Backup

[Peder 🚀]

Discuss!







HAH! Thought I was gonna start a topic without saying anything myself?
Well, I not!

It seems a lot of people loose their game files and such because of a lack of taking backup!
Even my friend lost a lot of data because of such a thing!

Is it so unusual to take backup of your data?
I can see I need to take a backup now because my computer is totally fucked again (I have just reinstalled VISTA and its started messing up again now (blue screens, the "toolbar" at the bottom sometimes looses it design, explorer crashes and so on.) )

Either way I was mainly interested in seeing how many actually DO take backups of their games regularly and even who doesn't!

[Nikolas]

I double take backups.

I have an external hard disk (300 GB) where I backup the works I do, every day or every couple of days. I'm using Syncbvack (which is free) for this purpose.

I also write to CD/DVD the FINISHED projects, once I'm done.

Scores I also print once I'm done.

Can't be too careful. Especially with a 4 1/2 year old machine.

[Raider]

I am currently on a Mac and I am running off a partition with XP. Back up is not needed as my mac is VERY stable. It's a good idea to back up to external drives anyway though.

Most of my friends put their entire computers on TB drives.

[zabnat]

I have question about this. I have two disks striped (RAID 0) with Windows XP installed. How can I backup my whole system? I mean the way that incase of disk failure, I could just get a new disk(s), build the array again and restore my system from the backup. I have external hard drive for this purpose.
Does the backup utility bundled with Windows work for this purpose? I think then I would at least install a new Windows on those new disks and then restore the backup.
What about other free backup utilities? Do they need Shadow Copy service to be enabled so they can copy locked files?
Do any of you take off-site backups?

Back up is not needed as my mac is VERY stable.

You are just asking for a harddrive failure.

[InCreator]

No, never. I'm too lazy!

[Peder 🚀]

I not sure about your question zabnat so I am afraid I am of no help .

I'm using Syncbvack (which is free) for this purpose.

Strange.. I just download that program to use for the same purpose on a same size external drive! .

[Nikolas]

Back up is not needed as my mac is VERY stable.

LOL!

Time for a thread name change: "Mac vs PC"!

zabnat: Why would you want to backup windows? Just reinstall them and reinstall most programs. Unless you deal with 3-d (textures) or music (samples), software are not THAT big to make a huge time to get installed. I have a 68 GB piano! THIS takes time. But samples are installed in a different hard disk, so even if the system disk goes bust, I can still just reinstall the dll and point to the right direction...

Information, documents, scores, audio, etc, are all backed up, as I mentioned earlier.

[zabnat]

zabnat: Why would you want to backup windows? Just reinstall them and reinstall most programs. Unless you deal with 3-d (textures) or music (samples), software are not THAT big to make a huge time to get installed. I have a 68 GB piano! THIS takes time. But samples are installed in a different hard disk, so even if the system disk goes bust, I can still just reinstall the dll and point to the right direction...

Because my Windows is not out-of-the-box. It takes about a week to get all the small utilities that I need and tweak all the settings from the registry. And it is not a task I enjoy too much.

[Nikolas]

Aha... Ok...

I don't know what you use, etc, but what I did in my last format (about 4 months ago), was that I kept all install programs I had from Internet (and I needed), as well as the updates for some of them. So it was a matter of installing 15-20 small programs that each took about 1-2 minutes to install. As I said larger programs already had the huge part installed...

But I don't know what you're using, so...

BTW, I do recall (not sure if it's Mac only though), that you can do a 'disk cloning. So you actually create an ABSOLUTE copy of your hard disk. I can imagine that this would work, with windows and everything included. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_cloning For more info.

[SSH]

Since AGS backs up your project when you import from an older version AND reminds you on occasion to back up, perhaps AGS should actually (optionally) DO the backup for you...

[zabnat]

Problem with disk cloning is that tools are usually stand-alone (you boot up from CD and run it) and I they usually don't recognize the RAID array as one volume. Another option would be a Windows based tool that could clone the disk while Windows is running, but I'm not sure these kind of tools even exist because of all the locked files etc.

Maybe I'll just try the Windows native backup and see how it does it for me.

[Matti]

Well, I never really took backups of my stuff. Once I saved my GiP onto my extern hard drive but unfortunately deleted it again some day. Well, and a month ago my PC's hard drive crashed and A LOT of stuff I worked on is gone, not only my AGS game.

