[Elecraft] <Long & OT> Data protection and recovery techniques

[Fred Jensen]

 From history:  First job after discharge from the US Air Force in 1972 
was in the Systems & Data Processing department at the County of 
Sacramento.  Please note the date, we were still using 80-col punched 
cards on an IBM 360-40 with 2314 disk drives and reel-to-reel tape 
drives.  The tape library was in a vault where one wall was used for 
system back-up tapes.  I was working on the Assessor's systems, one of 
which was a multiple linear regression program for appraising similar 
properties in suburban areas.  I was the only one in the department 
fluent in FORTRAN IV, one of the reasons I got the job.

The Assessor asked me one day how his data were protected.  After 
telling him, "Magnetic tape copies made whenever your parcel file [6 
tape volumes] is mounted with write rings,"  I wondered, so I wrote a 
little program to mount the file [sans write rings] and gather some 
statistics.  The first 2 volume sets we ran were blank, so we went to 
the end of the backup chain and tried the oldest one.  Not surprisingly, 
it too was blank.  Checking some of the other systems [e.g. Tax 
Collection, Welfare], we found:

1.  Blank back-up sets

2.  Back-up sets being recycled faster than the processing cycles that 
created the data

3.  Two systems with intact, recoverable back-up sets

I just asked the original question because the "art of back-up" is often 
the epitome of "Fire and Forget."  You might want to carve out a little 
time and see if the recovery part of "backup and recovery" actually 
recovers anything. [:=)

73,
Fred ["Skip"] K6DGW
Sparks NV DM09dn
Washoe County

On 6/14/2020 11:51 AM, Peter Dougherty wrote:
> I have a paid Dropbox account, supplemented by Microsoft OneDrive, folders for which reside on my D: drive. All my data (including pictures, videos, music, documents, and work projects) go in there AND get backed up to a local NAS for redundancy. The OS partition (C : drive) including all software, settings, download, temporary and archive folders are backed up using a differential scheme to a NAS device daily, and a full backup to a Passport drive weekly. I use Acronis True Image Home for backup/restore software.
>
> All my logs are backed up multiple places for safety, however due to the structure of both my DX logger and N1MM+ Contest Logger, they have to be run from a non-cloud folder, so extra care is taken in both cases.
>
> I'm less worried about the OS and software; those can be reinstalled easily enough over the course of a few days (albeit with lots of swearing involved), but the data, all of it irreplaceable, has to be stored in Dropbox (meaning a copy exists not just in the cloud but on the hard drive of every computer I own that's connected to the account).
>
>   - pjd
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: elecraft-bounces at mailman.qth.net <elecraft-bounces at mailman.qth.net> On Behalf Of W2xj
> Sent: Sunday, June 14, 2020 6:28 AM
> To: Bill Frantz <frantz at pwpconsult.com>
> Cc: elecraft at mailman.qth.net
> Subject: Re: [Elecraft] <Long & OT> Data protection and recovery techniques
>
> I backup into the cloud. When I get a new Mac, it restores automatically.
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
>> On Jun 13, 2020, at 10:46 PM, Bill Frantz <frantz at pwpconsult.com> wrote:
>>
>> Being a Mac guy, I use "Time Machine". I do test it every once in a
>> while when I recover a file, but having been in the computer industry
>> for my career, I am generally careful enough that I don't have to
>> recover files. (Knock on wood.)
>>
>> I have the largest disk I could find at Costco as a backup disk sitting on my desk.
>>
>> The real test comes when I buy an new computer and restore the entire backup to the new machine. That has worked through several new computers. The one time it didn't work, the old backup was so many no-longer-supported levels back, that the new machine didn't recognize it. However, with Time Machine, if you open the backup folder on the backup disk, you can dig down to a complete file system image that can just be copied. I like backup systems that are simple and don't try to do irreversible magic.
>>
>> The other dimension of backup is several offsite disks. One is at a house nearby, and another is on the other coast. Whenever I travel to those locations, I make a backup. If everthing here goes up in smoke, I do have some recourse.
>>
>> 73 Bill AE6JV
>>
>> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
>> Bill Frantz        | Can't fix stupid, but   | Periwinkle
>> (408)348-7900      | duct tape can muffle the| 150 Rivermead Road #235
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>>