Carefull with that backup!

I have learned some things the hard way concerning backups, and
thought I now was set up safely. So when my Windows 7 systemdisk
crashed, the safety of data was not a big concern. Still, there are
things to learn, and after some reluctance, I will share:

I do daily backups of data to an interal harddisk in my desktop-PC,
about once a week to an external disk that is only connected and
powered while backing up, about once a month to an external disk kept
at work. In addition I make a clone of the system disk from time to
time.
When I got the replacement disk, I put a clone of the old one on it,
and was happy to see Windows starting up as it should. After a while I
noticed my Backup Program, Second Copy, churning away in the system
tray. I have it set up to start backing up every day at 6:00 AM or
whenever the PC first is started after that, with a 1 minute delay. I
have set up Second Copy with what they call "Exact copy". That means
that all files on the target that are not on the source will be
deleted! When I stopped Second Copy, the damage was already done: all
new files created after the 6 month old clone, were gone from the
backup.
It did not turn out so bad, since I could pull user-data from the
crashed disk, and had that failed, the external backup was only a few
days old.

Next time...
Jesper Kaas - jesperk@neindanke.online.no