Questions about backing up stuff. Crash plan, parity files, etc

[jedispork]

I've been looking for a good way to backup my files. Normally I copy and paste to other drives. I've always been concerned with bit rot or some kind of file error. What would happen if your master copy goes bad and your using that to backup to other drives? I would think in theory you could ruin all your backups this way. This is one of the things that has always concerned me about dropbox. If your hard drive starts to go bad and somehow corrupts a file then it could be synced and unless you have the unlimited redo service it would be possible that your file is gone. Does crash plan work the same way?

I've started createing par2 sets for my important pics. Very tedious but at least I have a way to verify them. I can't believe more people don't do this especially if you backup to dvd. What kind of protections do file explorers have when your copy and pasting files anyway?

So does anyone have any advice on a solid backup plan? I am considering crashplan but I've heard a few things about them to put me off. I use flickr for my photos and upload home movies to youtube and keep them private. At least these places are free with no yearly fees. If I paid for something it might be crashplan though.

[HalfNote5]

Well, it depends on what you're backing up. For the system itself I use Remastersys if I want to be able to bring it back exactly how I had it before.



If you're talking storage drives, there's two things to remember. First of all, only copy/move stuff that has been added/changed since the last time. If it's the same file size and date/time it should be LEFT ALONE on the backup. It also saves time backing up.

Still, a file could be altered badly and corrupted, and it would get copied. There's a simple solution: redundancy. Have your daily, your monthly (and if you're truly paranoid, your yearly). That way if your daily succumbs to any kind of oddness, you have your monthly handy with a minimal amount of loss.

[HalfNote5]

Also, have LOCAL backup copies of the file, if you're using an online service as well. Then you can have redundant, multiple backups to your heart's content, and hard drives are CHEAP these days. Redundancy, redundancy, redundancy. ;)

[t0p]

As far as I know, Dropbox and Ubuntu 1 only change their copies of files if you've changed them. Also, a bit of redundancy jiggery-pokery should keep a pristine backup there even in the case of corruption. File1 is on your computer and backed up on Dropbox. File2 is a copy of File1 that you update periodically and is also backed up on Dropbox. If File1 becomes corrupted and the corrupted version backs up to Dropbox, File2 should remain pristine.

Redundancy is a good approach to backup. I love my photos, and I've got them on my HDD, external HDD, CDs, remote backups... it's the safest way I can think of, and media's so cheap nowadays it's no biggie.

[mbabar96]

you can use clonezilla or partclone to backup disks or partition to a externel HDD

[jedispork]

thanks everyone for the advice. I've been messing around wih a program called beyond compare as well. Not free but I'm thinking of purchasing it. It seems you can sort of do dropbox type syncs and make sure you have the same files. If I reorganize and create new folders its a hassle to do all of the changes on the backup drives without copying over everything again. This program helps you keep it in sync. Does clonezilla or any of those other imaging programs do incremental backups?

Dropbox is so expensive and not really ideal for picture storage. Our wedding photos alone take up 18 gigs of space. Flickr seems to be the only free service that doesn't compress your photos. Again its a huge hassle keeping eveything in sync and you can only upload 200 files at a time. Video eats space even quicker which is why I only do that for important events.