QOTD: How Often Do You Backup Your Data?
In this case, being backed up is a good thing.

Backing up your data is supremely important. Anyone who has had his or her laptop stolen or has been victim of a hard drive crash know how terrible the experience is of trying to recover everything that you've lost.
Having regular backups protects you from those sorts of things, including times of embarrassing user errors. Sometimes even installing the wrong thing can result in a freak accident that could take down your entire system.
Earlier today we discussed Microsoft's decision not to include the backup and restore feature into Windows 7 Home Premium and how that could be a disservice to general computer users. Those who opt for the Professional or Ultimate versions will be able to utilize the built-in software, however.
Mac users have one of the best backup options with Time Machine, which automates the entire backup process and makes restoring old files and configurations simple.
Regardless of backup solutions, the process of protecting one's data is up to the user.
So, our QOTD is: how often do you backup your data?
Also share with us which piece of software and method you use to backup your data. And if you don't backup your data, please tell us why not!
bad decision, you should move the files ASAP, more like once everyday.
TBH, I don't backup, and it's a bad decision. My current hard drive is about to die. I'm buying a new hard drive in 2 weeks.
At work I have five 3TB RAID PACKS for external daily backups. Storage Area Network (SAN) device that gets backed up daily along with 8 servers (Active Directory, Exchange, Ect.) that are backing up daily as well. These all go to the RAID PACKS at various times after hours. RAID PACKS get rotated weekly and are stored off site at a secure facility.
RAID5 FTW!
My data is stored on a RAID5. To the above poster: This is not a backup method, it is a redundancy. They are not the same. (A virus can still wipe out your RAID5, which you would not recover if you must format).
And my important data is kept on the OS partition, in the backup files on the external and on a USB flash drive.
Bad advice.
RAID is great, but it is not backup solution. I am not going to argue about it. Just for the users that don't know or don't want to know the difference. The external USB HDD with backup software is better then RAID.
I don't see raid as a backup at all since there there is no effort to keep the data seperate. What I used to tell tell customers is that we'll reliably duplicate errors.
Renee Culver
Head of VMS Phase II Shadowing team
My home backup consists of a NAS with 2 mirrored hard drives in it, a USB drive that I store elsewhere, and burned DVD's. A copy of the really important stuff also exists on my work computers.
Zip disks even though they are slow and can only hold 250megs never failed me and as long as i don't get a click of death i guess i will keep using them if only because they cost me like 40usd each back when i bought stacks of them.
My NAS computer has 2 1TB drives, the first backs up to the second once a week (might go daily soon though). Then once every couple months I replicate to a third 1TB drive and store off-site.
At work, I've got multiple raid 5 and 1 array's with an off site backup server at one of our other locations using NovaNet software. They do BITS backups every half hour as well as ntbackup and vmware snapshot backups daily and weekly. All but two servers are virtualized and I keep local copies on two servers and one on the off site backup server.
I think I'm fairly safe.
At work, I've got multiple raid 5 and 1 array's with an off site backup server at one of our other locations using NovaNet software. They do BITS backups every half hour as well as ntbackup and vmware snapshot backups daily and weekly. All but two servers are virtualized and I keep local copies on two servers and one on the off site backup server.
I think I'm fairly safe.