# How Much Should You Back Up Your Data and What is the Likelihood of Drive Failure?



## avrona (Sep 3, 2019)

So I've been doing some research into how much people backup their data and what the odds are of their backups actually coming in handy, as I've never really understood the whole backup culture that exists in the tech world. I have no backups of any of my files and thankfully I've never needed one, so I decided to do some research and make a video on the subject. So I just want to know, if you are aware of the percentages and likelihoods of different types of drives failing, please do let me know, and also let me know if you backup your data, if you do, what kind of data is it, and how much do you recommend both normal PC users and more advance users backup their data? And what do you think of using RAID 1 or RAID 10 as a type of backup?


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## sneekypeet (Sep 3, 2019)

All it takes is that one time a drive fails full of information you need, and you will become aware of the importance of a backup. I'm not sure percentages really matter, as any percent, when it happens to you, could spell big trouble. For the average users, with no important data needed, if things go belly-up, you can have a fresh OS in a matter of hours.

Personally, I work from a PC, and without backups of important data, I could lose everything in an instant. Normally I back everything up to my NAS once a month (1st backup), and at the same time I back up to a HDD that does not stay in the system powered on all of the time (2nd backup). The one thing I need to do on top of this is to have another backup off site. I know it may be a bit of a stretch, but if I were to have a fire or a flood, all of my data could still be lost


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## Ahhzz (Sep 3, 2019)

You're not going to be able to get any hard numbers on percentages of failure, for a multitude of explanations. Newer technology (NVMe Drives) show a lower failure rate than SATA drives for many reasons, but primary among those is that they've not been in widespread use for nearly as long as SATA drives, and so we don't have a good idea of how long they'll really last. SATA drives, according to Wiki, were announced in 2000, and starting going into serious use around 2003. NVMe were announced in 2011, and don't appear to be getting installed for at least another 3-4 years, in large numbers. 

Realistically speaking, the use of Solid State Drives like the original SSDs and the newer NVMe drives _should_ experience lower failure rates, and thus you shouldn't _need_ a backup as badly these days as in the days of SATA and *shudder* IDE drives. This is primarily due to being more durable and resistant to common failure issues (temperature, dust in the environment, physical shock, etc). 

I commonly recommend my _serious_ users to use the 3-2-1 rule. 3 backups, 2 different types of storage media, and 1 of those offsite. For home users with pictures they cherish, I push 2 externals, and at least 1 cloud service, altho I am prone to recommending 2-3 different clouds for "Just in Case".


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## avrona (Sep 3, 2019)

Ahhzz said:


> You're not going to be able to get any hard numbers on percentages of failure, for a multitude of explanations. Newer technology (NVMe Drives) show a lower failure rate than SATA drives for many reasons, but primary among those is that they've not been in widespread use for nearly as long as SATA drives, and so we don't have a good idea of how long they'll really last. SATA drives, according to Wiki, were announced in 2000, and starting going into serious use around 2003. NVMe were announced in 2011, and don't appear to be getting installed for at least another 3-4 years, in large numbers.
> 
> Realistically speaking, the use of Solid State Drives like the original SSDs and the newer NVMe drives _should_ experience lower failure rates, and thus you shouldn't _need_ a backup as badly these days as in the days of SATA and *shudder* IDE drives. This is primarily due to being more durable and resistant to common failure issues (temperature, dust in the environment, physical shock, etc).
> 
> I commonly recommend my _serious_ users to use the 3-2-1 rule. 3 backups, 2 different types of storage media, and 1 of those offsite. For home users with pictures they cherish, I push 2 externals, and at least 1 cloud service, altho I am prone to recommending 2-3 different clouds for "Just in Case".


What do you count as serious users and why would they need so many backups? Also with home users, what would be the use for 2 or more external drives? I have plenty of pictures I cherish, and a whole bunch of channel related files, yet I've never seen any use for a backup. Should I do one?


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## sneekypeet (Sep 3, 2019)

avrona said:


> What do you count as serious users and why would they need so many backups? Also with home users, what would be the use for 2 or more external drives? I have plenty of pictures I cherish, and a whole bunch of channel related files, yet I've never seen any use for a backup. Should I do one?



If you want to keep them, yes! 
If you were to run into a natural disaster, or even if the drive just went belly up, without a backup, they are all gone.


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## Ahhzz (Sep 3, 2019)

avrona said:


> What do you count as serious users and why would they need so many backups? Also with home users, what would be the use for 2 or more external drives? I have plenty of pictures I cherish, and a whole bunch of channel related files, yet I've never seen any use for a backup. Should I do one?



Serious users, for me, would include clients such as: Accountants, Attorneys, medical practices (although these are touchy due to privacy), businesses which could be subject to lawsuits (construction, chemicals, etc). The list is pretty long, and includes most of our clients. If you'll check the link on the 3-2-1, that will explain more than adequately why they recommend that, and their logic is sound for our purposes. 
For home users with pictures they cherish, a computer is way too subject to failure to not have backups of some sort. Cloud works well for most of them, and at least an external. 

To summarize, offsite is in case your house burns down. Onsite external is in case your computer burns down. If you've forgotten your online password, or the cloud company goes defunct overnight (or while you weren't looking), you don't lose everything. I've used the line "Ok, I'm a disgruntled employee, and I just tossed your PC out the 10-story window into the pond out there. What can't you lose?" That usually gets a couple of chuckles, more horrified looks, and then an order for the quickest backup we can order.


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## EarthDog (Sep 3, 2019)

If you want to minimize the risk and not lose those cherished pictures/files, you will be doing a backup. Eventually, EVERY HDD/SSD etc, will fail. Be it within warranty (less likely) or out (more likely).

