Have you made backups?

I have my working copy on my internal hard drive, my subversion repository on an 8GB USB flash drive, plus daily backups of the repository on a second external hard drive. Then the [important] contents of my external hard drive backed up to DVD periodically. I should probably get a blu ray drive.

 

I backup daily on two external HDs and two online services (idrive,dropbox). I think that should be enough

 

I backup all my work locally and in the cloud: GitHub for source code and Dropbox for other files.

 

I use USB sticks ant ouside computers personally.

 

I'm also using Dropbox to save my work online and on another computer using synchronization (usually once every 2 or 3 days).

 

I've thought of managing my assets directory that way, I would really miss the versioning features of SVN on code files though. Being able to diff revisions etc.

 

My databases are all replicated to slaves and all get backed up once a day and rotated every three days. My SVN server is backed up once a day with working copies on at least two machines. All desktops/laptops are Ghosted (norton Ghost) to external USB drives at least twice a week. All backups are tested for restore viability. I too learnt the hard way many years ago!!

 

I find SVN's diff and atomic commit features (as well as its approach to logging changes and comparing changes between arbitrary revisions) way too useful to migrate from that to a Dropbox-only solution. What I do is periodically back up my SVN repositories to a ZIP file and upload that to a Dropbox folder.

 

Got a 1TB USB 3 external drive recently and backing up so fast now it's really neat. Also yes I backup my blog comments etc.

 

Server DB is backed up off-site incrementally a couple of times per day. Work on local machine is backed up automatically using MozyPro. Also use versioning software on remote server for code.

 

All you folks who do 'offsite' backups - what internet connections do you have? I have "up to 8mb" and I generally get at least 6mb but upstream is a mere 48k. Do the likes of dropbox perform some magical compression to speed up backups and the like? Or any other solutions for folk like me with crap internet? (I'm UK, btw).

 

This is a really great topic and I'm interested to hear everyone's thoughts because we pondered over this for some time. Online storage seemed really expensive, and though it recently seems to have got a lot cheaper, as DG points out, you're always at the mercy of someone else.

In the end we have a Thecus N5200 with 5 1TB drives running in RAID5, which contains our source control, data and backups. Each user's machine has a work drive which is backed up to the N5200 daily using Acronis True Image.

At midnight, our N5200 in the office uses rsync to mirror to an identical N5200 stored offsite, just in case we're robbed or there's a fire.

 

I have worse upstream: 32kb but doesn't matter, the program runs in background so you just tell which files to backup and it does it automatically when I'm away from PC (iDrive). For Dropbox is similar, I use it with Syncback.

 

You can create an svn repository in your dropbox folder. This works from the point of view of back up if you are working on your own but if you have multiple people checking then it will not end well. Everyone is checking into a copied repository which is then synced to the main one on dropbox servers, chance are at some point changes might be lost.

 

If you're wanting off-site (or local for that matter) backups on the cheap, have a look at CrashPlan. Whilst their "cloud" part of the service doesn't allow storage of business related data, the app can be used for business purposes to backup to local USB drives, other machines on your account and machines your friends/family/co-workers own at remote sites. Plus you get some online cloud storage for your personal files such as irreplaceable photos.

Dead simple to install and configure.

 

Yeah no backups here, I figure if I fuck up it's all the more motivation to build from zero again.

 

Dropbox does a binary diff of modified files prior to uploading so it only has to upload those parts that have changed. The first time is therefore slower (it has to send all the data -- don't know if it's compressed), but after that it does it relatively quickly for most changes.

 

I make a backup of my data about 1 time every month, and I copy it on 2 external HDs, and also on a laptop hard drive. Then I have databases backups every week. Saying that, I had one of my 4 HDs in my main workstation, fault. Working but making strange noises. So I think I'll completely upgrade the workstation with a new tower, with a single HD, this time, with 2 tera.