Backup and recovery

Jean-David Beyer jeandavid8 at verizon.net
Sat Dec 19 08:59:24 EST 2015


On 12/19/2015 08:37 AM, Mike or Penny Novack wrote:
> On 12/18/2015 9:16 PM, Jean-David Beyer wrote:

>>
>> I do a full backup of almost my entire system every night to an external
>> USB-3 hard drive. I do a full backup of almost my entire system every
>> week onto magnetic tape that I keep in another room from where my
>> computer is. I do a full backup of almost my entire system every week
>> onto magnetic tape that I keep in my safe deposit box at my bank.

> THIS is an example of doing backup (although using obsolescent
> technology, since a modern external hard drive the size of one computer
> tape cartridge holds FAR more data and could rotate one to the other
> room, bank vault, etc. ---- I keep a second copy in a fire box inside a
> dead fridge in an outbuilding.).

You are right that magnetic tape technology is obsolete, although the
tapes I use are VXA tapes originally produced by Ecrix. They are
extremely reliable, and I can fit many months of these tapes in my safe
deposit box, whereas I can put only a very few WD-Passport drives in
there. I like to keep a year's worth there (12 cassettes take up much
less space than 12 Passports). OTOH, when these tape drives quit, that
is over as no one makes tape drives like these anymore. That is why I am
using the Passports for the shorter term (daily) backups.
> 
> You have LOTS of user data on your computer system besides gnucash data.
> Rather silly to have each application responsible for backing up the
> data with which it is associated.

Absolutely! By Murphy's law, each application would use a different
backup strategy, different storage formula, etc., so that restoring
would be completely unmanageable.

> You wouldn't expect your word
> processor to be doing the backups for the documents it created, would you?
> 
> The backups made by gnucash are really intended for use with problems a
> short time back (since the last full data backup). If you are not doing
> regular backups then sooner or later you will lose your data. It's not
> if computers fail but when. If you do not have a "tech support" to do
> your data backups and restores then you have to learn how to do it
> yourself. Part of successfully using a computer.

Amen!
> 
> Michael



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