As far as failures, the best we have is information from a builder or backblaze (though this is data center loads and not realistic compared to home use) on part failure. Overall it is low, but the risk is there. Not having a backup is a recipe for losing whatever it is you have on the drives.








						Most Reliable PC Hardware of 2018
					

At Puget Systems, one of the most important things we track in our workstations is the failure rates of individual components. Overall, 2018 was a very good year for hardware reliability with about half as many parts failing this year versus 2015, 2016, or 2017. But what models were the best of...




					www.pugetsystems.com
				



(this information is from within the first year, note... failures obviously can happen and at a higher rate on older drives.

The need for backups in a Enterprise environment you understand, right?

Please tell me your video is on the merits of taking a backup and not your single anecdotal experience of not needing one.... if your followers have half a clue, you'll get skewered in comments.

EDIT: To answer the questions directly...

1. I'm well aware of the percentages of failures. Google is my friend!
2. Of course I back up my data.
2a. It contains, pictures, MS Word/Excel files for personal and work use. I also have a base backup of my OS. Like Day 0 with just chipset and GPU drivers, as well as a few apps I use frequently. I also backup my games drive as well. This allows me to restore from a HDD which is much faster than even my 400 Mbps internet to DL and then install. I can re-associate steam games for example.
3. For data, it depends on how frequently it is changed (you can also do incremental backups). For a normal enthusiast, I recommend taking a monthly backup. For those with more critical information, perhaps weekly or even daily.


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## John Naylor (Sep 3, 2019)

There are 2 types of people in this world:

a)  Those that have had a storage drive failure.
b)  Thos who have not yet had a storage drive failure.

% of HD failures are (well were) published.  Not the usual nonsense that Backblaze publishes where drives are installed contrary to manufacturer's specifications.... but real hard data.









						Disques durs - Les taux de retour des composants (15) - HardWare.fr
					

La fiabilité est aussi importante que difficile à mesurer, si bien qu'elle reste inconnue. Cartes mères et graphiques, alims, ram, hdd et ssd : voici les chiffres dont nous disposons !



					www.hardware.fr
				





Seagate 0,72% (contre 0,69%)
Toshiba 0,80% (contre 1,15%)
Western 1,04% (contre 1,03%)
HGST 1,13% (contre 0,60%)

The 1st number was previous 6 months and 2nd was thr 6 months preceding that. 

It's not the relative difference is RMA rates between brands that is significant ... its the specific models.  I have seen drives with as high as 10%.  In general, large drives fail more often.    In SSDs 1st few years, they had a pretty high failure rate. In the last 8 years... we have had 

(4) SSD Failures
(0) SSHD failures
(1) HD Failure

We stopped using HDs 7 years ago ... every box has a at least (1) SSD and (1) SSHD

How often you back up depends upon how valuable your data is:

a)  gaming box ... no big loss , replace drive, redownload your games 
b) 20 years of business records ... kinda important
c)  25 years worth of CAD drawings and project specs ... critical importance.

We have a network storage drive.  It's mirrored to a 2nd drive in same box.  If it dies, switch cable and we are up and running again.  A 3rd drive us used in a d pocking staion and SSHD is stored off site.

It must be said that as you "don't understand why people do backups", you're really not well suited to prepare a video on the subject.


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## Solaris17 (Sep 3, 2019)

avrona said:


> Also with home users, what would be the use for 2 or more external drives? I have plenty of pictures I cherish, and a whole bunch of channel related files, yet I've never seen any use for a backup. Should I do one?



Iv had clients that have lost data. The one that sticks with me is the guy that came in with a PC that wouldnt boot. Begged me to save his pictures. His daughter died in the single digits after getting sick. His wife a few years prior in a car accident. His only pictures of his dead daughter and wife for this "normal home user" were on this desktop in which the most complicated thing he did was check gmail.

Iv had customer lose tons of data but I always remember this one.

If you use statistics to decide the worth of those pictures I feel sorry for the black and white way in which you look at life.


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## avrona (Sep 3, 2019)

EarthDog said:


> Please tell me your video is on the merits of taking a backup and not your single anecdotal experience of not needing one.... if your followers have half a clue, you'll get skewered in comments.



Actually kinda neither, the video will be me talking about how I think backups aren't really needed in most cases, and I will be mainly tackling the 3,2,1 rule and the amount of backups a normal user should have, along with showing how unlikely it is that a backup could help, at least that's the plan based on my current opinions and the data I gathered so far, as the point of this thread was to get some more insights on the topic so probably some of my opinions on it will change before I make the full video.


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## EarthDog (Sep 3, 2019)

avrona said:


> Actually kinda neither, the video will be me talking about how I think backups aren't really needed in most cases, and I will be mainly tackling the 3,2,1 rule and the amount of backups a normal user should have, along with showing how unlikely it is that a backup could help, at least that's the plan based on my current opinions and the data I gathered so far, as the point of this thread was to get some more insights on the topic so probably some of my opinions on it will change before I make the full video.



3/2/1 rule is more or less Enterprise to me. I mean, that IS a proper way to do it mitigating any of the 'most likely' of threats, but it is overkill for many, especially home users. I worked in a data center in many capacities (operations, management, capacity planning, etc)... for our backups (this is a water company mind you). We kept the active copy on the device, another copy in a different part of the building (mini  data center for backup storage only), as well as offsite storage (tapes, LTO4) we cycled through. This way if the data center and the device bit the dust, we have another copy. If the building went up in smoke, we had a copy offsite to restore business. It's all about risk management. 

My man, if this is YT vid, you are going to get skewered following your logic. You'll find your thought process is really in the minority.

Just because you haven't lost something valuable, doesn't mean there isn't a lot of value in backing what you/user deems to be critical for them.


