backups: a friendly reminder

[ILoveMovies]

I'm sure everyone here is smarter than me. . .and are probably thinking, no need to post. . .everyone knows the consequences, but I lost nearly 8 TB of movies the night before.

I had everything on a single 8 TB device (in an enclosure) and it took a spill the night before. I'm currently on suicide watch.

I tried, I removed the drive from the enclosure and placed it in a dock (hoping that the enclosure adapter was what was damaged), but no luck. . .I took it a step further and opened the drive, the head was suck and the platters weren't damaged at all. I successfully 're-parked' the head, closed the drive and crossed my fingers. . .no luck - so with a tear in my eye, I tossed the drive.

. . .so the countless hours I spent perfecting my downloads, catching those titles that were only available for a short time are gone - so today I'm starting over (I purchased 2 drives this time for regular backups)

to add insult to injury - I just learned about the Netflix resolution issue. I had started a few downloads and was none the wiser. . .click, click, click without thinking. Hopefully we'll get that back, but we all know we're on thin ice and could lose all access at any moment - hopefully I'll get caught back up before the rug is pulled. . .anyway I'm simply using this post to vent my frustration (with myself) and hopefully give someone that nudge they may need to BACKUP, BACKUP, BACKUP!

anyway, enough of that. . .but as they say misery loves company - so if you'd like to share your horror stories of data-loss, please do. If anyone would like to share their backup routines, that'd be great too!

finally, I want to thank everyone with the Redfox team. I truly appreciate your hard work and your contributions to the forum discussion. I appreciate the time you take to allow us all to entertain our love for movies!

 

[Bill7]

A long time ago I recall the saying: "there are two types of computer users - those who do backups, and those who have yet to lose data." Sorry to hear about your drive. Certainly have been there before. For what it's worth, DriveSavers can save the data directly from the platters (at a cost, of course).

I have a variety of different backup mechanisms for different types of data. My media is on a NAS with RAID-like functionality (5 separate drives). My local computer is setup for disk mirroring for my data drive. That data is then backed up to about 4 or 5 different external drives (backups, of backups, of backups). A subset of which (the actual "important" stuff) is rotated in a safety deposit box at the bank, and encrypted and backed up to different cloud providers.

All of this suffice to say, I've been there and don't want to go through it again.

 

[coopervid]

Sad story... I always say BACKUP. Otherwise Murphy's law will hit you.

 

[DQ]

I use a NAS with RAID5 (for resiliency/redundancy) but I still run a back up.

 

[gmc99]

A friend of mine and I have complete backups of each others TV shows (which is what we mainly collect). As such I have quite a few series I would never watch and he is the same.

During the 10 plus years we have been swapping stuff we have had plenty of discs fail but so far we've not actually lost anything between us.

Even during lockdown even though we couldn't actually swap discs we both took an extra copy of everything so that when we were able to meet up again; nothing was lost.

Backups of personal stuff rather than TV shows is a different matter. These are backed up to a NAS which is itself backed up to an external disc and also to the cloud.

 

[Ineedhelp2000]

A long time ago I recall the saying: "there are two types of computer users - those who do backups, and those who have yet to lose data." Sorry to hear about your drive. Certainly have been there before. For what it's worth, DriveSavers can save the data directly from the platters (at a cost, of course).

I have a variety of different backup mechanisms for different types of data. My media is on a NAS with RAID-like functionality (5 separate drives). My local computer is setup for disk mirroring for my data drive. That data is then backed up to about 4 or 5 different external drives (backups, of backups, of backups). A subset of which (the actual "important" stuff) is rotated in a safety deposit box at the bank, and encrypted and backed up to different cloud providers.

All of this suffice to say, I've been there and don't want to go through it again.

Yeap. Dodged a bullet myself. Started this venture after ripping all of my phys media to a single external then "discovered" the bountiful pleasures of AS. Noticed the external was getting slower and encountering read errors. Vendor disk tests started failing and i knew it was only a matter of time.
Bought a NAS and 2 drives to start, expanded in a week to 3 drives and converted RAID5. About to add a 4th drive possibly next week, but will be reripping most phys media since I went straight copy to MKV to get best video on my most frequent watches so I wouldn't have to use phys media. If anything, AS showed me even 720p is good enough for most and I reserve 1080 for sci-fi and some action/adventure now.

