Backups - why are they such a PITA?
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The Hackers destroy website[^] thread in the Lounge, and the abuse of the poor sods who lost all that work for not having a backup got me thinking. Why are backups such a PITA? When did you last backup your home machine? When did a proper formal backup of your work servers happen? In my case: Work - daily (GFS, latest taken off site nightly. Security risk, yes, but trusted employee and better than nothing) Home - last time I re-installed windows. (The wifes' PC even longer) So why doesn't Windows come with good backup software built in, then prompt people to do one regularly? XP does have backup software, but even microsoft say 'You may have to do some digging to find it'[^] The number of friends who say "my PC crashed, and I lost everything" - to which the normal reply is "Did you have a recent backup?" does get ridiculous. Does Weven improve this? Will Wait? Or Whine? Doubtful. But it would save so much hassle in the long run...
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The Hackers destroy website[^] thread in the Lounge, and the abuse of the poor sods who lost all that work for not having a backup got me thinking. Why are backups such a PITA? When did you last backup your home machine? When did a proper formal backup of your work servers happen? In my case: Work - daily (GFS, latest taken off site nightly. Security risk, yes, but trusted employee and better than nothing) Home - last time I re-installed windows. (The wifes' PC even longer) So why doesn't Windows come with good backup software built in, then prompt people to do one regularly? XP does have backup software, but even microsoft say 'You may have to do some digging to find it'[^] The number of friends who say "my PC crashed, and I lost everything" - to which the normal reply is "Did you have a recent backup?" does get ridiculous. Does Weven improve this? Will Wait? Or Whine? Doubtful. But it would save so much hassle in the long run...
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OriginalGriff wrote:
Does Weven improve this?
It ships with easy-to-find, easy-to-use, but rather bare-bones software. You can point it at a DVD drive, but it won't tell you the total size of the data you're preparing to back up, or how many discs it'll take... it just keeps asking for more and more discs 'till you realize it's backing up your ripped DVD collection and cancel it. You can point it to a removable drive, but it won't tell you the throughput while transmitting data. Just a very slow progress bar. Hope you remember which ports are USB 2.0 - i didn't. Still, better than nothing.
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The Hackers destroy website[^] thread in the Lounge, and the abuse of the poor sods who lost all that work for not having a backup got me thinking. Why are backups such a PITA? When did you last backup your home machine? When did a proper formal backup of your work servers happen? In my case: Work - daily (GFS, latest taken off site nightly. Security risk, yes, but trusted employee and better than nothing) Home - last time I re-installed windows. (The wifes' PC even longer) So why doesn't Windows come with good backup software built in, then prompt people to do one regularly? XP does have backup software, but even microsoft say 'You may have to do some digging to find it'[^] The number of friends who say "my PC crashed, and I lost everything" - to which the normal reply is "Did you have a recent backup?" does get ridiculous. Does Weven improve this? Will Wait? Or Whine? Doubtful. But it would save so much hassle in the long run...
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No as much a PITA as NOT doing a backup and then wishing you had! :)
------------------------------------ "Possessions make you poor, wealth is measurable only in experience." Sun Tzu 621BC
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The Hackers destroy website[^] thread in the Lounge, and the abuse of the poor sods who lost all that work for not having a backup got me thinking. Why are backups such a PITA? When did you last backup your home machine? When did a proper formal backup of your work servers happen? In my case: Work - daily (GFS, latest taken off site nightly. Security risk, yes, but trusted employee and better than nothing) Home - last time I re-installed windows. (The wifes' PC even longer) So why doesn't Windows come with good backup software built in, then prompt people to do one regularly? XP does have backup software, but even microsoft say 'You may have to do some digging to find it'[^] The number of friends who say "my PC crashed, and I lost everything" - to which the normal reply is "Did you have a recent backup?" does get ridiculous. Does Weven improve this? Will Wait? Or Whine? Doubtful. But it would save so much hassle in the long run...
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Because backups have no real value to a person or company until they have a loss. So it seems like doing busy work. Backed up last night and every night because; A long time ago I wrote a batch file that does a backup, then defrag, then shutdown. Whenever I shut down my machine, instead of doing the normal 'Start button' then 'shutdown' etc. I just click the icon in my task bar. Frankly I don't know why we have to push so many buttons to shut a machine off anyway. Oddly that was the original peeve I had and I just threw the defrag/backup in since it seemed like it made sense. It does the incremental backup anyway. It just sends it off to an attached usb drive that is a terrabyte. So I took my own self out of the equation except for initiating it. But I'm not responsible enough to do this regularly without a tool. And I have gotten burned. Almost anyone here could write a better version of this, I suspect. That's how easy it should have been for Microsoft as well. If I were smarter it would the defrag only on a schedule or when needed and it wouldn't ever bother with asking. I also think it should delete temp files before defragging or backing up but I haven't put that in. I've heard good things about carbonite but haven't investigated it.