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## ERazer (Sep 3, 2019)

Family photos/documents backed up in NAS then cloud.
Media files/steam library to NAS.
In NAS i can have up to 2 drive fails and still able to rebuild.


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## avrona (Sep 3, 2019)

EarthDog said:


> 3/2/1 rule is more or less Enterprise to me. I mean, that IS a proper way to do it mitigating any of the 'most likely' of threats, but it is overkill for many, especially home users. I worked in a data center in many capacities (operations, management, capacity planning, etc)... for our backups (this is a water company mind you). We kept the active copy on the device, another copy in a different part of the building (mini  data center for backup storage only), as well as offsite storage (tapes, LTO4) we cycled through. This way if the data center and the device bit the dust, we have another copy. If the building went up in smoke, we had a copy offsite to restore business. It's all about risk management.
> 
> My man, if this is YT vid, you are going to get skewered following your logic. You'll find your thought process is really in the minority.
> 
> Just because you haven't lost something valuable, doesn't mean there isn't a lot of value in backing what you/user deems to be critical for them.


I know it is in the minority, and I honestly I don't care if I get "skewered in the comments" as there is logic to my logic on this topic, and I am going to try to explain my logic to the best of my ability.


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## Vayra86 (Sep 3, 2019)

avrona said:


> What do you count as serious users and why would they need so many backups? Also with home users, what would be the use for 2 or more external drives? I have plenty of pictures I cherish, and a whole bunch of channel related files, yet I've never seen any use for a backup. Should I do one?



Definitely. Its not hard to have a thumb drive laying around somewhere. Totally worth doing. If its about your pictures (from holidays, events etc.) its just a small adjustment, when you copy them over to your rig, to also copy them to a USB stick in one go. If you'd do that every time you return from holiday, you've also got a nice frequency to your backups right away.

And you can do the same thing for your Documents folder, for example. Just copy paste over the last one, and done. There's no need to overcomplicate it with automation or anything.

You can then take it one step further and put one thumb drive per X years offsite. Such as with a family member.

Another good option these days is just using the cloud backup. That is something you can easily automate. Have OneDrive sort it out for you, done - you have an offsite backup. And if you take your pictures with your phone, its even easier.



Solaris17 said:


> Iv had clients that have lost data. The one that sticks with me is the guy that came in with a PC that wouldnt boot. Begged me to save his pictures. His daughter died in the single digits after getting sick. His wife a few years prior in a car accident. His only pictures of his dead daughter and wife for this "normal home user" were on this desktop in which the most complicated thing he did was check gmail.
> 
> Iv had customer lose tons of data but I always remember this one.
> 
> If you use statistics to decide the worth of those pictures I feel sorry for the black and white way in which you look at life.



If I would lose the pics of my daughter's birth etc.... man. That'd be bad. Imagine having to even explain that later on  'Yeah, I didn't think we needed a backup'. My wife already lost a bunch of her pictures from her 20's, its a few years ago but she still mentions it every once in a while. Its like having something stolen from you.


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## EarthDog (Sep 3, 2019)

avrona said:


> I know it is in the minority, and I honestly I don't care if I get "skewered in the comments" as there is logic to my logic on this topic, and I am going to try to explain my logic to the best of my ability.


I'm waiting with bated breath to hear this 'logic on logic'... But, I could easily be missing something.


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## neatfeatguy (Sep 3, 2019)

I have multiple backups of important files on multiple types of media.

Any important files I keep on USB and DVD, along with an external HDD. I keep a mirror image of my SSD, I update this once a month and that might even be too often since I don't keep much on it aside from the OS and important system programs such as antivirus/malware and one or two games that I frequent. I don't really add much of anything to it. 99.9% of all new data I do utilize is to my spin drives on my PC and my Plex server.

All family pictures/videos are copied in triplicate across the 2 HDDs in my PC and one HDD on the Plex server.

When I first cobbled together my Plex server, I had the two 4TB drivers setup in RAID1. Then Windows 10 updated (I think it was the Fall Creator update) and broke itself so bad neither drive would boot into Windows. Since windows wouldn't boot I tried Safe Mode - wouldn't load. Since Safe Mode wasn't accessible I tried Win 10 Recovery option - this didn't work, Windows couldn't recover. So, I was left with the option of format and re-install. Now I just have the data backup from the first drive to the second drive and I don't keep them in RAID1.

I always like to keep backups. Once the data is gone, it's gone. You won't get it back. If you don't have backups and you have a catastrophic failure, that's it. I've seen multiple business owners lose all their data history because they didn't keep any kind of backup. Even after I spoke to them about something as simple as an external drive to copy the files to.....they'd call in with a panic in their voice that all their info was gone because their computer crashed. Most of the time we could access the bad drive and recover some data, but that wasn't always the case. So I've learned to keep data you find important, backed up.


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## Ahhzz (Sep 3, 2019)

John Naylor said:


> There are 2 types of people in this world:
> 
> a)  Those that have had a storage drive failure.
> b)  Thos who have not yet had a storage drive failure.
> ...


Interesting data from 3 years ago, however not very representative, any more than any other set of statistics regarding hard drives. From the article:
_"It should be added that these statistics are logically limited to the products sold by this e-merchant, and to customer returns made directly via this one, which is not always the case since it is possible to make returns directly. with the manufacturer, especially in the field of storage: however this represents a minority in the first year, especially since the e-merchant from which these statistics come out bears the cost of return.  _"

As noted, Backblaze doesn't use the drives they report data on specifically as directed by the hard drive manufacturers, since they use them in data storage centers. This means they get more constant usage, as well as high continuous run time. It is nice to note from their data, however, which drives manage to maintain a high pass rate, as it _could_ be taken to indicate reliable drives for a long period of time.

