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I've seen several companies where everything claims to backup correctly, but either the tape can't be read back, or no one knows how to properly restore from a backup, especially when the entire computer (it's OS, etc) needs to be replaced.
I've found this to be especially a nightmare with tape drives, where new OS's don't support older tape systems, and older tapes can't be read by newer drives.
Backup is only half of the picture.
Marc
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User: Hi, i cant see my data.
Techie: Did u backup?
User: Why? Is it gonna blow?
Should really be in picture format 
MYrc : A .NET IRC client with C# Plugin Capabilities. See
http://sourceforge.net/projects/myrc for more info. 
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...how to backup my data using CFont. It sounds so elegant, a software-only solution! 
---
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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A company I used to work for closed the office I was in and laid everybody off. The contract I was on still had about three months of work left, so they hired me back as a consultant and sent their microVAX home with me.
The tape drive in the machine died, so I called them to have a DEC service call placed. "What? You've got to be kidding? We can't afford a $200 service call!"
I finished the job, and pleaded with them to have a service call made so I could back up the work I'd done (a 200,000+ line simulation program). They still refused. I printed a listing of the simulation, and shipped the machine out to them.
When it arrived, there were holes in the box, and dents in the case of the machine. It appears that someone drove a forklift into the side of the box. Needless to say, the hard drive was trashed. They tried several data recovery companies, all of which refused to try to recover the data.
I ended up taking the listing I'd made to Kinko's and having a copy made, and shipping the copy out to them. They then hired in a staff of 10 temporaries to type it all back in. The program never worked (in fact, they couldn't get it to compile, there were so many mistakes), and as a result, they were never paid the balance on the contract.
At least I got paid...
"Think of it as evolution in action." - 'Oath of Fealty' by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
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At my work site, which shall go unnamed for now, has me backing up their business accounting data every day to a zip disk. OK...That's not so terrible. What's terrible is the fact that everyone has access to the fireproof safe where the disks are kept.
Wait!! It gets better. Accounting never locks the safe.  Oh, there's *usually* no money in it but if the building burnt down, the contents of the safe would easily be destroyed. They don't seem to care and I'm sure the moment I say, "I told you so!" I'd be looking for a new yob!!
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Sounds like we work for the same company! They do exactly the same thing, except they don't use zip disks!
Marc
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Back in my network tech days I used to go onsite for many different clients and whenever it was a new client I would always at some point check their existing backup system.
We had a new client that was a carpet store (sell carpeting) and they had a fairly large Lantastic network (this was some time ago) and a good old Colorado tape backup system.
After reviewing their network I spoke to the owner and asked "how's your backup system running?" to which he replied enthusiastically: "No problems there at all! It's been running perfectly for 3 years and we're very careful to make sure we change the tapes every morning. In fact it's excellent! The whole backup takes only about 30 seconds!"
"30 seconds?" I say incredulously. (back in those days a backup operation usually would take all night even with only a few hundred megabytes).
So I check his setup and it turns out none of his tapes were ever formatted from when the original technician had installed the backup system and so when he started the backup it would initialize then exit with a quick flashed message saying the tape was not formatted which they apparently never saw.
When he found out that he had been faithfully changing the tapes every day for three years for no reason he wasn't very happy about it!
But the final kicker came when we formatted the tapes and tried it and found there was a hardware problem with the tape drive but it was out of warranty!
Ground Zero Tech-Works
http://www.ayanova.com
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J Cardinal wrote:
But the final kicker came when we formatted the tapes and tried it and found there was a hardware problem with the tape drive but it was out of warranty!
Gotta love that
- Matt Newman / Windows XP Activist
-Sonork ID: 100.11179
"You can't seriously believe that you could get away with suing someone over quoting text from a message posted in a public forum, can you?" - John Simmons
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Come on, get out of your egg.;)
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We do a nightly backup to a partition on each server, then those a copied to another dedicated backup server on a nightly basis. That server is then backed up to tape nightly with the tapes rotated and a week's worth kept. Then weekly CD's are burnt and taken off-site, currently looking at moving to DVD-RW because we're up to 4 or 5 CD's.
