Community poll forum: How will you retrieve your personal data after a disaster?

I backup all my impotant data to usb drive and cd/dvd and keep it in a fireproof safe. i keep important papers in there as well. i keep all my bills, ledgers, and such on usb drive with cd backup not on my hard drive because they crash. i'm more worried about harddrive crashes than fires.
The safe made me prepared for both.

Hi Marc,
The subjectively most elegant way I have come across (and use) is by a combination of ''other'' and ''USB'':
1. All personal data, operating system Linux Puppy 2.01, and applications are on a bootable 1.4 gig DVD-R (CD will do too), which can retrieve data also from HD:s (PATA or SATA; NTFS, ext. 3, etc. will do) mini-DVD. If the machine has a DVD ''burner drive'', any retrieved data can just be saved to the same DVD.
OR (if the machine does not have a writeable CD or DVD drive):
2. Boot from same mini CD or DVD as above, mount USB device, access the HD, retrieve data, and transfer to a mounted USB.
Cheers
''septus''

I have all paper documents in a safety deposit box with local paper copies in a fire proof safe. All electronic copies are backed up to a RAID 5 server in a remote location.

I enthusiastically signed up for Mozy yesterday. Prepaid the two years (very reasonable) fee and started uploading 200 GB worth of my photographs. Guess what? It would take a year and a half to complete this task. The average upload speed is ~20 kb/s. Their customer service remotely logged into my Mac Pro (Leopard OS) but found no problem. I tested the Comcast upload speed. It is 2000 kb/s. I sent Mozy an email requesting refund and cancellation. Let's see what happens.

It's a shame. They offer the best rates, nice people but not up to what they advertise...... or they want to eliminate customers who try to take advantage of the unlimited space.

Yes, Mozy is free. But, even with the paid version, the backups work sporadically with server errors, connection errors, etc. That MIGHT be OK if the technical support was responsive but it is not. I recommend going with your own virtual server backup or with something like Amazon S3 or JungleDisk.

I have a 1 TB (4x250GB) striping raid. Its about 90% full - I do video editing and other digital content creation For me its way too expensive to buy backup storage. I bought a 120GB hard drive and back stuff up to that but it can only hold so much. DVDs are soooo small, I often have files over 15GB that I can only backup by ripping to minidv tapes which is slow and painful. The bad part is that I'm in college so I'm carting my comp off to adn from dorms all the time so its in risk of damage from other stuff besides floods. The problem w/ internet backups is ISPs. They are just dumb because you can't buy decent upload speed unless you pay over $150/month. so even if there were viable internet sites for large backups it would be impracticle for anythign over a few hundred MB. If I had money I would setup a server at a freinds house and just back my stuff up to it every so often...but then the upload speed is so brutal it would be a waste of time

As you say, nobody likes to think about disasters happening, but as we all know - they do from time to time. Thats why our studio manager Brian at G3 Creative has installed software called Retrospect which backs up all our data on two seperate DAT drives, one of the drives is portable and is locked in a fire proof safe deposit box and the other remains onsite.

www.g3creative.co.uk

No kidding. I'm not sure I'd mind if my personal data got destroyed.

$86,000+ in school loans...gone. Hopefully, anyway. Knowing them, they'd find a way to track me down regardless.

The backup systems are not set in cement but I reckon for most eventualities mine works quite well.

You need two hard drives in your machine and a USB2 portable drive if possible.
From the many offerings of backup software, I chose Acronis, simply because the ''lite'' version came with a USB hard drive.

The slave hard drive has two partitions. (its an Iomega 250 Gig HD)

On the one partition I keep My Documents, My Music (Separately) and any other historical stuff, such as from previous PC's etc)

On the second partition I keep Image backups of my hard drives using Acronis. These I update as I feel necessary.

I also back up the latest Image and the My Documents folder to the portable drive, again, as and when I feel necessary.

It may sound complicated (or not) but if you require to re-install Windows, such as I have done recently, then you only have to point to the 2nd drive and My Documents to pick up where you left of.

These steps work ok for me. Mozy seems quite a good idea too!
One word of caution regarding DVD's etc. Always choose a top quality brand. Products do vary and some last better than others.

Best reagrds to all, Bob

100% of my prime data I keep both at home and in the office, as they are 25 miles away from each other. How? I relay zipped info by email every single day. My work, private (poems, short stories &c) and office (spreadsheets, a few letters, calculations) is thus reasonably safe. Additionally, in the office, I keep copies of the more important bumf in my HD and in the server, while my writings go also to CDs (all drafts and 'final drafts') or diskettes.

Now, what is disaster?: Katrina? hackers? forest fires? floods? lightning? kids? Buenos Aires (and its environs) is a city free from most natural disasters as quakes and the other mentioned. Certainly we have floods from time to time but these only affect the lowlands. Our office is well above the floodlines of the past 100 years; I live in a two-stories house (ground floor plus plus two on top) in a neighbourhood close to the River Plate but on very high ground, a hill, and my PC is in the top floor. I feel quite secure in this way. Am I missing something?

Besides the fireproof box at home, I have a laptop roller bag, and digital backups on three external hard drives.

Written plan which lists the most important items to take when evacuating within five minutes.

External hard drives are put in the laptop rollerbag, fireproof box, jewelry, wallets, Glock 9mm handgun, photo albums, and two suitcases of clothing are packed in both vehicles.

I live in the Virgin Islands and have been through some of the worst hurricanes in history. I have a small fireproof safe secured by bolts to the floor in a closet. My personal papers are in ziplock bags and backup scan discs with important financial data are all in the safe. A "goldenrod" or other means of preventing mildew is important in damp climates.
Make an attempt to cover your computer and electronics with a waterproof tarp or plastic bags just before a storm and move them away from windows and up off the floor in case of flooding. In case you aren't able to get back in your home immediately after a disaster, you should pack a bag in case you need to evacuate. You could scan in documents like birth certificates, insurance papers and also any financials you may need onto a scan disc type storage that anyone's computer can easily read. Always get back into your home as soon as possible, get the plastic off the electronics and wipe them down because hurricanes are all salt air. If there is a lot of damage and everyone has evacuated, looting is a possibility even in private residences and few theives will take the time to break into a safe they can't move. Most important thing is to be prepared for the worst and then hope for the best.

I have backup systems online.. some little files i also backup to my gmail.