To answer your basic questions, Yes, I use backups for the data critical to me, or (as data is cheap) difficult to replace: tax documentation, resume, scans of certain documents, and photos. I use cloud storages (plural), external USB drives, a file server local to my house, and a Netgear NAS under RAID 1. 

The discussion regarding Raid 1 and Raid 10 vs a "real" backup brings the definition of "Backup" in play. By definition, a Raid array is not a backup. However, for many people, myself included, having a additional copy of my data identical to the first available in case of catastrophic drive failure counts as backup.


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## authorized (Sep 3, 2019)

Percentages don't really matter, all you need to realize that it _can _happen, at any moment (and happens everyday to someone). What really matters is how important your data is.
Proper backup is kind of like insurance, it has some cost and inconvenience associated with it and most of the time, possibly never, pays off. But it's there just in case, protecting you from getting truly screwed, from worst case scenario.

Also, RAID is not backup.


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## avrona (Sep 4, 2019)

authorized said:


> Percentages don't really matter, all you need to realize that it _can _happen, at any moment (and happens everyday to someone). What really matters is how important your data is.
> Proper backup is kind of like insurance, it has some cost and inconvenience associated with it and most of the time, possibly never, pays off. But it's there just in case, protecting you from getting truly screwed, from worst case scenario.
> 
> Also, RAID is not backup.


So many other horrible things can also happen to us, yet the chances of those things happening are as rare as drive fails, so what's the difference? Also why exactly is RAID not a backup?


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## sneekypeet (Sep 4, 2019)

avrona said:


> Also why exactly is RAID not a backup?



More importantly, some types of RAID are not a backup.


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## avrona (Sep 4, 2019)

sneekypeet said:


> More importantly, some types of RAID are not a backup.


Yes I know that RAID 0 is not certainly a backup, but 1 is.


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## Ahhzz (Sep 4, 2019)

avrona said:


> Yes I know that RAID 0 is not certainly a backup, but 1 is.


The reason that RAID is not considered a technical "backup" is because a backup is supposed to protect you from loss of data due to events such as drive failure (obviously), loss of hardware (fire, theft, etc), accidental or malicious deletion (disgruntled employee/host manager) or massive data corruption (ion storm? lol). There are other potential causes of data loss, but already we've run into 2 situations where a RAID does not provide backup protection: Deletion or Data Corruption. A "mirrored" raid of any sort, by definition, is an exact copy of the data onto multiple drives. Let me repeat that: "Exact copy of the data". If the data is deleted, a RAID does exactly what it's supposed to: Deletes The Data. Likewise, a file which becomes corrupted becomes a duplicated corrupted file. Even if somehow the RAID doesn't have the ability to copy the corruption, that RAID is not programmed to kow the different between intentional or accidental bit-flipping.
Therefore, RAID is not an accepted form of "Backup" by the definition.


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## Toothless (Sep 4, 2019)

I'll just say I have a backup of my documents and a backup of that backup. Came in handy a few or more months ago when that drive completely failed.


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## Deleted member 158293 (Sep 4, 2019)

2 on site (raid not considered a backup), 2 off site backups.

Might take a few months or a decade+...  Experiencing the first time getting caught without a backup is the best teacher.


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## Ahhzz (Sep 4, 2019)

Toothless said:


> I'll just say I have a backup of my documents and a backup of that backup. Came in handy a few or more months ago when that drive completely failed.


several years ago, I splurged on Hard Disk Sentinel. Reasoning was that a few months earlier, I had seen an error on restart on my file server about a corrupted file and disk scan. I dug thru the Event Viewer, but got misled because of the way I had initially loaded the system, and started keeping a "Close Eye" on one of my older data drives. Fast forward 2 months or so, and my System drive (a Raptor 10k) crashed its board, taking my tax data, loads of email, and other random files I'll probably never know were gone. Fortunately, _most_ of my critical data like all my photos, were stored in the data drives and on an HP MediaVault, but I seriously considered paying to get it rebuilt. 

I've actually got an eBay page up at home right now, thinking about buying a replacement board to see if I can resurrect it, but it keeps referring to something like flashing the bios on the circuit board, and I'm a little concerned I won't have the components to do it heheh.

Too many people think "Ah, I've never had a data loss, who needs a backup??". Those people make really good customers down the road. "Can you recover my data?? What can I do to keep it from happening again?? Can you schedule annual checks on my drives???!"


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## notb (Sep 4, 2019)

avrona said:


> So many other horrible things can also happen to us, yet the chances of those things happening are as rare as drive fails, so what's the difference? Also why exactly is RAID not a backup?


The difference is that you *can* protect yourself from loss of data. That's why you should do it.

Your whole logic makes no sense. It's like if you said: I'm not buying an umbrella, because I could be hit by a car anyway.

RAID is not a backup, because it only covers disk failure (assuming it's a RAID with data redundancy).
The aim of RAID is not backup, but sustaining a system despite a disk failure.
Backups are supposed to protect you from particular events: disk failure, overvoltage, damage, fire, flood, theft etc.

The other thing you asked about: why multiple backups.
A more secure backup usually has longer retrieval time (the time it takes to get the data lost from primary storage).
A backup kept in a wardrobe doesn't protect you from theft, but you can access it in minutes.
A backup kept in another location protects you from theft, but you may need a few hours to get there.


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## authorized (Sep 4, 2019)

avrona said:


> So many other horrible things can also happen to us, yet the chances of those things happening are as rare as drive fails, so what's the difference? Also why exactly is RAID not a backup?


Do you have health and life insurance? Is your house or car insured? Why have those? Even if you personally don't, most people do, it's a very sensible thing to do.
Maybe insurance is not a perfect analogy but I believe it's good enough to illustrate the point.