Oh, personal data is like Bill7...backup of a backup of a backup to an encrypted drive stored offsite. physical media will always fail,it's just a matter of when. Darn physics. :-D

 

[gmc99]

One thing I do run on my PC is Hard Disk Sentinel which is really good for letting you know when a hard drive is likely to fail. In fact on a number of occasions I have seen that a disc is in a precarious state and I have been able to copy most or all of the data to another drive before it is too late.

 

[zero269]

I purchased 2 drives this time for regular backups

I would invest in a small 2- or 4-bay NAS that offers redundancy. Using two external drives of that size is rather cumbersome and painfully slow when it comes to mirroring the two over USB.

I own an older QNAP (TS-851) and a newer Synology (ds1821+). I would go with Synology.

However, if this is your route, use robocopy to mirror your Drive-A to Drive-B. This way, if you delete something from Drive-A that you no longer want, it will purge itself from Drive-B when you mirror your drives again. I assume you'll be mirroring these overnight so you don't feel the pain. And you definitely want to use the Log+ switch so you can look at the results to see if anything was skipped that wasn't expected to. There's a decent resource here on the topic.

Note: Be sure to test using sample files (like a bunch of text files) before testing a large amount of data.

 

[ocd]

A long time ago I recall the saying: "there are two types of computer users - those who do backups, and those who have yet to lose data."

There's also the saying: if you haven't tested recovering from your backup, you don't have a backup.

Sorry for your troubles!

 

[DQ]

There's also the saying: if you haven't tested recovering from your backup, you don't have a backup.

Sorry for your troubles!

With nothing but video files I find a good way to backup is to use some flavor of a sync so that all your are doing is copying files vs. trying to compress them in backup files.

 

[BoomKapoow]

I don't backup movies or trying to collect so just looking to have temporary nice stash to watch at times, I run NAS raid 0 as well so that's how much I value those movies .. I used to be a horder when younger having stockpiles with banana boxes with cd's/hdd's of all sorts of junk, just ended up throwing it all many years later, If shit breaks I'll simply download a temp stash again, movies are no biggie for me but for other more important data I do carry three backups

 

[Jimc115]

I'm sure everyone here is smarter than me. . .and are probably thinking, no need to post. . .everyone knows the consequences, but I lost nearly 8 TB of movies the night before.

I had everything on a single 8 TB device (in an enclosure) and it took a spill the night before. I'm currently on suicide watch.

I tried, I removed the drive from the enclosure and placed it in a dock (hoping that the enclosure adapter was what was damaged), but no luck. . .I took it a step further and opened the drive, the head was suck and the platters weren't damaged at all. I successfully 're-parked' the head, closed the drive and crossed my fingers. . .no luck - so with a tear in my eye, I tossed the drive.

. . .so the countless hours I spent perfecting my downloads, catching those titles that were only available for a short time are gone - so today I'm starting over (I purchased 2 drives this time for regular backups)

to add insult to injury - I just learned about the Netflix resolution issue. I had started a few downloads and was none the wiser. . .click, click, click without thinking. Hopefully we'll get that back, but we all know we're on thin ice and could lose all access at any moment - hopefully I'll get caught back up before the rug is pulled. . .anyway I'm simply using this post to vent my frustration (with myself) and hopefully give someone that nudge they may need to BACKUP, BACKUP, BACKUP!

anyway, enough of that. . .but as they say misery loves company - so if you'd like to share your horror stories of data-loss, please do. If anyone would like to share their backup routines, that'd be great too!

finally, I want to thank everyone with the Redfox team. I truly appreciate your hard work and your contributions to the forum discussion. I appreciate the time you take to allow us all to entertain our love for movies!

Couple of points....

Biggest One....It's happened to us all before.

-I keep a one to one backup of every disk....yes, it's expensive. Also, keep your copies in a different location if possible.
-NEVER EVER OPEN A DRIVE OUTSIDE OF A CLEAN ROOM
-A Recovery Program may have been able to recover most of your data...A slight tap could have freed the head.
-Removing a drive from it's enclosure normally removes access to the data (shows it as raw data)....unless it's your own enclosure.
(So...if you did not try putting it back in its original case, it may have a small chance of working if you do but even a speck of dust could prevent it)
-Do some non-Google searches for the titles you lost...you could get lucky and find a good replacement source.

