Well, I always say backup on anything digital, and I would like to point this out again to all you folks who don't do this. Me I have always tried to keep backups - for several years I have been rotating 4 * 4tb hdd's, backup quarterly on top of the hdd in the machine. Recently I thought I would upgrade this process by including a raid 5 enclosure for 3*6tb hdds - which is a reall nice bit of kit. I copied over a fair bit of the hdd, with the plan to copy over my games this weekend. However I turned the machine on Thursday, and no, the data HDD was gone. Showed GPT Protected drive in disk management. Tried a few of the data recovery programs, none of the work, then test disk which re-wrote the MBR, but now the computer wont even start with that drive in. So its one for the bin. Thankfully I have a back from Feb this year, so was able to restore 99% of things, and from what was missing download from GOG. But even so, there were a few files on there which are now lost.

Moral of the story = Backup whatever you don't want to lose. Then backup that backup. And if in any doubt, keep 2 or 3 spare backups at key times.

Oh, and always pay that little bit more for drives, sure 20 quid less for a Seagate might sound good, until the drive fails after a couple of years!

Can't wait until the price drop on SSD's, going to have whole racks of them backing up each other = maybe raid 5 + 1 *10 (i.e. raid 5, cloned as raid 1 over 10 seperate raid 1's.

Seriously though, go out now and backup all your files :o)

Sure. So when are you sending me a 3TB HDD?

You can start off with 1tb USB HDD for as little as £37 off amazon. Hell, I imagine you paid more than that for last full price game.

Are you talking about stuff that you can still easily download online? At the moment, I don't see the point of keeping several backups of my local GOG games because I can still redownload them pretty effortlessly from GOG. GOG servers are one of my backup places for my GOG games.

If the time comes that it seems GOG might be closing down or somesuch, then I'd start keeping two or more local backups of my GOG games (at least those that I don't want to lose). Before that one local copy is enough.

in fact, the primary reason for me to keep local GOG backups at this point is ease of use, not so much that I am fearing of losing my games (because GOG would go permanently offline). With my 10Mbps internet line, for the bigger games it is much easier to just install them from my local backups, than first having to download even several gigabytes from GOG. In fact, one reason I don't feel like starting to play many of my Steam games is because I realize first I'd need to wait a couple of hours (or more) while they download. I want to play the game now, tomorrow the urge might be gone already.

As for the important stuff I have no idea where I could download them again, or my personal stuff that I want to keep (family photos, videos etc.)... yeah, of those I keep several local backups. I don't use any fancy RAID systems or anything, merely just a couple separate portable hard drives, copying all the content from one HDD to the other every now and then (to get two or more 1:1 identical copies of my archives).

I already have 3TB backup HDD.
But I want to back up my back up. :P

Yes, principally its the stuff you can't get again that is important. I generally do everything now, there's always the possiblity of a site disappearing, and then even if it does announce closure then there is generally a mass panic and downloading. Not to mention its just easier to keep up to date downloading at the time although I know there is a good script available to do this. £70 off amazon, you may get them cheaper elsewhere. Sarcasm is great, but one day you will plug that drive in and it will just go pop, trust me it will happen. At work the other week someone turned an old server on to decomission it, but they forgot to turn off the automated backup, we spent several days getting the network drive back up and running again.

I do the same thing. I only worry about backup when a gaming site might go out of business. Most of my games are on Steam, GOG, Gamersgate, Amazon, Humble Bundle. As of right now, none of those sites are closing anytime soon, so no worries. I did backup all of my games from Desura before they went under. As for my really important stuff, I have 2 portable HD (2 TB each). It helps me sleep better at night knowing that I have double backup of everything important.

Seagates are loud, annoying and horrible... with a simple dos switch you can change a Western Digital GREEN into a Blue ^_^

But all that aside i run multiple SAN's and I will agree, its worth it to spend the extra $40 or so to get better quality drives. and always ALWAYS have a 2nd backup!

as RAID in concerned attached to SSD, thats a very bad idea as SSD's have a wear leveling architecture built in... but you can go with vRaid which is the only true option with marginal increase in performance. vRaid would only be needed in a SAN environment.

remember back up especially your saves..

Original data + 2 offline backups would be perfect.
Unfortunately, the big drives prices are still quite high, though.
Also, due to cryptolockers, mounted backups aren't safe anymore : (

Indeed. That is why I keep drives not only not mounted, but nowhere near the house even, totally offsite.

Eh, if you can, it's even better.
If you're talking about the Cloud, instead, that solution isn't great for me.

I still remember the time GOG pretended to shut down unexpectedly. While it was just a joke (and they even admitted that it wasn't a good one) it did bring up the point that online backups can go away at any time without any warning for any reason. If you don't control at least 1 copy of the backup yourself you're at the whims of the company and what could happen to them.

Now that isn't to say that the GOG servers can't be one of your backups, just don't rely upon it as your only backup.

No, I don't trust the cloud at all, hence why I download all my games I buy. I have a HDD outside the house - incase of major house events, and a drive back with a friend a long way away.

Ah yeah i am very afraid if one external HD would stop working,though i only use them for storing data and then i unplug them again,i have western digital HD externals. Haven't failed to work since i bought my first one in 2008,though what i am afraid is one has very important data to me which is nicovideo otomads and i have like 40 or 80 gb of it(i have to check that when i will) .The problem is if this dies i won't find the videos anymore since some are gone and the next thing is nicovideo somehow doesn't allow me to search the otomad tag (japanese tag is 音MAD) over 50 pages anymore don't know why they did that but i seriously couldn't find it anymore because of that.
Those vids are too fun to be suddenly lost,i could bring them over to the newest HD i have.