RAID with redundancy is technically a very weak form of backup, but it only protects from one of many common causes of data loss, so it is definitely not a good enough form of backup in most cases.

It's a pretty trivial concept, I don't really understand where's that pushback coming from. If you don't want to backup your data, for whatever reason, then don't. But convincing other people, who may be not aware enough about consequences of data loss, that they don't need it either is potentially harmful.


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## timta2 (Sep 5, 2019)

avrona said:


> Actually kinda neither, *the video will be me talking about how I think backups aren't really needed in most cases,* and I will be mainly tackling the 3,2,1 rule and the amount of backups a normal user should have, along with showing how unlikely it is that a backup could help, at least that's the plan based on my current opinions and the data I gathered so far, as the point of this thread was to get some more insights on the topic so probably some of my opinions on it will change before I make the full video.



Making this video will do a disservice to at least some of the people watching your video and will likely hurt them, as do most videos that propagate ignorance.


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## avrona (Sep 5, 2019)

timta2 said:


> Making this video will do a disservice to at least some of the people watching your video and will likely hurt them, as do most videos that propagate ignorance.


I'm not propagating ignorance though, just explaining how much doesn't make sense in terms of backups and "backup culture".


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## Frick (Sep 5, 2019)

avrona said:


> I'm not propagating ignorance though, just explaining how much doesn't make sense in terms of backups and "backup culture".



I'll highlight an important word in your first post.



avrona said:


> So I've been doing some research into how much people backup their data and what the odds are of their backups actually coming in handy, as I've never really understood the whole backup culture that exists in the tech world. I have no backups of any of my files and *thankfully I've never needed one*, so I decided to do some research and make a video on the subject. So I just want to know, if you are aware of the percentages and likelihoods of different types of drives failing, please do let me know, and also let me know if you backup your data, if you do, what kind of data is it, and how much do you recommend both normal PC users and more advance users backup their data? And what do you think of using RAID 1 or RAID 10 as a type of backup?



That is pretty much the gist of it. It would be a bad thing to lose your data, yes? As others have said, you plan for the worst. The "backup culture" (as you put it) is just part of life, as it should be. It's a solved problem, especially with cloud storage. I will not watch your video (because I hate videos) but if you are indeed saying anything other than "Backups, all of you!" then you arevery much doing a straight up bad thing, at least if thevideo gets any traction.


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## EarthDog (Sep 5, 2019)

avrona said:


> I'm not propagating ignorance though, just explaining how much doesn't make sense in terms of backups and "backup culture".


That's exactly what you would be doing... bunking sound procedures about backups injecting an illogical take on it which could cause users to lose data when followed. Whereas if they are backing things up, data loss is avoided.

Your post above essentially says, I'm not saying it's hot, just explaining why its glowing red and burned your fingers.


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## londiste (Sep 5, 2019)

Nobody thinks about backup until they've lost their first set of valuable data.
And I do speak from experience


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## TheMadDutchDude (Sep 5, 2019)

I only back up important documents, to the cloud, and then the rest can be recovered. I guess you don’t worry about it too much when you have 1 Gbps download speeds. Everything can be recovered quickly enough.


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## phill (Sep 5, 2019)

I wish I had the option of the cloud but with my internet and the data I store, I'd rather stick with it being local and backed up off site..  It's on a few different types of median so I should hopefully be safe


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## silkstone (Sep 6, 2019)

A failure is pretty much certain at some point, unless you cycle hard drives and throw them away before they die.
You should always backup critical information, 3-2-1, in case a failure comes unexpectedly.

I've had 4-5 HDDs fail (over the period of a few decades), but they have always been expected failures . . . i.e. I caught them before the failure via SMART.

Honestly, with the cost of storage now, even flash storage, there's no real reason not to backup your most essential stuff apart from laziness.

Personally, I use Resilio Sync to keep copies of everything in 3 different locations. Then I have backups of essentials in 3 different places (2nd internal HDD, Cloud and external laptop drive).
I also try to keep semi-regular drive images for most of my computers, but that's more because I don't want to go through the hassle of setting up systems again.


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## moproblems99 (Sep 6, 2019)

I like to do a big back up and then incremental backups until my next big one.  I have been terrible at lately but I did finally get my server built to make it happen   

You also have to remember that backing up isn't because it can happen.  It is merely so you can recover if it does happen.  For instance, why put money in the bank?  Well, if you kept it at your house and you got broken into...you'll still have your money.

There are lots of things that might happen that you will say: That won't happen to me.  But when it does, you better hope you prepared for it.


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## lemonadesoda (Sep 6, 2019)

Failure rates are higher than reported. Why? Most failure statistics are created by the manufacturers themselves where they stress test drives continuously and measure failure rates. Real world? Drive degrade OVER TIME not just OVER USE, and also, due to power failures, and due to faulty mainboards, SATA controllers or SATA cables.

Case in point? My father has lost HDDs twice due to power outages in the UK. Grid power outages are much more dangerous than just the user pulling a power cable, why, because they are preceded by voltage instability and voltage spikes.

I have lost 2 HDDs in the same server due to faulty SATA cables, (I think), accelerating their wear and tear and RAID failure.

Does MY EXPERIENCE and drive failure enter the manufacturers statistics? No.

Do yourself a favour. Do a RAID for redundancy, usually enabling you to get back online with just a HDD swap and a couple hours of the RAID software rebuilding the array, and do a backup for occasions of RAID fail or when you inadvertently delete a file and need to recover it.

Make the process automatic, or you will just stop doing manual backups after you have done it once or twice. A decent NAS like synology or qnap will sort you, and provide many other features you didnt even know you wanted!


