it as evolution in action." - 'Oath of Fealty' by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
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I only use floppies for when I reinstall windows and it wants to set up a boot floppy.
On another note, when I do find the occasion to use a floppy at work, I find that 9 times out of 10 that the disk has bad sectors even though it's a brand new diskette.
Back in the day I didn't have that problem, dig?
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Having just set up a three-host Peer-to-Peer network for a client that can't afford a tape drive, I've been wondering about the viabiliy of a different approach. I'm considering backing them up to each other. Each night I'll have host A back up to the drive on host B, host B to host C, and so on. The 40GB drives are far larger than these users need, but I couldn't save any significant money by specifying smaller ones. Any drawbacks to this idea?
A New Adjective Is Born!
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Roger Wright wrote:
Any drawbacks to this idea?
A lot 
A real backup strategy needs at least three generations of data stored on independent media stored at different locations or (at least) in a fire resistant place. You are lost, if:
- Your data is corrupted by a virus, accidentaly, sabotation or similar things, and you notice this after doing the backup.
- Your house is burned
- A lightning strike or an electricity problem destroys both machines at the same time
- ...
It depends on the importance of the data if you can live with this.
--
Daniel Lohmann
http://www.losoft.de
(Hey, this page is worth looking! You can find some free and handy NT tools there  )
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Can't be said enough.
Assume your business will burn down.
Most people don't have a media quality fire safe. A normal fire safe will not work with media. A normal fire safe is rate for such things as 400F for 30 minutes where media quality fire safes are rated at 100-150F for 30 minutes. Media won't last long in a fire safe rated at 400F for 30 minutes.
Tim Smith
"Programmers are always surrounded by complexity; we can not avoid it... If our basic tool, the language in which we design and code our programs, is also complicated, the language itself becomes part of the problem rather that part of the solution."
Hoare - 1980 ACM Turing Award Lecture
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At least 2 or 3 times a year it is a good idea to make sure you get some hard copy backups to locations outside of your current country. You never can tell when a serious war will break out. If all of your off site backups are in the same country or, even worse, the same city, you could be at serious risk from nuclear attacks, or even traditional fire bombing.
The idea is to play it safe. Once sufficient data storage is available elsewhere in the solar system, regular off-Earth backups will probably be prudent. You don't want your data to be caught off gaurd by armageddon. Lets make sure that our code outlasts humanity!
Tim Smith wrote:
Assume your business will burn down.
To heck with that, assume everything will burn down.
Ryan Johnston
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Our company is working on such a device.
We are working on lasers to write 137 bit encrypted data onto the moon's surface, much the same way as a CD Writer works. A similar technology is used for reading the data using lunar geostationary satellites.
Lunar backups will be a big thing in the future.
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Wow! Finally a *good* use for that rock. But, why 137 bit? Won't the aliens living on the dark side find that rather easy to crack (what with their alien tech and all)?
---
Shog9
Actually I use to find learning in bars when drinking really useful.
It sort of makes a language liquid. - Colin Davies, Thinking in English?
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Unsure about the aliens Shog9 ... but the 137 bit cipher block riddle has been around for a while, and I doubt anyone has any notion still of how it's to be cracked.
The thing is you can easily encrypt data, but decrypting it is still impossible AFAIK.
I think another name for is the T16++ bog.
Regardz
Colin J Davies
Sonork ID 100.9197:Colin
You are the intrepid one, always willing to leap into the fray! A serious character flaw, I might add, but entertaining.
Said by Roger Wright about me.
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Ah, thanks for the info Colin. I couldn't find any info on it searching Google for some reason, and that Buck was being all mysterious about it.
---
Shog9
Actually I use to find learning in bars when drinking really useful.
It sort of makes a language liquid. - Colin Davies, Thinking in English?
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Shog9 wrote:
and that Buck was being all mysterious about it
maybe he is a 137 bit encrypted member
Mauricio Ritter - Brazil
Sonorking now: 100.13560 MRitter
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The aliens are not on the dark side of the moon but the dark side of the sun.
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Oh. Thanks for clarifying. But, how do you know... 
---
Shog9
Actually I use to find learning in bars when drinking really useful.
It sort of makes a language liquid. - Colin Davies, Thinking in English?
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But when my plan to RULE the Earth begins, everyone shall regret their mockery!!!!!!
Tim Smith
"Programmers are always surrounded by complexity; we can not avoid it... If our basic tool, the language in which we design and code our programs, is also complicated, the language itself becomes part of the problem rather that part of the solution."
Hoare - 1980 ACM Turing Award Lecture
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Not me, I will have my data safely stored on several servers in Mars orbit.
Ryan Johnston
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yup.
i do a full backup and take it to a safe deposit box once a month. weekly backups stay with me at home.
(don't forget to archive a copy of the backup software, too ! )
-c
Though the cough, hough and hiccough so unsought would plough me through,
enough that I o'er life's dark lough my thorough course pursue.
--Stuart Kidd
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We in Germany (Saxonia) have yet a flood greater than the "Sächsische Sintflut" (Saxonian Flood*). *Flood in the bible
Its real desaster which no-one has ever expected. Many people lost everything. Imagine your house and everything in it is washed away!!!
So there is an outside backup essential!!!
CD may worked with this water desaster but a fire would destroy them quickly.
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As stated in the title, didn't we do a "How often do you backup your data etc..." survey a while ago, so why another one so soon?
Roger Allen
Sonork 100.10016
I think I need a new quote, I am on the prowl, so look out for a soft cute furry looking animal, which is really a Hippo in disguise. Its probably me.
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Maybe this is a backup poll
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That was 'how often', this is 'how'.
Suffice to say that last one was due to me *almost* losing data, and this is because I was thinking about how best to actually backup my data now. Two sides of the same coin.
cheers,
Chris Maunder
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I think that first two options (Copy to a spare drive/partition and Copy to a network share) are not actually a methods of backing up but just making a copy.
You can as well copy files to another folder - most likely in the event of data loss you will loose partition, and if you are attacked by virus you may loose network share contents as well.
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George wrote:
if you are attacked by virus you may loose network share contents as well.
Network shares are not the only way to copy from one computer to another.
Ryan Johnston
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I see there are a big portion of ppl use spare partitions/network share for backing up data, and like most of you, I used to backup my data in that fashion... but with recent attacks (or attemps) from the nasty Nimda virus, I only back up my files on either CDs or SCP to my *nix (FreeBSD) box now...
Call me paranoid, but I'm not taking any chances...
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