Backup Failure

Creating backups. Something everyone with a computer should do. Not only to preserve the items of (sentimental) value, but also to minimise the time and effort to recreate what went to the eternal data fields.
But even if you create backups, things can go wrong.

Many believe that storing the data on an external device is a backup. Well, it is, but only if you have the original data on another device. Backup means that you store the same thing (at least) in two places. If one of the devices (your computer with internal hard drive, or the external backup device) should fail, you have still one copy of the data, which you can restore or backup (depending which device went up in smoke).

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Backupify Cloud Backup

Updated on Monday, January 11, 2010 at 16:32 by Willem

There's a new service around called Backupify. It's an online backup system for your online identities/services (free usage till January 31, 2010). It provides automated online backup for the following online services:

• Gmail
• Twitter
• Google Docs
• Flickr
• Facebook
• Basecamp
• Wordpress
• Delicious
• Photobucket
• Blogger
• FriendFeed
• More coming soon...

On itself a nice service, since cloud services aren't invulnerable to customer data lose. This way you have a online backup in case Flickr or Twitter 'decides' to purge your data.

There are some 'drawbacks' though (in my opinion).....

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Windows 7 Backup Flaw(s)

During the last couple of weeks I've been using Windows 7 at my work laptop (a Dell E6500). The OS itself ain't that bad (but still no OSX). Among the many improvements there's a new Backup ad Restore Center in the OS (compared to Windows XP, since I skipped Vista). But the application/service has a flaw. A very annoying one.

The interface is pretty intuitive and definitely more user-friendly. There's the option of backing up to a local (CD/DVD) drive, and you can choose to backup to a network share. In the corporate environment I choose the network drive. To do this, you do need ownership (some special permissions) on the drive share. This way the Backup and Restore application can do its thing.

Since Windows 7 is a member of the corporate domain I don't need to enter any credentials when accessing network shares, except with the backup application. Why? Don't ask me. But this is where the flaw kicks in.

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TrueCrypt Bug, or Hardware Failure

For the last couple of years I've been using an offsite backup method. And today the drive I use for that failed on me. My backup program reported that it could write (or read) data to the drive.

Investigation showed that several directories in the TrueCrypt volume were gone!!!!! Thankfully, the data on my Drobo and server were still pristine condition.

Disk Utility and several other tools reported problems with the drive (or at least the TrueCrypt part/volume). So I erased the drive, and re-initialized it. No reports of trouble while I did that. After that I recreated the TrueCrypt volume and restarted the backup to the drive (which takes forever).

All I can do now is wait for the backup to finish, and pray that the house doesn't catch on fire.....

After that a new case for SpinRite.