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## Jetster (Sep 6, 2019)

The likelihood of drive failure is yes. And if its important back it up

Personally I use two back ups. A continuous and a cold back up

And RAID is not a back up. However it is more reliable and faster


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## tabascosauz (Sep 6, 2019)

Exhorting the importance of backups to someone who's never experienced *sudden* data loss is like urging someone who's never had an accident or near miss to buy a dashcam. They _understand_ the theoretical importance of backups, but not the stringent need for them at a personal level. You just have to experience it.

Why sudden data loss? Because a slowly failing drive gives them plenty of time to move their stuff and justify "I'll just get a better drive next time that won't fail". But a suddenly dead SSD without backups? That's a paddlin'.

I'm a little more lax than I used to be. Nowadays I rely heavily on Dropbox for just about anything except program files and large unnecessary screen recordings because I'm on the Plus plan. But I basically don't use Selective Sync, instead opting to keep everything locally instead. I keep the big stuff off my laptop with Selective Sync, which has a 256GB PM961, but what important DB files I do have on the laptop mirrors what's local on my desktop. In addition, I've got a mechanical external drive (the only spinny remaining in my house) that gets regularly updated backups, and is largely safe from falls/shock as it never leaves my desktop. Lastly, as for the stuff that I would not want to lose but aren't absolutely essential (e.g. my image working folders that contain the raws but not the PSDs and final product) are spread out across 4 different SSDs now, so that if one of them goes, I don't lose absolutely everything.


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## windwhirl (Sep 6, 2019)

At home, I honestly don't have backups, except for a few passwords that are important to me for what they open, which are saved in three places (a USB drive I always carry with me, another drive in a safety box, in both cases encrypted with the only password I bother remembering, and a book, the latter one being marked in many pages in certain ways, so that I can recover what I need, as long as I'm not in a hurry to recover it in less than, say, 30 minutes). Almost all the files at home are simply not critical , since they are either available on the Internet or are copies of some other media, like DVDs or music CDs.

At work (accounting firm), every computer backs everything up to our main server at least once a week every Thursday. The servers get backed up to a portable HDD every month, which is stored off-site. Most of our data are databases (for the actual accounting and for government-issued tax filing and report software), spreadsheets, Word and PDF documents and emails (we don't keep them on the cloud).

Ultimately, most if not all of the original information (meaning the source of all the information we load into the accounting software, the spreadsheets, the tax filing programs, etc.) is printed and kept in folders and boxes. This being necessary because sometimes we get information requests from the tax office (for example, they may want to know if X made deals with Y, and in such case they want to know every single detail of them) which must be answered on physical paper and presenting all the information requested also on paper.

There have been a couple of times where backups came in handy. One of them being that a computer's power supply failed and could not be replaced immediately. The data we needed was already stored on the server, so no worries. Another time was when a SIAP (the government-issued software for tax filing and reports,) upgrade failed and borked its main database. We later learned that specific version was buggy and didn't play well with Windows versions newer than 98, for some obscure reason that only someone who knows Visual Basic 5.0 could probably tell.


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## moproblems99 (Sep 6, 2019)

avrona said:


> I'm not propagating ignorance though, just explaining how much doesn't make sense in terms of backups and "backup culture".



Just like everything else, the are use cases.  If you don't think backing up irreplaceable images then...can't help you there.  Obviously, backing up cat memes doesn't make a whole lot of sense.


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## silkstone (Sep 6, 2019)

Jetster said:


> *And RAID is not a back up. However it is more reliable and faster*



This is so important to stress, I've repeated it. Lots of people get it into their heads that If they have raid, then it's backed up!


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## Solaris17 (Sep 6, 2019)

avrona said:


> "backup culture"



It's not a culture its a practice. Honestly, I don't understand at this point why you are making this or who would even listen. Your fear mongering at this point. You self admitted that you didn't understand why people used it. Furthermore you then asked for opinions on what you believe to be this "cultures" view on things you seem to think are a backup like RAID but for the majority of the "culture" you speak of it is not considered a "backup".

Someone who clearly does not understand the underlying technologies should not peddle youtube videos on their "opinions" as fact when they don't even comprehend the practice that is data backup.

Just when you seemed to be open to ideas on the first page you hit us with the quoted doozy in which you continue your initial ignorance by defining it as such.



avrona said:


> just explaining how much doesn't make sense in terms of backups and "backup culture".



What do you intend to explain? You have no significant experience in the subject to be able to title yourself or be dubbed anyone that has the ability to rationalize the practice.



avrona said:


> I have no backups of any of my files and thankfully I've never needed one



What interests me more is that for someone seemingly bent on defending no backups; not only do you intend to explain to people that they don't need them after not even having them yourself, but you go as far as to contradict yourself by saying.



> and thankfully I've never needed one



Odd that you would be "thankful" you have never needed one coming from someone that does not believe in their use? I'm starting to believe that you and your organization or body or outlet or however you want to quantify your distribution outlet. Seek to do nothing more than sensationalize random subject matters that you yourself have no vast amount of experience in and masquerade it to the younger generation as fact or "best practice" while utilizing slang that draws in crowds like "culture". 

I think you should more carefully contemplate the sources in which you get your material because if this is truly your goal (and you would be hard pressed to convince me it isn't) I don't think you will find your backing here. I have my doubts about this community sometimes but I do not think anyone will rally with you in regards to backups being not needed or useless.


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## R-T-B (Sep 6, 2019)

Ahhzz said:


> I've actually got an eBay page up at home right now, thinking about buying a replacement board to see if I can resurrect it, but it keeps referring to something like flashing the bios on the circuit board, and I'm a little concerned I won't have the components to do it heheh.



I tried this with a 15K Hitachi Ultrastar years ago.  A straight board swap didn't work there, FWIW.



Solaris17 said:


> Someone who clearly does not understand the underlying technologies should not peddle youtube videos on their "opinions" as fact when they don't even comprehend the practice that is data backup.



