You might lose all your data in 2016

[TerraHertz]

I'm more concerned that I may lose my life in 2016. The way things are going, with the lunatics of a certain government apparently being hell-bent on starting WWIII. Before enough citizens wise up and lynch them for past and ongoing crimes.

But anyway... RAID... Rapid Agony of Incompatible Drives.
I now have a rule: If my data isn't on a media that I can read back as a plain, complete filesystem, from any single drive, on any standard PC with no special software and no net connection, then I consider it lost.

Discovering that the files on RAID array hard disks, even just plain mirroring, generally can't be read back on a standard PC or USB external HD dock, was a bit of a shock. If you are not an enterprise, with cash to lay in stock of spare identical drives when you set up the RAID machine, then trying to find a same-drive to replace a failed RAID array drive later is generally not going to go well.
As for obtaining replacement RAID array electronics - controller card, etc, in a hurry (or at all) , forget it.

So for me, backup medium is CDs, DVDs, and (mainly) bare hard disks plugged into cheap USB HD docks. Keeping a bunch of dated copies on separate drives. Drives stored in anti-static bags, in padded boxes.
Other measures:
* Only use NAS boxes if I've verified that I can read back the bare NAS drives in a standard USB external dock.
* Keeping different types of data in cleanly organized separate trees in my working machines, so I only have to backup datasets that need it, when they've changed significantly.
* I no longer backup the  installed OS and 'Windows installed' utils, due to it never being feasible to restore the whole bundle cleanly to new hardware. Thanks MS.
* Trying to switch all my software utils to 'portable' (no Windows install) forms, as this allows me to have all my utils in one folder tree that CAN be cloned to multiple PCs and work, and can be easily backed up.
* Using ZTreeWin for folder tree transfers, because it doesn't change file dates, and just does the copy. As opposed to Windows which will complain annoyingly. I suppose that counts as 'special software'. But at least it is possible to fall back to standard OS file copy.

Still looking for a good freeware filesystem compare/sync utility. Or even a payware one that does the job properly. ViceVersa PRO has fatal flaws.
What compare/copy/sync tools do people here like?

[SL4P]

You might get a functional Batteriser in 2016 as well... !

[eugenenine]

Still looking for a good freeware filesystem compare/sync utility. Or even a payware one that does the job properly. ViceVersa PRO has fatal flaws.
What compare/copy/sync tools do people here like?

rsync

run it under cygwin if you must use windows

[MT]

Weeell, i use one rune stone for data, one for programs and 1000 for web downloads! They tend to last, so far about 1600 years or so
we dont know exactly!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runestone

[Kjelt]

Yup stone is a good storage medium, i wonder if the m-disk made it?
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/92286-m-disc-is-a-dvd-made-out-of-stone-that-lasts-1000-years

[timb]

I think I'm going to start backing up to 5.25" floppy media again.

I recently found a 20+ year old box of floppies with games, source code and other stuff on them from my first computer when I was a kid. I broke out my old Compaq Portable III and sure enough, every one of them read just fine! Surprisingly, so did the Connor 20MB hard drive in the system, which was actually one of the first IDE drives made!

[Kjelt]

  I got 40+ TB of data to backup, and you advise 360kB floppies? 

[Kjelt]

No, I collect data. Most of that data I sometimes project on a 94" whitescreen while eating popcorn   
Most of the good data also resides on discs in blue plastick covers, the bad data is erased after review 

[Brumby]

Popcorn data - some of the best (and worst) data around. 

[stmdude]

No, I collect data. Most of that data I sometimes project on a 94" whitescreen while eating popcorn   
Most of the good data also resides on discs in blue plastick covers, the bad data is erased after review 

I have a similar situation. However, I consider the blue plastic covers and its contents to be the backup, so the HDD based versions never get backuped. Sure, in case of a failure, I have some work to do, but nothing is lost.
Either way, it always gets done "better" the next time I have to restore. ( .mp4 -> .mkv w/ subtitles and extra audio tracks last time ).

I'm guessing that the next time it happens, it'll all be H.265.

/J

[Kjelt]

I have a similar situation. However, I consider the blue plastic covers and its contents to be the backup, so the HDD based versions never get backuped. Sure, in case of a failure, I have some work to do, but nothing is lost.
Either way, it always gets done "better" the next time I have to restore. ( .mp4 -> .mkv w/ subtitles and extra audio tracks last time ).
I'm guessing that the next time it happens, it'll all be H.265.

Yeah well the data is also getting bigger with 4k UHD coming up this year, heard about 140GB per file  So perhaps with the new 265 we can half that, still huge amounts and if you noticed the HDD developments seem to come to a halt yet again. 6TB/8TB seems to be the max, with one exotic helium filled 10TB with an extreme price the exception.
The 6TB prices are constant now for well over a year.
With Moore's law on HDD's we already should have seen standard 12TB drives for the same prices or 6TB for half those prices. So yeah challenges in the data storage and backup coming up