Life In 19x19

Actually, NTFS supports hard links, symbolic links and something called "NTFS junction points" which is like a special weird hard link for directories. But it doesn't seem like anybody uses them.

Most backup setups for linux have a time-machine like functionality using rsync and hard links, but kudos for Apple for making rsync-style versioned backups usable for the masses. Backups are so important, and it's not like versioned backups are some kind of sci-fi alien technology; I don't know why it's taken this long for them to be made user-friendly.

My basic strategy is that any time I get a new hard drive, I just get two plus an external enclosure. After I get everything installed on the new drive, I image it to the external twin then keep it up to date with rsync. Then when the drive in my box fails, I can just throw in the other drive and keep going. When I move on to the next computer, I can stick the external on a shelf somewhere. I have a stack of old drives that have all sorts of nostalgia fodder on them.

There are also those toaster-style docks. I haven't used them, but they're probably more cost effective if you're using a lot of external drives.

I wonder how much date people backup.

I make a backup (manually copy) of a tiny part of my data files and digital photo's on an external disk I keep next to my PC.
A couple of times a year I put a backup on an old PC I keep at my parents home. (in case of robbery, fire ect.)
This is maybe 100GB of data.

On my main desktop PC I have 4TB of storage most of which is used (75-80%). Creating regular backups of all this just takes too long, and buying the extra storage isn't cheap either.

fwiffo wrote:Actually, NTFS supports hard links, symbolic links and something called "NTFS junction points" which is like a special weird hard link for directories. But it doesn't seem like anybody uses them.

Most backup setups for linux have a time-machine like functionality using rsync and hard links, but kudos for Apple for making rsync-style versioned backups usable for the masses. Backups are so important, and it's not like versioned backups are some kind of sci-fi alien technology; I don't know why it's taken this long for them to be made user-friendly.

My basic strategy is that any time I get a new hard drive, I just get two plus an external enclosure. After I get everything installed on the new drive, I image it to the external twin then keep it up to date with rsync. Then when the drive in my box fails, I can just throw in the other drive and keep going. When I move on to the next computer, I can stick the external on a shelf somewhere. I have a stack of old drives that have all sorts of nostalgia fodder on them.

There are also those toaster-style docks. I haven't used them, but they're probably more cost effective if you're using a lot of external drives.

Yeah, I've always been puzzled by that - NTFS supports several modern filesystem features (well, modern in the sense of "any filesystem written since the 80s should do this,") but the only people who are allowed to actually use them are virus writers.

I think "junction points" are what we call bind mounts. So the people who wrote NTFS maybe were pushing to get away from the crazy, inconsistent "drive letter" scheme (and got beat down by Gates/Ballmer?)

Ah! I might have just figured it out. I bet NTFS was actually written for Xenix (which was supposed to replace DOS and Windows as the "operating system of the future" - before "Cairo" came out managers in Microsoft didn't want to be assigned to the Windows project because they thought it meant they were getting sacked soon.) When they decided they were going to continue using the win32 kernel they probably just grafted the POSIX (well, Weirdnix at least) filesystem onto the OS and called it an "enterprise feature."

fwiffo wrote:There are also those toaster-style docks. I haven't used them, but they're probably more cost effective if you're using a lot of external drives.

I've moved to disk docks in the past couple of years. Fewer cables, fewer power bricks, and, with the exception of drives that I use all the time (I have two externals connected to my Mac), it makes life oh-so-much-easier. Saves a lot of space too.

fwiffo wrote:There are also those toaster-style docks. I haven't used them, but they're probably more cost effective if you're using a lot of external drives.

What are these docks and how do they look? Picture?

They look like... a toaster... and hook up via eSATA, USB or firewire. You can just plug a bare hard drive into it. I don't have a specific one that I've used or recommend, but here's an example: example toaster-style dock

I lost data due to a hard drive crash last year - mostly go stuff, but also some photos. I tried recovering the drive with some softare (on the mac) called DiskWarrior. I let it run for over a week, and it still didn't repair the drive. I finally gave up, and bought a new internal hard drive, and then an external hard drive to use for backups. Now, I use Time Machine with an external hard drive, and it seems to work fine.

I still have my old hard drive from last year in a closet somewhere. My hope is that there will be good enough software available sometime in the future for me to someday recover my data... Someday...

fwiffo wrote:They look like... a toaster... and hook up via eSATA, USB or firewire. You can just plug a bare hard drive into it. I don't have a specific one that I've used or recommend, but here's an example: example toaster-style dock

Ah, thanks.

Kirby wrote:I lost data due to a hard drive crash last year - mostly go stuff, but also some photos. I tried recovering the drive with some softare (on the mac) called DiskWarrior. I let it run for over a week, and it still didn't repair the drive. I finally gave up, and bought a new internal hard drive, and then an external hard drive to use for backups. Now, I use Time Machine with an external hard drive, and it seems to work fine.

I still have my old hard drive from last year in a closet somewhere. My hope is that there will be good enough software available sometime in the future for me to someday recover my data... Someday...

Put it in the freezer for over 24 hours (in a ziplock bag or something so water doesn't condense around it) and throw it in the computer fast when you take it out.

ddrescue if=/dev/sdc of=bad_disk.img

GNU ddrescue (careful, there's a non-GNU program as well, dd_rescue - not as good) is awesome because you can tell it to go back over bad sections reading fewer bytes at a time. I rescued a disk that way and in the end (after 4 or 5 retries) I was able to recover everything but 27 bytes, IIRC. I'll live with a skip in one MP3 file.

ethanb wrote:Put it in the freezer for over 24 hours (in a ziplock bag or something so water doesn't condense around it) and throw it in the computer fast when you take it out.

Just a note: This method will destroy the platters, thus making any future attempts impossible (or nearly so), therefor it should be saved as an absolute last resort. There is also no guarantee it will work. If you have anything very important on your drives, do not attempt this. Send the drive to a pro to take care of (it will be expensive, anywhere from $1000-$5000).

That said, if you don't care about the data on your drive all that much, but would still like to try and get it back, this is a good trick to try.

ethanb wrote:Put it in the freezer for over 24 hours (in a ziplock bag or something so water doesn't condense around it) and throw it in the computer fast when you take it out.

I don't see what this would accomplish other than a cold drive. Why is a cold drive better than a warm? Are warm drives inherently more error prone?

CarlJung wrote:

ethanb wrote:Put it in the freezer for over 24 hours (in a ziplock bag or something so water doesn't condense around it) and throw it in the computer fast when you take it out.

I don't see what this would accomplish other than a cold drive. Why is a cold drive better than a warm? Are warm drives inherently more error prone?

I think it has to do with the mechanic parts being more rigid when cold, especially the head. With less 'wobbling', chances of reading data are temporarily enhanced.

It actually worked for me once, when my HD started crashing after an elongated period of relaxed backup discipline *ahem*. I was able to get about one last hour of operation out of it with three of four overnight freezing sessions.

I don't have any real backup system in place. If I have a document I really care about, I just upload it to some online server (like Gmail). I had my HDD crash before, and I lost all my files, but it wasn't too big of a deal for me as I don't and didn't have a whole lot of important files stored on my computer.