Damn you, technology!

[RitualClarity]

Acronis is an excellent choice for people like me. People that can understand some of the tech and don't really care about the rest. I can give this program to a mother, grandmother, aunt uncle and they don't have to be tech certified. It is for the regular user. There are a large number of videos on the web that cover almost every aspect of its use in terms that the average user can follow. The failing point is this program is for the regular user not a power user. It isn't for heavy commercial users. I work at a place where they use various equipment like what Pride states and they don't use Acronis. If needed they use Norton programs. Even with the change over and the added bloat (likely created for the home user) it is still an excellent base with the tools to do more advanced recovery while still not costing the amounts that someone can buy a car with.

 

The main issue is the individuals need to check and verify that their back up process is working as desired. This wasn't the case with Pride. It don't matter the program or the raid type or number of backups you have if you don't make sure they work. Anything from copying the drive or drag and drop to commercial backup programs and fancy RAID units are only as reliable as the user and their verifying that everything is working as planed.

 

I have had a number of drives die recently (in the last 5 years) many were Seagate. Some were Hitachi. I don't really care if they dye barring the annoyance of creating another backup and the cost of replacement because I have multiple copies of the most important data and at least 2 separate copies of the casual data that isn't important but desired. I am unconcerned because I have proper backups that have been checked regularly enough to be confident that the data contained is in good condition. In fact about a week before Pride had his computer meltdown I had checked a drive and found it unresponsive. Nothing I could do could get it to work properly. Because of the regular checks I was aware of a bad drive and replaced it and backed up the data to the replacement drive to keep the proper # of backups running.

 

I am a home / regular user. I don't have fancy raid units or other devices. I use Acronis only to backup the clean proper install and programs not my personal data. For that I just copy entire drives off to bare drives using a dock. Rotate the drives weekly or when enough data has been changed to need a copy of the current data.

[prideslayer]

The main issue is the individuals need to check and verify that their back up process is working as desired. This wasn't the case with Pride. It don't matter the program or the raid type or number of backups you have if you don't make sure they work. Anything from copying the drive or drag and drop to commercial backup programs and fancy RAID units are only as reliable as the user and their verifying that everything is working as planed.

I made two mistakes. First, I had not configured Ghost to send me emails when the backups were successful or failed. Second, more importantly, I didn't check to see that my backup was up to date before I started doing the array stuff. Remember that I didn't actually have a HDD fail outright -- I just had one making noise, and preemptively replaced it. The replacement I put in was bad (the new WD), and it's mirror in the RAID1 was the original one that was *going* bad (making the noise).

 

If I'd take 5 minutes to ensure my backups were up to date before I started yanking drives out, I wouldn't have lost any data.

 

Simple situation. I knew better, but went ahead anyway. Thankfully all my really important stuff is backed up multiple places, like yours. All my critical stuff fits easily on a 16G thumbdrive, which I sync daily to both my workstation and my laptop. MS SyncToy works really well for this. The only thing I wish is that it would auto-launch whenever I plug the drive in. I could make it do that with an autorun file, but that would mean I have to actually turn autorun on -- and there's no way in hell I'm doing that.

[RitualClarity]

Yep I was aware of your situation. I did state that you didn't verify the backups were working. Even if you started yanking out all sorts of stuff and doing all manner of crazy things that you knew you shouldn't have been doing had the backup been verified functional you could have returned back to where you were. However I believe you discovered that the raid software or chip itself wasn't working properly anyway.

 

I haven't ever lost any data .. ever when I followed the 3 B rule.. Backup, Backup, and Backup. Three separate and distinct backups that are verified working for the data I intend to keep. The only time I have ever lost anything was when I didn't follow that rule. I have done my fair share of pretty silly things omitting steps that I should have done but so long as I have followed the 3B rule it is all able to be returned to normal, eventually.

 

I don't actually use a 16g thumbdrive for daily backups. I just don't trust those things very much. Fortunatly I don't need to have daily updates to my backups as I am a casual user and not working on critical things. I do use thumbdrives for projects and other things that need to move from one computer to another. Don't trust the email or cloud systems they have, don't like them either.

