jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Here's a good article by "Ask Leo!" I have several computers, but I backup just this one - my main computer. There's nothing on he others that's important enough to backup.

https://askleo.com/why-dont-people/?awt_a=7qbL&awt_l=9nnPg&awt_m=JmJTsrJ3QpdfbL&utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=20191022&utm_medium=email&utm_content=featured

robertjerl Loc: Corona, California

Because things only happen to "them"!!!! Never to "me" I have a squad of Guardian Angels to protect me.

Popeye Loc: LifIno

Lazy

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Are they available from Amazon?

nadelewitz Loc: Ithaca NY

Don't need to read an article.

People don't backup their data because:
1. It doesn't occur to them that they might someday (tomorrow!) regret losing everything. The "Oh gee, the computer is pretty new" syndrome.
2. They don't even know the simplest skills in file management...copying to another location, moving to another location, using an external storage device of SOME kind.
3. They figure they will somehow get a hint that their data is endangered before it's gone, and be able to rush through a rescue.

I could go on and on. Been through this subject endlessly as a support tech in a school district for ten years. Seen teachers lose an almost-finished masters thesis, almost lose a completed masters thesis that only existed on their laptop, lose years of photos of student work, videos etc. My colleagues and I performed some heroic measures to save peoples' stuff. Couldn't always do it. It's pretty heartbreaking.

robertjerl Loc: Corona, California

E-Bay, from some guy with an ISP address in Italy. He also sells swiss army knives, watches and chocolate and has the blurb "Supplier to the Vatican." in his endorsements.

robertjerl Loc: Corona, California

School district huh! Some of the other teachers made fun of me about my electronic roll book. Early days it fit on a 1.5 floppy disk. In fact the first few years it was DOS. I had the roll book on my teacher's desktop, put it on my personal laptop, burned two disks, one in my desk one in my brief case. When I got home it went on my desktop and another floppy. Before I went to bed after grading, writing lessons etc. I updated both floppy disks and my laptop. When I got to school before the day started I updated the desktop and floppy in the desk. End of day-repeat process. If I was entering a lot of data at school I would update everything after each period. Some of them laughed. A couple of them had their school desktop crash on them and freaked out. Then the office told them the school mainframe(s) both had auto backup copies of every teacher's desktop. (They were a pain to access - teacher to the office and enter their personal passwords etc but they were there.) It was a "Digital High School" and the whole campus was tied in by fiber optics and a wifi system on steroids (3 mile range from roof top antennas). So there were actually 8 copies of my roll book at any one time.

I learned that the hard way when just a year or two before the electronic roll book came along a student spilled a drink on my paper roll book the morning of the last day of school. I was just about the last teacher to leave that day (after 4PM) because I sat and copied the entire book into a new blank copy the office gave me. It took all day. They offered to let me come back with the new copy in a day or two but I lived 21 miles away and had plans with the family for the first few days of vacation.

Abo

Why Don't People Backup Their Data?

because when the sheets are short Jerry, the bed seems longer.

nadelewitz Loc: Ithaca NY

An old folkism?

Flyerace Loc: Mt Pleasant, WI

I've mentioned several times that I use 3 external hard drives. My photos are on #1, a duplicate of my photos is on #2 and an additional photo copy is made to #3 as well as my computer backup. (I only have programs on my computer)

Well, through some stupidity of my own trying to get a refund from a nefarious fiend, I ended up being hacked. I didn't even catch what was happening for quite some time. When it occurred to me that I was in trouble. I had the black screen of death. The person perpetrating the invasion wanted the "codes" on the back of a Walmart $200 gift card. I said no! They tried to purchase 3 $500 gift cards themselves, but Discover notified me and I stopped it. I called my bank and shut down accounts, two credit card companies. In the mean time, the bad guy called me back 3 more times. Said he would wipe me out and sell my information. I did let him know that he picked the poorest person he could and he wasn't going to be able to sell the information anywhere.

When I got my computer back from Best Buy, the black screen of death was gone. They had reset the computer, so I had to reload all the programs. I chose to get rid of some of the programs because I wasn't using them. Then I plugged the 3 external hard drives in. #1 & #2 were wiped clean. #3 was saved when I killed the power. #3 had every file backed up. All my pictures and LR catalogs as well as Word documents.

The point of this long story is BACK UP, BACK UP AND THEN BACK UP AGAIN. You never know when something stupid will happen. The good news is, because it cost me money to have Best Buy reset the computer, it became a felony. This goes to the FBI and I've already received a letter from the Attorney General for WI. My claim might be small, but when put together with the others this has been done to, it adds up.

I've posted as much as possible on the offender company, that I was trying to get a refund from, website and facebook page. Apparently their sales are suffering due to their poor quality and deceptive practices.

nadelewitz Loc: Ithaca NY

Posted where? Are we mind readers? After all that, why not tell us who the offender is?

cochese

And never leave a backup drive plugged into the computer after the backup is done. If you are attacked by malware, ransomware or a virus it only takes seconds for them to infect every drive connected. At a previous employer one computer got ransomware and because they auto connected to several servers and never disconnected all those servers got nuked too. My desktop and the workstations in my department were the only ones not affected as I had put in place rules to always disconnect from servers unless you were actively using them.

Abo

I don't know what a "folkism" is.

It would be a better analogy, if it went; "When the bed is long the sheets seem short",

pendennis

From the outset of my IT experiences starting in 1966, it was drummed into my head that off-site backup was necessary for all computer operations. When I worked for a municipality we backed up tapes to the vault of a closed bank, since it was fire-proof. Those were the days before disk drives were generally available. Employees were willingly paid overtime to insure tapes were taken off-site several times daily.

When we got our first IBM 360, we were introduced to the disk drive, small yes, but we treated them the same way. We even backed up disks to tape, so data was secured on more than one medium. That's just how "paranoid" our IT director was.

When I switched careers and went into finance at a major auto maker, our back up plans were even more intense. Not only were disks, and tapes backed up, but files on card stock were backed up and stored in a climate controlled storage facility.

I later switched careers, and back to IT in infrastructure. Back-ups were a part of our basic mission. We used to think of back-ups to an off-site facility, and it does help. But, for real protection, we mirrored disk drives in other states.

The reasoning? If our world headquarters operations were somehow compromised, we had to consider running operations in other states, even other countries. The most important function in case of a disaster, is to generate cash for recovery. If you can't bill a dealer's finance source when a vehicle is shipped, you can't get cash. So, we could draft banks from a number of locations, here in the U.S. and abroad.

Scale that reasoning down to your home computer set up. Off site storage for everything.

nadelewitz Loc: Ithaca NY

Folklore, folktale, etc. Your "better" analogy makes no more sense.