Author Topic: Back Up Your Research!  (Read 17569 times)

Offline ..claire..

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Re: Back Up Your Research!
« Reply #9 on: Wednesday 14 September 16 12:44 BST (UK) »
Sorry to put another spanner in the works, but for those of us who don't do 'tech talk' - could you explain what some of those terms mean or are, Andrew, farmeroman and Guy  ?

Most of my family history is backed up 'off' computer, so I figure is relatively safe, unless my home burns down of course :)
Luce, Tippett , Thomson, Dolling ~ Devon & Cornwall
Mocquard ~ London, France
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Offline Rosinish

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Re: Back Up Your Research!
« Reply #10 on: Wednesday 14 September 16 13:10 BST (UK) »
Hmm,

I agree Claire.

Topic started well & understandable but now it's like "knowledge" v "knowledge" & only for the "knowledgeable", certainly not for us average users or beginners  ::)

Annie
South Uist, Inverness-shire, Scotland:- Bowie, Campbell, Cumming, Currie

Ireland:- Cullen, Flannigan (Derry), Donahoe/Donaghue (variants) (Cork), McCrate (Tipperary), Mellon, Tol(l)and (Donegal & Tyrone)

Newcastle-on-Tyne/Durham (Northumberland):- Harrison, Jude, Kemp, Lunn, Mellon, Robson, Stirling

Kettering, Northampton:- MacKinnon

Canada:- Callaghan, Cumming, MacPhee

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Offline farmeroman

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Re: Back Up Your Research!
« Reply #11 on: Wednesday 14 September 16 13:53 BST (UK) »
Sorry to put another spanner in the works, but for those of us who don't do 'tech talk' - could you explain what some of those terms mean or are, Andrew, farmeroman and Guy  ?

I agree that the discussion has gone wildly tech in just a few posts, but that's the nature of nerds  ::). However, hopefully some of us techies' paranoia about the threat of data loss has rubbed off on anyone reading this.

I think that the real message is take regular backups of anything that you would hate to lose, which I'm sure includes your photos (50.6GB/20,000 photos in my case), genealogy research data (10.6GB/6200 files and roughly 10 years of my life) and music (22GB/50,300 tracks), plus other important documents, etc.

NAS: Networked Attached Storage. It is a box containing or more disks which is connected to the network (e.g. into the back of a wifi router). It can be used as a backup device for one or more computers and the data can be shared between one or more computers. It can also be set as a personal cloud meaning that the data can be accessed anywhere there is an internet connection.

RAID/mirroring: Too techie for normal people to care about  ;D.

Incremental backup: Software which recognises when a file is changed and backs it up to the relevant drive immediately or according to a schedule (daily in my case  ::)) whilst also retaining a copy of the original file (I can go back several months to recover from mistakes).

Ransomware: A nasty piece of software which can be triggered by clicking on the attachment on an email purporting to be from a bank, etc. Your files are then encrypted and you can only get them back by paying the criminal a fee, in which case he may give you the key to decrypt it. Or not. Unfortunately it will encrpyt anything on the network which the computer has read/write access to, which may include other computers and NAS drives. Oh and don't leave your USB backup drives permanently connected as those will get encrypted too. That's why I also take a regular USB drive backup and remove it from the computer.

So, whatever method(s) you use, back it up, take it out and store it somewhere safe! But don't rely on a single copy on your computer's hard drive. It will fail eventually.

Offline farmeroman

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Re: Back Up Your Research!
« Reply #12 on: Wednesday 14 September 16 14:17 BST (UK) »
I stopped using Raid drives when a controller failed on a 4 disk raid system I had in place failed.
Luckly being parinoid i also had a convention copy on two individual hard drives that gave me access to everything I needed.

Yeah, unfortunately that can happen. Maybe I'll get a second RAID array for redundancy ;D.

Only joking; I probably have enough copies now to cover every eventuality apart from a nuclear strike or an Armageddon asteroid hitting the earth :o.


Offline ..claire..

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Re: Back Up Your Research!
« Reply #13 on: Wednesday 14 September 16 14:18 BST (UK) »
" that's the nature of nerds" ... Well you said it ;D ;D

As Annie said this thread started off well, and to me, really informative. So thankyou  :)

And thankyou farmeroman for taking the time to explain to us lesser techie folks what you were all talking about :)
Luce, Tippett , Thomson, Dolling ~ Devon & Cornwall
Mocquard ~ London, France
Census info is Crown Copyright http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk

Offline Guy Etchells

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Re: Back Up Your Research!
« Reply #14 on: Wednesday 14 September 16 15:23 BST (UK) »

RAID/mirroring: Too techie for normal people to care about  ;D.


RAID arrays (redundant array of independent disks) are a way of splitting files between a number of hard drives in the hope that all the information can be combined in the case of a failure in any specific part of the hard drive.
Hard drives are divided into sections (like the sections of an orange), the most common type of failure in any hard drive is a section that fails leading to loss of the complete file that could be written over 50 sections.
A RAID system shares copies of every used section onto other drives in the system in the hope if one or more sections fail other sections will hold the required information.

The flaw in this system is if the controller or master index fails none of the information held on any of the drives can be read.

There are a number of different ways (7) a RAID array may be set up over a number of disks.

0 : A array that allows two drives to act as one huge drive
1 : Mirroring – basically a copy of one disk held on another.
2 : Striping each sequential bit is on a different drive.

3 & 4 : More complicated striping
5 & 6 : The higher two levels allow one or two of the drives to be removed from the array (in case of failure) yet still allow all the information to be safely accessed.

Cheers
Guy
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Offline ..claire..

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Re: Back Up Your Research!
« Reply #15 on: Wednesday 14 September 16 16:15 BST (UK) »

Thanks Guy.... I think  :) :)
Luce, Tippett , Thomson, Dolling ~ Devon & Cornwall
Mocquard ~ London, France
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Offline andrewalston

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Re: Back Up Your Research!
« Reply #16 on: Wednesday 14 September 16 18:26 BST (UK) »
One of the great things about working in the IT industry is that you get a good feel for the reliability of the equipment you come across.

Proper file servers, for example, are built to be reliable. Properly-designed components, not just whatever is cheapest this week.

However, the industry is forever moving onto newer and newer equipment, and that leaves servers with many years of life left in them being sent for recycling. Great kit, but most businesses want the shiny new stuff.

That means that three years ago I picked up from eBay a server of the same type which until this summer was handling the main storage needs of a large business. It came with redundant power supplies, a couple of drives (I already had quite a number from the ancient box I had previously), 4GB RAM and two dual-core processors. It has on-board RAID and SCSI controllers. There are 10 fans keeping it cool. All the important components can be hot-swapped - replaced without powering the system down.

I paid 25 quid including delivery.

Looking at ALSTON in south Ribble area, ALSTEAD and DONBAVAND/DUNBABIN etc. everywhere, HOWCROFT and MARSH in Bolton and Westhoughton, PICKERING in the Whitehaven area.

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Offline 3sillydogs

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Re: Back Up Your Research!
« Reply #17 on: Wednesday 14 September 16 18:51 BST (UK) »


You are right there andrewalston, I see it all the time with my son (who is in IT). Not complaining though it got me a fairly new computer that had been "junked" by a client as too old. The equipment becomes obsolete so quickly...

Good buy you got there!!! ;D ;D
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