[ale] Hard Drive Failures

[JD]

For the record, I only use a system image for windows machines where there isn't any other option.  For Linux recovery, I install the minimal OS with an ssh-server, restore from backups, then install the remaining packages from a list of installed packages created nightly, just prior to the backup job.  I used to backup everything on an OS, but changed that about 2 yrs ago.  

Don't forget to backup crontabs too.  When I'm selective about what gets backed up, I'm extremely cautious about getting everything that is customized, logged or contains performance data that would be useful for determining a root cause for any problems on the box.

As an example, the entire backup for an email gateway that I run is about 50MB (settings, configs, crontabs), while the backup for the full email system is about 20GB due to the extra IMAP data that it contains. 

David Tomaschik <david at systemoverlord.com> wrote:

>On Fri, Feb 22, 2013 at 11:32 AM, Jonathan Meek
><jonathan.l.meek at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> Thanks for sharing your thoughts on backups. I hope I didn't give the
>> impression that all was lost when my hard drive appears to have
>failed. I
>> had everything backed up ahead of time but since I got it to boot one
>last
>> time and it prompted me to backup I figured I would back it up since
>it is
>> only data that I backup off my rigs. (Haven't started backing up any
>> configuration stuff but that's for another time when I am not working
>full
>> force on a master's degree)
>>
>> But in the future plan to implement the suggestions I see here.
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Jonathan
>>
>
>Hi Jonathan,
>
>I hope you didn't take it that I was specifically targeting your post
>-- I
>just happened to read your post while waiting on something else to
>finish
>and it inspired me to write a message I'd been meaning to for a while. 
>The
>topic of how to "burn in", "test", "repair", etc., hard drives has been
>a
>frequent topic of discussion and I wanted to share my feelings on it.
>
>Unlike JD and Ron (and others), I don't bother with anything resembling
>a
>system image for desktop systems.  I backup a list of installed
>packages
>and the contents of /etc, to be sure, but for the most part, I assume
>I'll
>be doing a reinstall in my restore strategy, and I'm ok with that
>strategy.
>For servers, of course, images are nice, because downtime is more
>critical
>there.
>
>Good luck with the master's degree!
>
>David
>
>
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-- 
Sent from a Linux system.
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