William
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Can anybody explain me what column '%' means? Or explain to programmer of this site what percentage means! In previous survey total of this column was 250%, in this survey it is already more than 150%. Very informative column!
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Moreover the total of responses is not correct, this may be the reason for wrong values in % column.
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Good backing up requires more than one media, so the response should be above 100%
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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Multiple choice.
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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As mentioned, I believe that this is because the code is more meant to handle 1 single choice, and not multiple choice. Since more than 1 selection is allowed per-person, the total is greater than 100%.
: Dean 'Karnatos' Michaud
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Since it is a multiple choice survey the % column indicates what percentage of people checked that particular box. Theoretically all of the %'s could be 100% (if every person picked every box). So it isn't a column that is meant to be added up anyway.
Ryan Johnston
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Ryan Johnston wrote:
Theoretically all of the %'s could be 100% (if every person picked every box). So it isn't a column that is meant to be added up anyway.
It should just be normalized
MYrc : A .NET IRC client with C# Plugin Capabilities. See
http://sourceforge.net/projects/myrc for more info.
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Every few days I zip up my code (which I keep under \work so it's easy to zip) and copy it to a Zip disk. My work dir fills up a Zip in about 3 backups, but I figure 3 snapshots is good enough for me.
Then I have \software and \media where I store stuff I download and want to keep. Once the sum of all un-archived data reaches ~600 MB, I burn it to a CD, then keep any files I really want and delete the rest.
I've actually not lost any data in years (a 1.2 GB drive died in like 1997 and had some movies & stuff on it) but I keep up this practice Just In Case.
Now all I need is an indexing system so I know which CD (I have about 10) holds which picture/movie/program.
--Mike--
Just released - RightClick-Encrypt v1.4 - Adds fast & easy file encryption to Explorer
My really out-of-date homepage
Sonork-100.19012 Acid_Helm
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Just out of interest, how do you know which data needs backing up? By the Date Modified? I've been thinking of implementing a similar system 'cause I've got about 3 gig stored in my profile (single machine) and much of it is currently not backed up, apart from the really important stuff.
I've also considered CDRW, but figured that for the price of 15-20p / disc with the added advantage of 40x writing, I might as well use standard CDRs so it reads anywhere.
--
Andrew.
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Andrew Peace wrote:
how do you know which data needs backing up?
The archive attribute! That's its purpose, after all. 
I do a dir *.* /s /a:a in both dirs to see the size of all files not yet backed up. After making a backup, attrib -a *.* /s to clear the attribute from everything in the tree (including the files I just backed up).
--Mike--
Just released - RightClick-Encrypt v1.4 - Adds fast & easy file encryption to Explorer
My really out-of-date homepage
Sonork-100.19012 Acid_Helm
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Hey Mike,
I do just the same as you and as well I'm trying to find a proper indexing program which allows to keep a shallow copy (only names, no data) of the CD on Disk.
I've such app somewhere but can't remember where. What the program did was just maintaining a database of CD's (you let the proggy scan them), which you could view "offline" in a TreeBrowser as if it would be the original file-system. Plus some additional search features.
Well if you come across this program or an equi. good solution, let us know
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, however, there is.
(unknown author)
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Wouldn't touch 'em with a barge pole. The number of times I've had floppies fail on me is incredible, I simply have no trust in them whatsoever. Nearly everything I have on floppy I have on HD or CD.
In fact, for me, it's more a case of backing the floppies up onto the hard drive than backing the hard drive up onto floppies  .
As for my actual backups, I tend to use CD-Rs. I'd like to use DVD-RW but I can't afford a drive 
--
Andrew.
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If you want to use floppies propery you must use cyrogenics,
and a slow warm up process so they don't crack.
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