[X4U] Hard Drive Recovery How Ridiculous

[Ed Gould]

On Jun 21, 2008, at 10:20 PM, Zane H. Healy wrote:

> At 5:06 PM -0700 6/21/08, John Baltutis wrote:
>> In addition to Time Machine (requires running Leopard), Carbon  
>> Copy Cloner,
>> SuperDuper!, and Disk Utility, for example, are simple and  
>> inituitive. If
>> backing up isn't part of an average user's paradigm, then they've  
>> haven't been
>> paying attention.
>
> How many people that deal with system backups professionally on a  
> daily basis are lax at home?  My problem is the added expense.  I  
> know what I need, but haven't had the $$$'s to implement it.  It is  
> always a lower priority.  Though now I buy two HD's every time I  
> need a new one, and occasionally use Carbon Copy Cloner to  
> duplicate the drive.
>
> Which reminds me...  I need to back up my Adobe Lightroom library.
>
> Zane
>
>

Zane:

I used to be responsible for my company's back up and DR restores (as  
well as a LOT of other items). I also had a PC back then and really  
worried about the backup issue. Back then (20 years ago) HD's were  
expensive and TAPE was the only option. I was hurting my budget when  
I bought tape (IIRC it was $24 each) The tape did not hold very much  
either(its been ages so I would rather just say I don't remember).  
Backup to tape was really the only option as tape was less expensive  
than disk. Now days disk is cheap and tape is $$ (go figure). One  
thing we always had to worry about was tape errors when restore time  
(and we did have them) happened. The tape technology really improved  
over the years so now its rare that tape errors occur (although they  
still occur). One thing I should also mention is that TAPE capacity  
really improved over the years and that made it even cheaper. Alas  
disk capacity also increased but if memory serves me tape is still  
cheaper. My memory is knotty about tape capacity so I won't say what  
it improved to but a number sticks in my head of 30-40 times what it  
used to be (could be higher).
Now drives are cheap and some manufactures allow what you would call  
cloning but 10-30 seconds to do an entire drive is done everyday.  
Most companies still do TAPE backups however a growing number are  
doing remote cloning of drives (the remote drive is typically 10-500  
miles away) so if a disaster happens a company can be back up and  
running within 10 or so minutes. I worked at a bank and if we were  
down for more than 5 minutes we were fined major time. That was just  
for online banking we had other applications that had a 20 minute  
downtime allowable and we were never fined for any downtime on that  
application (AFAIK). Other applications were not quite as critical as  
next day was "OK".  The PC issue was a real thorny one and in order  
to back up & restore data remotely was doable if the data was  
centrally located not on somebody's desk top. I wasn't responsible  
for the PC arena (thank heavens). The PC people had a different  
mindset than the rest of the company and they didn't think twice of  
saying "oops" (loosing data) if I lost even a small file my boss was  
all over me. I never lost anything major so no "oops" although one  
time a Tape drive did burp and I lost a small file. Luckily it was  
easily re-created. The PC people seemed to be able to get away with  
what I would call murder and loose data like it was yesterdays fish  
and no one yelled. I could never understand why there was a double  
standard like that but there was.

Ed