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Because backups have no real value to a person or company until they have a loss. So it seems like doing busy work. Backed up last night and every night because; A long time ago I wrote a batch file that does a backup, then defrag, then shutdown. Whenever I shut down my machine, instead of doing the normal 'Start button' then 'shutdown' etc. I just click the icon in my task bar. Frankly I don't know why we have to push so many buttons to shut a machine off anyway. Oddly that was the original peeve I had and I just threw the defrag/backup in since it seemed like it made sense. It does the incremental backup anyway. It just sends it off to an attached usb drive that is a terrabyte. So I took my own self out of the equation except for initiating it. But I'm not responsible enough to do this regularly without a tool. And I have gotten burned. Almost anyone here could write a better version of this, I suspect. That's how easy it should have been for Microsoft as well. If I were smarter it would the defrag only on a schedule or when needed and it wouldn't ever bother with asking. I also think it should delete temp files before defragging or backing up but I haven't put that in. I've heard good things about carbonite but haven't investigated it.
See what I mean? Shog: So it gets canceled, because the programmers didn't think about the users. Make it pretty useless. Dalek Dave: Damned right! So why not make it easy to do? smcnulty2000: So why isn't it built in? Microsoft have had over 15 years to get this right, and it looks like they still can't be bothered...
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See what I mean? Shog: So it gets canceled, because the programmers didn't think about the users. Make it pretty useless. Dalek Dave: Damned right! So why not make it easy to do? smcnulty2000: So why isn't it built in? Microsoft have had over 15 years to get this right, and it looks like they still can't be bothered...
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OriginalGriff wrote:
Microsoft have had over 15 years to get this right, and it looks like they still can't be bothered...
If they did, they'd probably be sued for anti-trust violation - there is a healthy industry in third party backup tools.
Anna :rose: Having a bad bug day? Tech Blog | Anna's Place | Tears and Laughter "If mushy peas are the food of the devil, the stotty cake is the frisbee of God"
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The Hackers destroy website[^] thread in the Lounge, and the abuse of the poor sods who lost all that work for not having a backup got me thinking. Why are backups such a PITA? When did you last backup your home machine? When did a proper formal backup of your work servers happen? In my case: Work - daily (GFS, latest taken off site nightly. Security risk, yes, but trusted employee and better than nothing) Home - last time I re-installed windows. (The wifes' PC even longer) So why doesn't Windows come with good backup software built in, then prompt people to do one regularly? XP does have backup software, but even microsoft say 'You may have to do some digging to find it'[^] The number of friends who say "my PC crashed, and I lost everything" - to which the normal reply is "Did you have a recent backup?" does get ridiculous. Does Weven improve this? Will Wait? Or Whine? Doubtful. But it would save so much hassle in the long run...
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OriginalGriff wrote:
Why are backups such a PITA? When did you last backup your home machine? When did a proper formal backup of your work servers happen?
1. They aren't - we have scripts for that. 2. Last night. Automated script copying to two mirrored external drives, and synced to a server (which is continuously backed up online). 3. Continuously (online backup, and rotating removable drives stored offsite)
Anna :rose: Having a bad bug day? Tech Blog | Anna's Place | Tears and Laughter "If mushy peas are the food of the devil, the stotty cake is the frisbee of God"
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See what I mean? Shog: So it gets canceled, because the programmers didn't think about the users. Make it pretty useless. Dalek Dave: Damned right! So why not make it easy to do? smcnulty2000: So why isn't it built in? Microsoft have had over 15 years to get this right, and it looks like they still can't be bothered...
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They did build in a tool. It sucks. It showed up in win 3.1 and I don't know anyone who used it or currently uses the XP version. I've just had another look at it. Its like a copy of Veritas whose been dropped on his head every birthday and twice at Christmas. It doesn't match the criteria of being a built in tool for so many reasons. Compare it to notepad or paint. Re your main idea of PITA: I'm not disagreeing with that point. There should be something simple as a file copy utility that almost any user could use and recover with and it should come with windows. But there isn't. I was, in truth, just answering your secondary questions about when I last backed up my system, etc. I've almost removed the pain and randomness from the maintenance by integrating it with the shutdown so it seemed worth discussing from that level. This isn't just a Microsoft issue, either, as I'm sure you are aware. You look at the way servers are backed up, you look at the use of high speed tapes, you look at the costs, you look at the methodology for offsite storage most companies have and the whole thing is a mess. I'm also not sure the other OS's do better. But I'm not knowledgeable on that. I guess nobody buys an OS based on how well it backs up anything. That's sort of an answer to this question.
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The Hackers destroy website[^] thread in the Lounge, and the abuse of the poor sods who lost all that work for not having a backup got me thinking. Why are backups such a PITA? When did you last backup your home machine? When did a proper formal backup of your work servers happen? In my case: Work - daily (GFS, latest taken off site nightly. Security risk, yes, but trusted employee and better than nothing) Home - last time I re-installed windows. (The wifes' PC even longer) So why doesn't Windows come with good backup software built in, then prompt people to do one regularly? XP does have backup software, but even microsoft say 'You may have to do some digging to find it'[^] The number of friends who say "my PC crashed, and I lost everything" - to which the normal reply is "Did you have a recent backup?" does get ridiculous. Does Weven improve this? Will Wait? Or Whine? Doubtful. But it would save so much hassle in the long run...
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Data stored to an external networked drive and mirrored nightly. Periodically I backup the mirror to a zipdrive I keep at work. If the machine fries any time I'll only need to reinstall the OS and software. PITA to be sure, but not much of one.
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