October 15, 2010 at 8:47 am
Ben Moorhouse (10/15/2010)
With disk space getting cheaper and cheaper, I'm considering doing some basic disaster recovery for home.Copying all music/photos etc onto a big disk and taking it to a relative's house.
That way if my house burns down, I'll still have the photos etc.
I've been burning photos/videos to DVD every quarter or so for the last couple of years and leaving them in my desk drawer at work. It's great peace of mind. My commute is 20 minutes, so even a large-scale disaster probably won't destroy both sets. An added bonus is having a huge album to pick your work PC's desktop background from.
October 15, 2010 at 9:12 am
Doug Lane (10/15/2010)
Ben Moorhouse (10/15/2010)
With disk space getting cheaper and cheaper, I'm considering doing some basic disaster recovery for home.Copying all music/photos etc onto a big disk and taking it to a relative's house.
That way if my house burns down, I'll still have the photos etc.
I've been burning photos/videos to DVD every quarter or so for the last couple of years and leaving them in my desk drawer at work. It's great peace of mind. My commute is 20 minutes, so even a large-scale disaster probably won't destroy both sets. An added bonus is having a huge album to pick your work PC's desktop background from.
At home I've setup a scheduled batch file that zips and encrypts everything under "My Documents" folder to a 2nd hard drive, and then it gets auto-uploaded to an online backup service. Some services will provide a couple of GB storage with a free account or for only a few dollars a year.
"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Instead, seek what they sought." - Matsuo Basho
October 15, 2010 at 9:52 am
Before the corporate buy out axe fell, I was in the process of upgrading our overall system. Part of that was building a redundant servers that would be used as part of the load balancing but in case of failure, the others could be handle the entire load. This was going to be the same for the SQL and application servers later. The older servers were planned to be relocated to another building on site but at a safe distance away and connected by fibre should the server room be destroyed. Backup copies would also be sent there. The cost was far less than being down and unable to use the system for daily work. I'd estimate that DR cost averaged about 5% per year.
October 15, 2010 at 11:59 am
I work for a local bank, so we spend a ton of time & money on DR-related work. ($ millions!) Connectivity, network infrastructure, applications -- everything that we need to run our core business is mirrored to our alternate location. We test every component at least yearly. In fact, tomorrow we have a test of our largest system.
It sucks having to spend so much time on something we've never had to use, but we're all pretty comfortable in knowing that we're covered.
October 15, 2010 at 12:01 pm
ryk 98103 (10/15/2010)
....It sucks having to spend so much time on something we've never had to use, but we're all pretty comfortable in knowing that we're covered.
it's still more fun than spending money on life insurance!
...
-- FORTRAN manual for Xerox Computers --
October 15, 2010 at 4:29 pm
I had two thoughts after reading about the idea of leaving a hard drive of personal files at a friend or relatives house:
1) It's like leaving a house key with a friend or relative. Sure, you trust them now....
2) I remembered a story a friend recently told me when we were talking about the likelihood of identity theft. Until recently, my friend's sister kept personal family information (names, b-dates, ssn, insurance policy numbers, etc.) in a family safe. Someone broke into their house AND the safe. All those papers were stolen.
. The thought being then: even if you still trust that other family and even if you brought over your own mini-safe in case of robbery, leaving a drive at someone's house opens you up to some major security risk.
Of course, I understand that people are probably talking about the kind of files that you may not care too much about if they get out. (Maybe everyone can have whatever prints of the family dog that they want.) But it makes me wonder if some good security on the drive itself might not be in order before dropping the thing off.
Just saying.
October 15, 2010 at 5:35 pm
One govt agency I know had not spent any. Then there was a major scare one day that woke up the management. Then we planned and spent half the IT budget on a DR implementation that has now stabilized to about 20% of the annual IT budget, which includes all DB systems. This DR includes moving right personnel to the remote location if needed, and annual dry runs.
October 18, 2010 at 3:37 am
Doug Lane (10/15/2010)
Ben Moorhouse (10/15/2010)
With disk space getting cheaper and cheaper, I'm considering doing some basic disaster recovery for home.Copying all music/photos etc onto a big disk and taking it to a relative's house.