Thank you for summarizing the issue with "youtube culture" news, quite succinctly.


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## EarthDog (Sep 6, 2019)

It's the YouTube nation... where every dick and tom who has an opinion can film it and be put on a medium to be heard by the few who are subscribed... regardless if the information or opinion is rooted in fact and helpful or complete horseshit.


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## silkstone (Sep 6, 2019)

EarthDog said:


> It's the YouTube nation... where every dick and tom who has an opinion can film it and be put on a medium to be heard by the few who are subscribed... regardless if the information or opinion is rooted in fact and helpful or complete horseshit.



It's unfortunate that we now live in a 'post-facts' society where, by many, an opinion is just as valid as a fact


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## notb (Sep 6, 2019)

timta2 said:


> Making this video will do a disservice to at least some of the people watching your video and will likely hurt them, as do most videos that propagate ignorance.


Precisely this. @avrona if you feel the urge to make videos, make them about something you know?
What's the point?


lemonadesoda said:


> Failure rates are higher than reported. Why? Most failure statistics are created by the manufacturers themselves where they stress test drives continuously and measure failure rates. Real world? Drive degrade OVER TIME not just OVER USE, and also, due to power failures, and due to faulty mainboards, SATA controllers or SATA cables.


You're mixing 2 types of ratings.

Manufacturers publish MTBF based on laboratory tests and estimations.
These figures make most sense when comparing products of the same company.

Failure rates are based on data gathered from clients, not manufacturers. One has to be a user of the drives to do this kind of research. 
These rates are lower than what we may experience because they're based on datacenters. That means controlled environment, stable power supply, low dust etc.
In other words: datacenter drives fail almost solely because of factory defects (sub-par quality).
Consumer drives fail because they're more exposed to external factors.


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## btarunr (Sep 6, 2019)

I just image my SSD every 14 days onto a separate HDD. Important stuff is backed up to the cloud.


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## avrona (Sep 6, 2019)

Frick said:


> I'll highlight an important word in your first post.
> 
> 
> 
> That is pretty much the gist of it. It would be a bad thing to lose your data, yes? As others have said, you plan for the worst. The "backup culture" (as you put it) is just part of life, as it should be. It's a solved problem, especially with cloud storage. I will not watch your video (because I hate videos) but if you are indeed saying anything other than "Backups, all of you!" then you arevery much doing a straight up bad thing, at least if thevideo gets any traction.


Exactly how is it a bad thing though, especially since I won't be saying that in the video most likely? Just presenting my view on the whole thing.


EarthDog said:


> That's exactly what you would be doing... bunking sound procedures about backups injecting an illogical take on it which could cause users to lose data when followed. Whereas if they are backing things up, data loss is avoided.
> 
> Your post above essentially says, I'm not saying it's hot, just explaining why its glowing red and burned your fingers.


How exactly is it illogical though?


Solaris17 said:


> It's not a culture its a practice. Honestly, I don't understand at this point why you are making this or who would even listen. Your fear mongering at this point. You self admitted that you didn't understand why people used it. Furthermore you then asked for opinions on what you believe to be this "cultures" view on things you seem to think are a backup like RAID but for the majority of the "culture" you speak of it is not considered a "backup".
> 
> Someone who clearly does not understand the underlying technologies should not peddle youtube videos on their "opinions" as fact when they don't even comprehend the practice that is data backup.
> 
> ...


Well I'm making the video for a similar reason most people do videos on topics, to explain things in that topic, give their own opinion, etc.
And the fact RAID isn't considered a backup in most of a culture is a perfect example that it has just become it's own little culture and any ideas opposing it, like I think has been clearly demonstrated here, are kinda frowned upon.
And I'm not sure where the idea of me being totally against backups came from, like I explain in the video in certain scenarios and for bigger companies they start making sense, and I am also planning on talking in the video about what I like to call "unintentional backups", something that did actually saved me from the only data loss I've ever experienced.
Plus what you said there is totally not my plan. My whole channel is tech and hardware-based so I do have experience in the topic, I'm not trying to sensationalise it, just giving my opinion on it and wanting to show how there is this weird culture around it. It's that simple.


notb said:


> Precisely this. @avrona if you feel the urge to make videos, make them about something you know?
> What's the point?
> 
> You're mixing 2 types of ratings.
> ...


It is something I know though, and that's why I'm doing a video on it, on my opinions on it.


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## authorized (Sep 6, 2019)

I suppose you don't want to share your channel here?
Will you share the video with us? Any ETA on that?


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## moproblems99 (Sep 6, 2019)

avrona said:


> And the fact RAID isn't considered a backup in most of a culture is a perfect example that it has just become it's own little culture and any ideas opposing it, like I think has been clearly demonstrated here, are kinda frowned upon.



So RAID is not being frowned upon.  Calling it something it isn't is frowned upon.  If your array gets corrupted then how do you restore it?  In a RAID 1, or 5, all you basically get is tolerance.  You don't really have an escape plan.



avrona said:


> My whole channel is tech and hardware-based so I do have experience in the topic, I'm not trying to sensationalise it, just giving my opinion on it and wanting to show how there is this weird culture around it. It's that simple.



I still have trouble trying to correlate a 'culture' to a simple thing like backing up data.



avrona said:


> "unintentional backups"



Would you explain what an unintentional back-up, how it saved you, and then how back-ups don't make sense?



avrona said:


> It is something I know though, and that's why I'm doing a video on it, on my opinions on it.



If back-ups were something you truly understood, you would never say the words: 'They don't make sense and people don't need them.'


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## R-T-B (Sep 7, 2019)

avrona said:


> How exactly is it illogical though?



