On 4/28/2012 4:12, Patrick Elliott wrote:
> Yeah, have an external USB drive, which I got due to running out of space on
> the other two drives. Its just one of those things.. 1) its the same sort of
> media, to similarly volatile,

All backups are volatile to one extent or another.

 > 2) unless it stays connected, and automatic backups happen, its not a 
certain solution,

Well, yes, you have to run the backups. Hard to blame the technology on 
that. Otherwise, get a second computer and do network backups to it on a 
schedule or something.

3) if you do keep in connected,
> to do that, then some of the stuff that can kill the main drive *will* also
> kill the backup (like power surges).

Sure. Why would you keep your backups connected instead of in a fireproof safe?

> Practical to me means that at least 2 out of the 3 problem above are removed
> from the list of risks (with the, "it dies if the machine does", being one
> of the two in any case).

I think you have an implicit #4 there, which is "it's cheap". Because all 
those problems are pretty easy to solve with a bit of money thrown at the 
problem.

> There are a lot of poor backup solutions, and many of them come with idiot
> problems, like the OS whining about not letting you copy certain files, to
> back them up, which make full restoration a problem, even without the other
> issues above.

Sure. But say you have Win7.  You buy a USB drive, and plug it in. The 
autoplay pops up, and says "Hey, you want to use this as a backup drive?" 
You say yes. It spins around for an hour. It says "OK, all done." You put it 
in the safe.

It also offers to make a bootable CD to use in case of disaster to restore 
what it just made. Make one of those, and put it in the safe also.

Next week, or whenever you get a new program installed, or whenever you copy 
a bunch of vacation photos off your camera, or whatever, plug the drive in. 
It says "Hey, you want to freshen your backup?" You say "Yes." It spins 
aorund for 15 minutes, and then you unplug the drive and put it back in the 
safe.

If you can't trust yourself to make backups when you've just done a whole 
bunch of work on your machine, then the data just isn't worth it to you. I'd 
like a car that doesn't run out of gas if I don't bother to stop at the gas 
station too, but that's not available either.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Oh no! We're out of code juice!"
   "Don't panic. There's beans and filters
    in the cabinet."

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