Copy is shutting down

[sadievan]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Yep. Perhaps even more. I learnt the hard way, many years ago, after a "grinding metal" disk crash. Now I make daily backups of my important stuff onto an external drive, and a weekly mirror of that external drive onto a second one.

I subscribe to the theory, 'it's not if your hard drive will crash, it's when your hard drive will crash'.

I too make daily backups.

[badgoodDeb]

Originally Posted by Sweetpea

Also, even if you use, let's say, an external HDD, which you then put away (either in your house or somewhere else), that one can also break down. So, no matter what choice you use, as long as it's only one backup, you can still lose your data.

External HDDs are cheap enough that I keep (occasionally) buying another. I've now got 4 (5? I forget) in rotation for my backups, plus another doing more regular Time Machine backups on my mac.

I don't do these backups *often* (once a week for the Time Machine, and once a month for the total-system-copy to one of the HDDs). But then, I don't *do* much on my home machine, since I've spent all day at my work machine. I only do email, really. I store my ebooks and audiobooks at home, but I generally have them at work too. So my frequency makes sense to me.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by badgoodDeb

External HDDs are cheap enough that I keep (occasionally) buying another. I've now got 4 (5? I forget) in rotation for my backups.

Heh. I have two 1 TB HDD's as backups for my desktop hard drives.

I also have one 2 TB HDD as backup for my laptop hard drive. Both of those are split into two 1TB partitions to mimic the desktop setup.

I use the laptop's backup drive to keep my desktop (and through it, its backups) and my offline backup in sync.

This, in the end, I have 5 backups of my data: laptop (+backup), desktop (+backup), offsite.

The most important backup is the offsite one, however. If my house would burn down, I'd lose four backups at once. Maybe I should create another offsite one...

(Besides all of this, I also have an old 250GB, 160GB, and 80GB external hard disks I bought in the past. I now use them to move large data, such as disk images, as 128GB+ USB-sticks are still quite expensive to just have a few lying around.)

[Ellachanted]

Originally Posted by Sweetpea

I use OneDrive (Microsoft's cloud solution). It works almost the same as DropBox. It has clients for Windows (mobile and desktop), Android and Ios.

I have my library synced across three devices (two tablets and a PC) and never had a problem. I've been known to open the same library on multiple devices at the same time and the only thing that happens then is that the machine that closes the database last makes a new .db file and I'll have to figure out which one I want to keep (but that's entirely my own fault!)

Thanks. I wasn't sure One Drive would work. But I know I can get 15 gbs on it.

[Katsunami]

Why is it a bad idea to trust a cloud (whichever one) as your only storage?

Here's an example

For some reason, an Adobe's Creative Suit update removes all data in the first folder it encountered in the storage space. While you won't lose all data, you might lose an entire project.

The latest update fixed the problem, but if you were under the impression that your data was safe 'because it's in the cloud', then you could get to swallow a very bitter pill... especially if the project you're working on must be delivered tomorrow and is (was...) called "AAA Marketing Techniques for Startups" or something.

edit: From this article, it's not 100% clear to me if the Adobe software removes content on the local drives, or on the cloud storage. It could be that this is a local issue. Still, it clearly shows why having at least one independent backup is important.

[latepaul]

Buggy software deletes data. That could never happen with local storage. No wait, it could.

That's not a reason to not use the cloud. It's a reason not to have only one copy of important files.

Also, almost no-one uses "a cloud ... as [their] only storage" because the most popular cloud storage solutions are sync-based so there's two copies one local, one in the cloud.

[ApK]

Originally Posted by latepaul

Buggy software deletes data. That could never happen with local storage. No wait, it could.

That's not a reason to not use the cloud. It's a reason not to have only one copy of important files.

Also, almost no-one uses "a cloud ... as [their] only storage" because the most popular cloud storage solutions are sync-based so there's two copies one local, one in the cloud.

He did say that. Twice, in fact, after his edit.

But as smart phone and tablet makers remove sd slots, and try to force people to use their cloud services to REPLACE their non-existent local storage, we're seeing more and more people keeping their one and only copies of stuff in the cloud.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by ApK

He did say that. Twice, in fact, after his edit.

But as smart phone and tablet makers remove sd slots, and try to force people to use their cloud services to REPLACE their non-existent local storage, we're seeing more and more people keeping their one and only copies of stuff in the cloud.

In case of a phone, it might actually be more secure if the device does not have an SD-card. I'm unable to count the times that people have asked me if I could recover their data (stored locally) on a phone they just dropped onto the pavement.

If it's on a phone, nobody ever makes backups.

[Purple Lady]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

In case of a phone, it might actually be more secure if the device does not have an SD-card. I'm unable to count the times that people have asked me if I could recover their data (stored locally) on a phone they just dropped onto the pavement.

If it's on a phone, nobody ever makes backups.

I guess I'm a nobody. I use Titanium Backup weekly to backup my apps and app data and sync to Dropbox.

[Apache]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

In case of a phone, it might actually be more secure if the device does not have an SD-card. I'm unable to count the times that people have asked me if I could recover their data (stored locally) on a phone they just dropped onto the pavement.

If it's on a phone, nobody ever makes backups.

Originally Posted by Purple Lady

I guess I'm a nobody. I use Titanium Backup weekly to backup my apps and app data and sync to Dropbox.

I also backup the data on my phone.
Apache

[HarryT]

My iPhone is backed up to iCloud, and obviously all the important stuff I copy to my phone, such as books or music, is backed up separately.

[Blossom]

Same here I backup my phone.

[HarryT]

Is there a standard (ie provided by Google) way of backing up an Android phone, as Apple provide iCloud?

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Is there a standard (ie provided by Google) way of backing up an Android phone, as Apple provide iCloud?

In newer versions of Android, the phone backs itself up to Google's cloud. You can choose to do so, or not, during first setup.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

In newer versions of Android, the phone backs itself up to Google's cloud. You can choose to do so, or not, during first setup.

Thanks. Same on an iPhone.