blue screen or how do a dba neglected backuping his own machine

Early this week I was gently surfing on the Internet with my home PC when I got interrupted by a blue screen. Well, I was used to those in Windows 3.1 and Windows 95, but nowadays, I just waited that the machine reboot. But it did not come up. Even booting Linux from CD or using Windows Recovery CD did not help. So I think my disk or my controller crashed. At least when booting from Linux, the OS is stuck after loading module driver for S-ATA.

I really hope it is the controller and not the disk.

I always tell the customer to backup their productive data. I tell developers to use a repository that have reliable backup (like Veritas Netbackup). Myself I often have scripts that targz my source from one server to another server (just in case the sysadmin is too lazy). But what do I have at home? Nothing! Not even an old DVD image or whatever!

Ironically, I was browsing this week the Adobe Message about Online backup of all my pictures. This is the most valuable part of my disk, the pictures of my kids.

http://services.connected.com/adobe/plans.asp

Well, paying 100$/year for 5 Gb of pictures sounded expensive.

There are also some free/cheap services like flickr.com with unlimited storage for 25$/year. I did not see flickr as a backup service before. But to keep your pictures online, it may be convenient too.

Alternatively, I could have my own external disk drive to maintain copies.

Also I could look for Tape backup, the tapes have quite a long life in comparison with CD/DVD copies. And you can have multiple copies of multiple versions in different locations. In the cheapest segment, I have found tape drives starting at 500$ for DAT (20G/40G) and about 1000$ for DLT (160G/320G).

Ok, I am open for feedback ...