Please...refrain from thoughts of suicide...we'd miss you!!!!

 

[Bill7]

There's also the saying: if you haven't tested recovering from your backup, you don't have a backup.

Ha! For sure.

 

[Don922]

I have a NAS with disks in a RAID 6 as my primary storage. I have a second NAS with disks in RAID 5 as a backup. For my important files I also back them up to the cloud.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[MuttJunior]

Couple of points....

Biggest One....It's happened to us all before.

-I keep a one to one backup of every disk....yes, it's expensive. Also, keep your copies in a different location if possible.
-NEVER EVER OPEN A DRIVE OUTSIDE OF A CLEAN ROOM
-A Recovery Program may have been able to recover most of your data...A slight tap could have freed the head.
-Removing a drive from it's enclosure normally removes access to the data (shows it as raw data)....unless it's your own enclosure.
(So...if you did not try putting it back in its original case, it may have a small chance of working if you do but even a speck of dust could prevent it)
-Do some non-Google searches for the titles you lost...you could get lucky and find a good replacement source.

Please...refrain from thoughts of suicide...we'd miss you!!!!

I believe OP is referring to an external drive, and the "enclosure" is the case it is in, not the hard drive enclosure itself.

 

[vikingár]

I took it a step further and opened the drive, the head was suck and the platters weren't damaged at all.

Never ever open a hard drive if you do not have a white room (just my to cents).
Otherwise I would have said: give testdisk a try - but it seems to late now.

 

[gdc333]

Schofield's Second Law of Computing states that data doesn't really exist unless you have at least two copies of it.

For truly irreplaceable and valuable data, I prefer to have THREE copies. Even though my home server duplicates all data onto different hard drives, I still backup some data offsite.

I learned the hard way but I'm a quick learner...

 

[testiles]

I'm sure everyone here is smarter than me. . .and are probably thinking, no need to post. . .everyone knows the consequences, but I lost nearly 8 TB of movies the night before.

I had everything on a single 8 TB device (in an enclosure) and it took a spill the night before. I'm currently on suicide watch.

Believe me I feel your pain!


Back in the early 2000's I decided to move my huge DVD collection onto Hard Drives. At the time, it was in 5 400-Disc Sony Megachangers -- and growing.

That was around the time I discovered AnyDVD.

I was so happy and proud to move that entire collection to a couple of Hard Drives that when I moved to another state, I decided to leave the discs behind.

Had no idea about second backups at the time.

Fast forward and as those early (Western Digital) external USB Hard Drives hit the 10-year mark, one-by-one they blinked out and failed. Nearly at the same time.

I was devastated as I lost irreplaceable content!!


Nowadays, not being able to afford a RAID big enough to hold all my current media, I simulate a RAID by making two backups of every movie title to two separate external HD's.

I burned through a lot of storage that way, especially when UHD's entered the picture. But I was willing to do it for peace of mind.

Still don't often keep the discs around, but I'm comfortable with the double back-up system.


However, now that HD prices have skyrocketed, I had to cut back.

I get a Blu-Ray version of a movie now instead of the UHD unless I really like the title (used to get UHD for everything).

And now only make a second backup for the most treasured movies.


As everyone has said, personal data is another matter.

Don't like the cloud but there are probably copies of my private data in at least 4 separate HD locations, maintained by backup programs that kick off on my computer each night.

That's something you really can't afford to lose!!!



Anyway, hang in there!!

You'll hopefully rebuild your collection - and consider this a learning experience.




T

 

[coopervid]

Believe me I feel your pain!


However, now that HD prices have skyrocketed, I had to cut back.

I get a Blu-Ray version of a movie now instead of the UHD unless I really like the title (used to get UHD for everything).

And now only make a second backup for the most treasured movies.

T

Instead of getting BD I suggest to shrink the UHD with CBD.

 

[DrXenos]

That sucks, but as others have said, live and learn. I haven't lost anything since floppies were a thing.

All my discs are backed up to hard drives, with hash and par2 files. Discs that were expensive, out-of-print, hard-to-find, or had difficulty ripping, are doubly backed up.
All my downloaded media files are doubly backed up to hard drives, with hash files.
My 8-Bay NAS is also doubly backed up, which hash files.

I have invested in several of these: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0714BK6RX