[slap_j]

Originally Posted by bobthecockroach

Backing up hard drives with hard drives isn't really much better. Backing up to the cloud or to DVDs is a much better option.

BD-REs will be great when they're cheap.

[scared2mosh]

Originally Posted by slap_j

BD-REs will be great when they're cheap.

Indeed.

[NoMoreSilence]

I would rather back up to an external hard drive... Just because I can then back up my entire hard drive (including all the system files and registration files that I may otherwise miss for my softwares and stuff, especially Microsoft office)
I would back up my entire system (except for docs, pics, and vids) right away each time I install a new software.

[Andrew]

Originally Posted by NoMoreSilence

I would rather back up to an external hard drive... Just because I can then back up my entire hard drive (including all the system files and registration files that I may otherwise miss for my softwares and stuff, especially Microsoft office)
I would back up my entire system (except for docs, pics, and vids) right away each time I install a new software.

All of that stuff is stored in AppData/Application Data (depending on the OS) in windows installs. On a very heavily used system that takes maybe 1GB to blindly back that folder up.

[bobthecockroach]

Originally Posted by Andrew

All of that stuff is stored in AppData/Application Data (depending on the OS) in windows installs. On a very heavily used system that takes maybe 1GB to blindly back that folder up.

Not to mention, you probably can't "reinstall" Word by copying the application from an external hard drive. You need registry entries and all kinds of other crap Windows puts in random places. If we're talking Linux here, yes. Copy the whole filesystem and be done with it. Unfortunately, Windows is not so simple.

This brings me to another point: backups are worthless. Only restores are meaningful. If you haven't tested restoring your data from backups, you may as well not have them. I suspect the backup of Word would fail if you actually tested restoring from it.

[Andrew]

Originally Posted by bobthecockroach

Not to mention, you probably can't "reinstall" Word by copying the application from an external hard drive. You need registry entries and all kinds of other crap Windows puts in random places. If we're talking Linux here, yes. Copy the whole filesystem and be done with it. Unfortunately, Windows is not so simple.

This brings me to another point: backups are worthless. Only restores are meaningful. If you haven't tested restoring your data from backups, you may as well not have them. I suspect the backup of Word would fail if you actually tested restoring from it.

Oh absolutely you would need to reinstall word! I was assuming he was talking about his settings (recent documents, window size, dictionary settings...) and not the actual install.

If you want to back up EVERYTHING and be able to restore and you are running XP, NTBACKUP is your friend.

[redbaron]

Hard drives are not backup solutions, even in a good RAID (i.e. parity or mirroring (or both)). Moving parts and magnetic bits are too temperamental and drives fail ALL THE TIME. Given that unless you buy your disks from different manufacturers, or at least at different times to get out of the same batch, it's likely that you'll have multi-disk failure before you notice that one of them has gone bad.

I had a series of Quantum Atlas 10kII drives crap themselves one after another in the most vexing way possible, one of which caused me to have to send a JBOD for recovery.

Now that i've had failures on virtually every manufacturer, with SCSI, SATA, PATA, of all different speeds and generations, I don't trust 'em as far as I can throw 'em.

Tape, DVD, BRD, and the cloud work, but even the cloud is only as reliable as the backup there. For important data at work we tend to keep 3 backups at different sites plus the cloud. I do a nightly HDD backup, but that's mostly for workday-oopsies and being able to just roll back without pulling out slower, safer media.