> On Thu, Jul 29, 2010 at 7:14 AM, David Mann <[email protected]> wrote:
>> On Jul 29, 2010, at 9:02 AM, Doug Franklin wrote:
>
>> If it ain't verified, it ain't a backup. Trusting that they were OK may be
>> part of what got you in this mess.
>
> The only sure way to verify a backup is to restore from it. On a test
> system, of course.
Ok, let's see.... hopefully the questions and responses will be fairly
clear and google won't mangle my formatting. :-\
Doug Franklin wrote:
If it ain't off site, it ain't a backup.
I'm covered here. Backups are at multiple sites.
What does "will not open" mean?
What messages do you get?
Are these PEFs, JPGs, or what?
What tool are you trying to use to open them?
When I try to open the jpg using "windows picture and fax viewer"
I get a blank screen and
either "generating preview" or "drawing failed". When I use
"microsoft office picture viewer" I just get a black screen.
And hey ... that's odd ... when I use "internet explorer" the file
actually seems to display. Strange!
The scarier symptom is when the thumbnail appears to be fine but is in
fact corrupt, because there is no easy way to verify if the files were
backed up successfully.
What do you mean?
How are you backing up?
Since you're just copying to an external drive, you can always do a
file-by-file comparison afterwards.
Sometimes even when the thumbnail displays an image in windows
explorer, if I click on the file to open it, I'll get
an error message (see above error messages). So the scary part is
that even though the thumbnail seems to display
ok, the file is in fact corrupted.
Backup has been either a simple copy/paste using windows explorer
or by "syncback" which is a pretty decent
free backup software. File by file comparisons doesn't really
sound realistic or practical, except for maybe once a year.
I have currently 15,000+ files.
For the command-line inclined on Windows, the "comp" or "fc"
commands will do it, or simply add "/v" to the (x)copy
command to start with. Similar options are available for Linux and
Mac, too. For those preferring GUIs, there are a variety of
free software tools out there for any given platform that will
compare the files after copying. WinDiff is one for Windows.
I just check my syncback software and there is a "verify" option
which I will use from not on at the very least.
If it ain't verified, it ain't a backup. Trusting that they were OK
may be part of what got you in this mess.
So true ...
Bob W wrote:
I run xcopy as a scheduled task
Can you share a little more of what you do? Did you write some
bat or cmd file and your schedule calls this file?
Do you mind sharing your file with me (feel free to edit
files/paths/machine names etc if security is any concern)?
Steve Harley wrote:
rsync
That seems to be a unix thing ... not sure I want to muck with
getting it to run on windows.
PJ Alling wrote:
You might want to check on the health of your hard drive
Good tip. In this case the original problem was on a computer
that was retired long ago.
Current drives are all pretty new and reliable.
Boris Liberman wrote:
EMC Retrospect
I looked online and it goes for $1670. That is a scope creep!
---------------------------
Sam
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