How is not protecting your essential files at all logical, is the real question I think.  Especially with a very real statistical risk.



avrona said:


> And the fact RAID isn't considered a backup



It isn't.  A power surge can take out your entire RAID in one incident.  Heck, controller firmware updates can do it.  Also, what about that file you deleted 6 momths ago, forgot, now need, and is now irrecoverable?  How is RAID helping now?

It helps some situations.  But a backup, it is not.


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## londiste (Sep 7, 2019)

@avrona are you trolling or are you serious? I cannot tell.

If you have something important (for you) on your computer - it could be documents, pictures, videos or anything - this should be backed up. It is not a question of culture, it is a question of whether you would like to keep that data in case something goes wrong. Whether to just copy files over to some external disk or follow the 3-2-1 rule is a question of the degree of risk management but no backup is a very significant increase in risk.

Disks fail. The chance might be very low but if that happens to you once per 10 years and you don't have a backup you data is lost. In many cases there is no way to recover it, at least with reasonable cost. It does not even have to be a disk failure. Maybe you accidentally delete your files. Or Windows update/upgrade loses your Documents folder.

Or course it is possible that you have nothing of value on your drives. Then it is OK not to have a backup but it should be an informed and acknowledged risk acceptance.


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## avrona (Sep 7, 2019)

authorized said:


> I suppose you don't want to share your channel here?
> Will you share the video with us? Any ETA on that?


Well I didn't know that was even an option on these forums so I've now added in as my "website" on my profile here. When the video is out I will probably post it here and it should be out on Friday. And yes the date is intentional as I do plan on talking about luck and statistics and odds in the video.


moproblems99 said:


> So RAID is not being frowned upon.  Calling it something it isn't is frowned upon.  If your array gets corrupted then how do you restore it?  In a RAID 1, or 5, all you basically get is tolerance.  You don't really have an escape plan.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


With that logic not much really is a backup then, even a backup somewhere on your PC that isn't RAID 1 or 5 or anything like that can be taken out with your real-time data.
I also pretty much see some pretty striking evidence to there being this "culture" around this in this very thread. And the unintentional backups I'm planning on going into a lot of detail into in the video, but essentially it's what I call any action which primary objective isn't to give you a backup, but you end up with one anyway, and what's great about it is that the files you often unintentionally back up happen to be the most important of your files anyway, such as putting some files you need to have access to a lot and from a lot of places going into the cloud. I am also a photographer, so after each shoot I got plenty of photos that need transferring over to my PC for long-term storage and editing, as it's not really practical to have to dig up some SD card whenever you want to look at a photo; same with videos after recording something to the channel. However since the SD cards I do use are rather big, I can allow myself to keep the original files on the card, so instead of moving all the new files, I copy them over, as I have a lot of uses for the files to still be on the SD card and on my camera. And again, I do understand backups, and I think being extremely obsessed and almost paranoid about them doesn't make sense.


R-T-B said:


> How is not protecting your essential files at all logical, is the real question I think.  Especially with a very real statistical risk.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Never said that what you just said there "protecting your essential files" is illogical, protecting yourself from extremely low odds or essentially being paranoid and incorporating several different backup methods all at the same time is. I myself protect some of my most essential files, via what I mentioned above, what I call "unintentional backups".


londiste said:


> @avrona are you trolling or are you serious? I cannot tell.
> 
> If you have something important (for you) on your computer - it could be documents, pictures, videos or anything - this should be backed up. It is not a question of culture, it is a question of whether you would like to keep that data in case something goes wrong. Whether to just copy files over to some external disk or follow the 3-2-1 rule is a question of the degree of risk management but no backup is a very significant increase in risk.
> 
> ...


No I'm not trolling, last time I've seen just having a different opinion on a subject isn't trolling...


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## londiste (Sep 7, 2019)

avrona said:


> No I'm not trolling, last time I've seen just having a different opinion on a subject isn't trolling...


I simply find it very hard to believe someone doubts the usefulness of backups.


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## avrona (Sep 7, 2019)

londiste said:


> I simply find it very hard to believe someone doubts the usefulness of backups.


Well I'm here, and if you don't believe me it's your loss.


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## infrared (Sep 7, 2019)

Spreading an opinion like yours is pretty damn unethical. If you want to risk data loss yourself that's fine but to encourage others to take that same risk based only on your inexperience is flat out wrong. Not impressed.


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## TheEmptyCrazyHead (Sep 7, 2019)

Several drives died on me the past 15years. Luckily by the time I accumulated important info (documents and photos) I already had minimum two hdd's in the PC and had it backed up on the second hdd. Also the occasional cd/DVD back up here and there. Currently I'm using cloud service, my desktop and important folders are synced to my laptop and pc. All photos from my phone go there as well, just don't sync to the computers. This is kind of the minimum I recommend. The smart minimum though is a cloud service with ransomware protection, because you really never know. I friend lost to such an attack all his photos. Later a cleaning tool became available and he got them back. His wife/daughter were watching online movies and nobody knew what happened and what they clicked. 
On professional level, I've a box about 20x20x20cm full of dead customer's laptop drives. And saw a fair share of tears when data was impossible to get back with the normal methods (people here are not very inclined to go to data recovery company and pay several hundred euros). 
So people, BACK UP! Drive failure can happen suddenly and without any prior indication. Most of the cloud services offer limited free storage which is enough for many, if not most of the people.


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## londiste (Sep 7, 2019)

avrona said:


> Well I'm here, and if you don't believe me it's your loss.


What is your argument or logic here exactly?
That backups are pointless? That drives do not die? Advocating for other types of backup methods?


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## Ahhzz (Sep 7, 2019)

I feel we've reached the end of the road on this topic. OP, if you'd like to share when you've finished your video, I'm sure there are many members here who would be delighted to visit your channel. thanks all!


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