That way if my house burns down, I'll still have the photos etc.
I've been burning photos/videos to DVD every quarter or so for the last couple of years and leaving them in my desk drawer at work. It's great peace of mind. My commute is 20 minutes, so even a large-scale disaster probably won't destroy both sets. An added bonus is having a huge album to pick your work PC's desktop background from.
Why oh why didn't I think of leaving the drive at work! Bah!
I'm going to be hot desking (given a laptop and left to look for a spare ethernet connection) in a couple of weeks, so that wont work anymore, but is a good idea for those people with their own desks!
October 18, 2010 at 3:58 am
JJ B (10/15/2010)
I had two thoughts after reading about the idea of leaving a hard drive of personal files at a friend or relatives house:1) It's like leaving a house key with a friend or relative. Sure, you trust them now....
2) I remembered a story a friend recently told me when we were talking about the likelihood of identity theft. Until recently, my friend's sister kept personal family information (names, b-dates, ssn, insurance policy numbers, etc.) in a family safe. Someone broke into their house AND the safe. All those papers were stolen.
. The thought being then: even if you still trust that other family and even if you brought over your own mini-safe in case of robbery, leaving a drive at someone's house opens you up to some major security risk.
Of course, I understand that people are probably talking about the kind of files that you may not care too much about if they get out. (Maybe everyone can have whatever prints of the family dog that they want.) But it makes me wonder if some good security on the drive itself might not be in order before dropping the thing off.
Just saying.
I think you need to choose who you trust with data. I would certainly trust my Mam and Dad over a data backup company.
You're right about the burglary risk though - whilst massively reducing the risk of losing data to fire damage, you're doubling the risk of burglary. It's worth adding at least a little bit of security, but I'm not going to go OTT.
October 18, 2010 at 6:58 am
Ben Moorhouse (10/15/2010)
With disk space getting cheaper and cheaper, I'm considering doing some basic disaster recovery for home.Copying all music/photos etc onto a big disk and taking it to a relative's house.
That way if my house burns down, I'll still have the photos etc.
Maybe a bank safety deposit box would be a less risky/more secure location. Of course you have the added pain of going to the bank, especially if they aren't open when you need the disk...
October 18, 2010 at 7:06 am
Ben Moorhouse (10/18/2010)
I think you need to choose who you trust with data. I would certainly trust my Mam and Dad over a data backup company.
You're right about the burglary risk though - whilst massively reducing the risk of losing data to fire damage, you're doubling the risk of burglary. It's worth adding at least a little bit of security, but I'm not going to go OTT.
Encryption is never a bad idea. You're presumably not talking about stuff that would justify a massive expense (as in government or large organization resources). A decent encryption program would stop nosy relatives and a serendipitous burglar.
...
-- FORTRAN manual for Xerox Computers --
October 18, 2010 at 7:16 am
Exactly - just enough to protect my parents eyes from those photos you wouldn't publish or the size of my mortgage! 😀
October 18, 2010 at 7:20 am
milzs (10/15/2010)
Maybe a bank safety deposit box would be a less risky/more secure location. Of course you have the added pain of going to the bank, especially if they aren't open when you need the disk...
Although that would also cost, so we're back at square one - paying for offsite storage with a 3rd party. :-/
November 1, 2010 at 8:22 am
For personal DR, here's what I've done:
- buy 2 NAS devices - I'm using the DLink DNS-323 - ebay $100 for both
- plunk in a couple 1TB drives in each
- create TrueCrypt volumes on the NAS to host your important files (set to automount)
- Use Allway Sync to copy your files to the TrueCrypt volume while your pc is turned on
- Set up scripts on the NAS (it runs Linux) to ftp a copy of the Truecrypt volume to your second NAS which is offsite.
It's been working very well.
November 1, 2010 at 8:44 am
Nice, solution. Tony. I might check that out with a friend, see if we can swap some bandwidth. Especially as my Home Server has died again.
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