 

I use FreeFileSync to sync my files from drive to backups. I might look into MS SyncToy. I can create batch jobs for my backups, Cross platform, 64bit support, copy locked files Even can check the actual file for any changes (checksum I believe it is called). Features  and of course FREE...

 

I agree there should be no reason in hell to turn on autorun.  That is an entirely different story...

[prideslayer]

However I believe you discovered that the raid software or chip itself wasn't working properly anyway.

Yes, my final conclusion is that the southbridge on the motherboard had started failing. Not only was the raid refusing to rebuild even with all new drives, that I tested with the WD and Seagate tools on my laptop with a USB adapter first, but I experienced a random lockup (or two? I forget) when I was moving data between two external USB drives. The SATA ports and USB (and basically all peripheral connections) are done via the southbridge.

 

I don't actually use a 16g thumbdrive for daily backups. I just don't trust those things very much.

Oh I don't use it for a "backup" per se, it's just a transport of a single directory between my desktop and laptop, that could function as a backup if both of those failed somehow. It has my really important stuff on it like SSH keys, software serial #s, etc. The main reason it's there is to keep stuff like my SecureCRT configuration sync'd between the two computers. The directory that I sync the thumbdrive to is also included in the normal daily backups, which go to an external 2TB USB drive.

 

Once a month or so, I dupe that thumbdrive to another one I keep in a little brinks safe, that also has spare keys, ID, etc.

 

Weirdly, I've *never* had a thumbdrive fail, not counting the one I broke the connector off of. I have some extremely old 256M and 512M ones that still work fine, though they're very slow by today's standards.

 

I use FreeFileSync to sync my files from drive to backups. I might look into MS SyncToy. I can create batch jobs for my backups, Cross platform, 64bit support, copy locked files Even can check the actual file for any changes (checksum I believe it is called). Features  and of course FREE...

SyncToy is extremely simple. You just set a target and destination as a job, and click "run" when you want to run it.

 

If you want to schedule it, you just use the built in task scheduler in windows. I believe it can do what I want (run the sync job whenever the thumbdrive is plugged in) but I haven't dug through the event log to find the correct event for it. Maybe I'll do that now.

[RitualClarity]

FreeFileSync is the same way. Extremely simple or I wouldn't have been able to use it... lol.

 

It can even have a batch set up. I suppose it can even be started with the scheduler as well for timed backups however for me it won't work. I don't keep the backups plugged in or connected to anything except when backing up. Don't need an electrical issue causing me issues. (that happened once)

 

The thing I like about it over Synctoy is the compare file option it can do on files to make sure they are the same. Not just the time or changes but the entire file for complete accuracy. Well as complete as possible. I occasionally use it to make sure that what it has backed up is the same and don't have bit rot or other errors in it. I mostly have DVD's copied. Saves me the problem of dragging them out every time I want to watch a favorite movie. I just click and play. If they start going bad the picture goes bad and I have to rip it again. Not a big deal however with a couple of hundred DVD's it can be a pain. The "compare file" option also has helped me notice that a drive is giving or causing errors before any other signs have happened.

 

The use of the thumb drive makes sense now... before I was like .. ? Why would he do that.. what if he lost it? etc. Now it makes sense. I like the extra copies in a safe. I can see myself doing the same thing if I needed to go from one computer to another on a daily basis.

 

It is also cross platform so when/if I start using Linux or Mac I can continue using the same program..

[prideslayer]

Synctoy can also do a checksum thing as well. I don't use that since the times are all I need, but it's an option.

 

The windows task scheduler is not a strictly time based thing -- it can also be triggered by any event you can find in the windows event logs. That's what I was looking for but so far I haven't found any straight forward event related to when I plug the drive in. I'm sure there is one, but I probably disabled a bunch of event logging when I first installed Win7 to keep the event log size down.

 

The thumbdrive.. yes it's just a transfer thing. I also take it with me when I'm out of the house so I have all that stuff if the place burns down, or if I get some emergency call and have to log into the machines to fix them. I could do the sync over the network but... file shares... no thanks.