From now I'll burn a CD once in a while with all my important stuff and as long as I'm working on my new AGS project regularly I'm backing up the game every 2-3 days. I won't let something like this happen EVER again.

[Peder 🚀]

@ Matti
Your the reason I started this thread as I read about your game being cancelled because of loss of the data!! (And I that was looking forward to that game alot )

Either way, @ zabnat, couldent you run some kind of mirror disk thingie?
So if your main disk failed you would have the other one still running?
(I not sure how those things work, but I know my business partner uses this kind of technology on his backup server etc.).

[abstauber]

Hey, I'm using SyncBack too

As for AGS games I sync to an USB stick and a FTP server, so I hope I'm pretty safe. Also if stuff gets finished I tend to burn a CD/DVD.

[zabnat]

Either way, @ zabnat, couldent you run some kind of mirror disk thingie?
So if your main disk failed you would have the other one still running?
(I not sure how those things work, but I know my business partner uses this kind of technology on his backup server etc.).

You are right, I could. I could have putten my disks in RAID 1 (mirror), but I wanted performance, so I put them in RAID 0 (striped). I could get two more disks and mirror the RAID 0 array I have now, and still have almost the same performance. But, the disks cost about 300 euros each, so it isn't really cost effective solution.

Have to knock wood here, but I've only had one bad harddrive failure where I've lost data during my time using computers (about 20 years). But even with that experience, I really don't make too much backups. And that kind of bothers me.

[Peder 🚀]

I find things that can take time makes us not want to do it, like virus scans and so on.
I mostly never scan my computer for viruses because it takes all the resources of my computer and whenever I have the laptop on I am working. And running a scan is then not an option.

Though backup might not take so much resources its still something ive never usually done.
And lets face it, external drives brakes easy themselves!
You might be a little bit unlucky and it tips over, and your done! its broke!
Or you by mistake being in a rush plug in the wrong power lead, *pling* it doesnt work!

Ive done both, unluckely I had a 500GB disk that I couldent find the reciept for so I never got that replaced... though I had my 300GB replaced.. luckly I I never had any important data I diddent have elsewhere on them!

I think someone should come up with a safety system when it comes to power supplies!
If the power supply has more power than the device should have this should be blocked not to brake the device..

If its not allready made I might think of something myself, though by the time Ive come up with something it probably exists... besides manufacturers etc probably wouldent want to use the solution as they can earn more money on such things if the user has to buy new equipment...

[Buckethead]

I always use back ups when doing 3D work. You never know when something might crash and corrupt your file. Maya has an option to keep backsups every time you save. I'm not sure about Max , I just do it manually there.

Making back ups for AGS game just doesn't seem needed. AGS has never crashed on me. I only made a backup once when switching to higher versions.

And I really don't see why I should back up my entire harddisk. I've never had a situation where I suddenly lost it all.

[WHAM]

I am currently on a Mac and I am running off a partition with XP. Back up is not needed as my mac is VERY stable. It's a good idea to back up to external drives anyway though.

Most of my friends put their entire computers on TB drives.

I happen to work for an IT maintenance/store company, and I can tell you that even if the MAC is stable, once it plays a trick on you, you are just as screwed as anyone else. If the hard-disk breaks, it will cost you a LOT to get anything recovered from it. If the MAC goes unresponsive, it will take AGES and cost you a LOT to get it back up and running again.

Do yourself a favor and start doing backups! Just buy yourself a 4 Gb USB memory stick and use that, if nothing else.

[Oliwerko]

I have two 500GB server HDDs designed to run 24/7 and one of them is purely backup. I manually backup files from the "in use" one to the another from time to time. My first thought was to mirror it completely (you know, the thing that Nikolas mentioned - HDD array or how it's called, when you set it up in BIOS and your system actually "sees" only one HDD, the other is exactly the same. So if something happens on one of them, it happens also on the other one). But I did not do this for one reason - it only protects you from a HDD failure. However, I had to format my HDD completely many times because of viruses and stuff, not because HDD failure. Mirroring does not help here. So I have two separate HDDs.

But it may be a good idea to use some kind of software to back it up, gonna check out that SyncBack thingy, thanks Nik.

[SSH]

I have question about this. I have two disks striped (RAID 0) with Windows XP installed.

...


You are just asking for a harddrive failure.

You do know that you've doubled the chances of having to restore by having RAID0, right? If either drive fails, you lose all your data.

And I really don't see why I should back up my entire harddisk. I've never had a situation where I suddenly lost it all.

No-one has a hard disk die... until they do