When the building burns down, my main concern will be getting out of the building. If the a third floor London flat floods my main concern will be surviving the apocalypse. If someone steals my computer, I won't have a computer to install the backup back on to.

I know offsite backup is ideal, but it's a step too far for what is essentially expendable data. My concern is that when the drive packs in I won't have to spend a day re-installing my OS and all my applications, re-activating them, setting up my dev environment etc. This is something I can do, but it costs me time, RAID mitigates that particular risk. If an event occurs resulting in the loss of my entire computer, I'll take the hit.

hedwards - what do you mean "RAID doesn't always do a good job o making sure the files are properly written."?

The best tip I've found is to regularly burn your important data on discs, have one set in your home and then make sets for your trusted friends to have at their homes. If a disaster occurs it's unlikely to happen to ALL of them at once.

The holy trinity of data storage: Backup, Spinrite, Backup. And Backup.

Knock on wood, I've never lost a primary hard drive! :D

Sadly, I have only myself to blame for all the files I've destroyed over the years. :(

Thanks, I think I was looking for something like that to verify that the 2 terabyte 1:1 backups from one USB drive to another are truly 1:1. I personally think the filesystems, copy tools etc. should be bright enough to make sure every bit is in order and stays that way too, but maybe they aren't...

I don't know why though, Trend Microscan blocks this DVDsig web site as a "verified fraud page or threat source":

[url=http://members.ozemail.com.au/~nulifetv/freezip/freeware]http://members.ozemail.com.au/~nulifetv/freezip/freeware[/url]/

It was the top link in google search for "dvdsig". The other links in google work though. Probably a false positive then, Trend Microscan also blocks replacementdocs.com etc. as similarly "verified fraud page".

I back up my data partitions to an external drive, but that's about it. I recently found out about Ocster 1-Click Backup, and that makes things easier. I even considered buying the $20 10-license deal they have now and give it away to people here and on other forums, but then I saw that it's one key with 10 uses, which means I have no control (can give away to one person and he'd use all the licenses).

I did, since 2005, replacing as needed... Interesting coincidence actually, since I've been having a computer since 1992 and didn't have HDD failures before. (Don't blame the 2004 one on the drive, wasn't mine, I had moved and my computer followed me later, so it was on the one I was using at the time and had been quite abused before, I heard.)
Still, the 2007 one was on a drive that was just weeks shy of 5 years old, and this other model that failed in 2009 and this year was apparently known to fail frequently. Seagate Barracuda ES.2, I got it just because it was listed as more reliable and tough luck... When I bought it it was newly released, so no complaints then, but by the time of the first failure there was a flood of them on sites, many saying it just lasted 6-7 months, so the year and a half it lasted for me was already good. Then was extremely careful with the replacement (well, 2nd replacement, first was dead on arrival...) and it held on for 3 years, but then failed again. 5 year warranty, so still have a few months and at least always got a free replacement so far, but won't be putting much faith in this one now...

Speaking of warranties and of the fact that they shouldn't be failing that frequently, after manufacturers had initially taken them up to 5 years you may remember the time they said they can't sustain that anymore and dropped to a single year. Since then, they had increased back to 5 at the time I got this, but looked now and saw that nearly all HDDs now just have 2, only a few models at 3 and just WD's 10000 rpm ones still at 5. At least in the shops from here.... So they must know something. Guess everybody's moving to SSDs now and HDDs are just made to be as cheap as possible and, well, buyer beware, you're on your own.

As for this entire conversation about online backup services, I have serious issues with cloud... anything, largely starting from the fact that I have to trust my data to somebody else.

Once or twice. Now I keep a back-up of my system (not games, just windows and applications) with Acronis (HIGHLY recommended), it works really good. I had some virus issues two or three months ago and I just swapped to my older, safe backup and everything was fine, very useful.

Back up the back up is expensive but I'll get around to it.

A good provider like Crashplan lets you specify your own encryption key that's used before data is sent over the wire. If that's not good enough, then you probably shouldn't be connected to the internet at all.

No, at that point you should learn to code yourself. :P

LOL, I suppose if you're really that paranoid, you could always keep an encrypted mirror and ban the client from reading data from anywhere else.

Personally I prefer not to use the cloud either. I live in a very dry part of the country so
I think that might have something to do with the fact that my hard drives haven't shown any real problems after 3-4 years of regular use, knock on wood. There has been some bit rot, most noticeable on the subtitles for certain shows which seem to be gradually disappearing.

Nonetheless I don't live in an area with near-ubiquitous access to the internet and the connection I have now is slow as molasses so having access to my movies and games when I don't have great access to the internet is crucial for me.

By the by, can anyone recommend a good brand of external hard drive? I need a new one exclusively for my burgeoning GoG collection. All my hard drives so far have been WDs which have been great so far but I was wondering if anyone else can give me their experience with them and any other good brands out there.

I have not had a personal computer for several years. Initially, I created a "PC to go" on a USB stick, and loved being able to turn any PC into "my" PC.

And then I lost the USB drive. Needless to say, somebody out there knows FAR too much about me. I am hoping the person wiped the drive for personal use, but you never know,...


Needless to say, I learned about encryption the hard way, and data loss.