Backups
How many of you keep important or confidential information on your computer? I would guess that many of you have important or confidential information stored on your computer. Regardless of what it is, you do not want to lose the information you worked so hard to create. This is the reason you need to backup your computer files regularly.
A backup is a simply a copy of data from one medium to another which runs independently of the source medium. Backups include burning files to a CD-ROM, transfering files to another computer, or knowing that the files saved on your AFS space receive nightly backups.
Yes, that is right, every night around midnight, all the files on the AFS partition are automatically saved to a backup. Here they are stored until the next backup twenty-four hours into the future. Should you need to restore a file off the backup, this NCSU Help Knowledgebase solution should be able to aid you in your task.
If, however, you should need a file that is older than twenty-four hours, you will need to request a restore from a tape backup. This process involves humans other than you, and is time consuming. In light of this, you will only get two shots at recovering a file. If you need to request a restore from a tape backup, please e-mail ecehelp@ncsu.edu.
Your entire PC can be backed up as well. This is all accomplished via VERITAS Netbackup Professional on the domained Windows 2000/XP workstations. VERITAS is considered by many to be one of the leaders in desktop and laptop recovery; providing nightly backups and easy restoration methods.
Administrative staff have an automatic backup of their files generated nightly. Research groups are welcome to subscribe to this service provided they consult with Wolftech regarding the expense of the required software and server.
If you have ever accidently deleted a file, suffered a computer virus, or ran into some other loss or corruption of data, you have most likely learned the value of a good backup. However, if you still think, "It wont happen to me," you'll be in for a shock when you lose that document you have been working on for the past six months. Trust us. We've seen it happen.