Backup Question/ How, Where, what?

[michal1980]

Now that i'm 'older' (27)

my computer is finally getting full of stuff that I would not want to lose.

frankly dont care if the mp3's and movies get lost. (not home movies, but backup/compressed dvd's)

but years of documents, and pictures etc I would hate to lose.

The biggest problem is alot of these pictures are taken with a 7 or 8mpixel camera so the files add up.

I can copy to an external drive.

but what other solutions are there that you used?

I'm looking for may off site services.

or media you use? external harddrives can die, plastic media I dont trust much (rot etc).

If I get enough info, i'll edit this post and make a guide.

 

[MustISO]

Here's what I do:
2nd internal drive gets a backup everyday (incremental), once a month full backup
External drive gets full backup once a month

I use a program called Cobian Backup. It's free and works great.

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

I used to use optical media (DVD) for backup, but not anymore. I had a RAID 5 array crash due to power loss of two hds, and when I tried to restore the backup, all of the DVDs were corrupt. Horrible experience that cost me thousands of pics that couldn't be replaced.

I have primary backup of everything to my RAID 5 array. Media & data files are backed up on DVD. More important media & data files are also backed up on external hd. Important files (documents and projects) are also kept on USB thumb drive.

 

[michal1980]

thanks for the tips so far.

i'm not to worried about lossing the o.s. maybe I should be...

even with increased flash drives, I probably have 5-6gbs if not more of documents/pictures.


I know it would take forever to upload somewhere. But it would seem like a good way to save stuff in case of fire/ robbery etc.

I'm also thinking product keys should be saved and backed up.

Those with external drives. Do you use software/automation?

Does the software compress well, for those backups where I would save the eniter o.s. file system?

 

[Modular]

Paragon has a utility that they released for free some time ago. It's saves compressed backups of an entire drive to another hard drive. Then you can run it to your local safety deposit box for safekeeping.

 

[w3stfa11]

Originally posted by: Fullmetal Chocobo
I used to use optical media (DVD) for backup, but not anymore. I had a RAID 5 array crash due to power loss of two hds, and when I tried to restore the backup, all of the DVDs were corrupt. Horrible experience that cost me thousands of pics that couldn't be replaced.

I have primary backup of everything to my RAID 5 array. Media & data files are backed up on DVD. More important media & data files are also backed up on external hd. Important files (documents and projects) are also kept on USB thumb drive.

How do the DVDs become corrupt? I'm using DVDs right now since I don't have a lot to backup. Is there a chance they wouldn't work?

 

[QueBert]

HD's are cheap, you said they can die, 2 of them won't. Even if you needed 400 gigs of space you could get 2 HD's + external cases for less then 200 bucks. It's possible to have your main internal HD fail and your external backup also be bad (very very unlikely) but to have 2 external backups + your internal HD fail? As long as you're using verification on your backups that's 100% and much cheaper and easier than anything else

1st external = monthly full backup
2nd external = daily incremental backup

wanna get anal add a 3rd external and do a weekly backup

bout as full proof as you can get without getting super anal, or spending huge bucks on some DAT tape drive.

 

[Zepper]

I also use either external HDD or a HDD in a mobile rack. Very little is much more useless than a backup that wasn't done and anything else is just too slow. An eSATA connection makes external backup nearly as fast as an internal drive. Mobile rack mounted HDDs are just as fast as any other internal HDD and you can carry it off site and even rotate them for max security. I'm glad HDDs aren't anywhere near as expensive as they used to be...

.bh.

 

[sun818]

> but what other solutions are there that you used?

It really depends on your needs.

1) How soon do you need to be running if you have a disk crash or hardware failure?
2) Do you need point in time recovery? For example, if you goofed on your Word document, do you want the ability to restore a version from one week ago?
3) How about recovery from fires or natural disasters?

My desktop runs RAID 1 (mirrored) in case of a disk crash. My Documents get backed up to my NAS every day. The rest of my important files go to online backup (via Moazy). The initial online backup takes a long ass time, but adding new files goes very quickly.

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

Originally posted by: w3stfa11

Originally posted by: Fullmetal Chocobo
I used to use optical media (DVD) for backup, but not anymore. I had a RAID 5 array crash due to power loss of two hds, and when I tried to restore the backup, all of the DVDs were corrupt. Horrible experience that cost me thousands of pics that couldn't be replaced.

I have primary backup of everything to my RAID 5 array. Media & data files are backed up on DVD. More important media & data files are also backed up on external hd. Important files (documents and projects) are also kept on USB thumb drive.

How do the DVDs become corrupt? I'm using DVDs right now since I don't have a lot to backup. Is there a chance they wouldn't work?

Honestly, I don't know. I burned the DVDz at slower than full speed, verified the burn, and kept them in a case. When I went to restore data, I got errors on the majority of it. Out of 40 DVDz of backup data (it was straight copy to DVD, no compression, no programs image / backup programs used), I successfully retrieved ~7 gb of data. I don't mind the music that I lost, but the 14,000 pics from multiple digital cameras over the span of several years--that really hurt.

 

[michal1980]

sun818 Said

1) How soon do you need to be running if you have a disk crash or hardware failure?

As soon as possible is always nice, But, A big BUT, not required, I can reinstall everything nicely, and have other pc's I can use.

2) Do you need point in time recovery? For example, if you goofed on your Word document, do you want the ability to restore a version from one week ago?

Nope

3) How about recovery from fires or natural disasters?

YES, very big, that and or tefth.


Here is what I would like to back up

Highest priorities: would have to make it through fire/robbery/flood etc.
Email
Pictures
Documents

Would like to back up at least once a week.


medium:
My pc or one I will be building. Will turn into a windows medica center pc.
it will store a lots of dvds. I have all the disks, so I would lose the time it takes to restore the backups.

For this i'm thinking just a raid 5 system?.


Lower:
Actualy system, if its gone, well I can just reinstall. But if its easy I would like to be able to restore the system.

From the reading here: external drive with autosoftware back up?

 

[xitshsif]

Have you considered something like Amazon S3?

 

[michal1980]

Originally posted by: xitshsif
Have you considered something like Amazon S3?

nope, seems a bit more complicated then what i'd like.

 

[sun818]

If you're going to survive natural disaster, the data has to go secure offsite. You'd have to be diligent about taking the external drive off-site on a weekly basis. If you go this route, it makes sense to have two external drives - one off-site and one on-site. Rotate between the two as you drop off and pickup the external drives. If you have to restore files, the external drive would, of course, be much faster than restoring from an online backup service. The advantage to online backup is that it is completely automated. You just have a program run in the system tray that backs up new files.

Here's a round-up of some online backup/webdrive services:
http://theblogjoint.com/2007/0...nline-storage-roundup/

Some of the web services are free if you don't have a lot of files to backup.

 

[crimson117]

I developed a simple "better than doing nothing" solution. I got an external 300 GB USB hard drive, and wrote a batch script to xcopy various folders to the drive. xcopy only copies if the file source is newer than the destination.

I double-click the batch file whenever I feel the need, such as if I add a bunch of new photos or MP3's.

Large projects get backed up to DVD, as well.

Even a simple solution is better than nothing

ps. and if you wanted to extend this, you can add redundant external (or internal) drives, and you can also take them offsite to a safe deposit box or something.

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: michal1980
Now that i'm 'older' (27)

my computer is finally getting full of stuff that I would not want to lose.

frankly dont care if the mp3's and movies get lost. (not home movies, but backup/compressed dvd's)

but years of documents, and pictures etc I would hate to lose.

The biggest problem is alot of these pictures are taken with a 7 or 8mpixel camera so the files add up.

I can copy to an external drive.

but what other solutions are there that you used?

I'm looking for may off site services.

or media you use? external harddrives can die, plastic media I dont trust much (rot etc).

If I get enough info, i'll edit this post and make a guide.

Windows Home Server. This is exactly what it's made for.

Imagine a tiny box the size of a Mac mini that has 512M RAM, no mouse, no keyboard, no video card (or perhaps it does...), and a 500GB HDD. You never touch it directly and attach it to your network just like you attached your router - just plug it in. Its' only purpose in life is to sit there and run backups on all machines on your LAN, act as a simple fileserver/printserver, and handle a few other nice bits too.

If you ever lose your drive on your PC, you can boot from the WHS CD, and restore all your data (via the CD) in about 20 minutes, depending on how much data and how fast your network is. Pretty slick. And you can easily go back to a certain point in time.

Cost is unknown, but it's clearly a consumer device, so I'm guessing anywhere from $500 to $1000 depending on drivespace in it, expandability, and brand name, but the OS is probably going to be $150-$200 (again, that's a big guess!), and you can stick it on any old (emphasis: old) PC with a big hard drive...

 

[JustaGeek]

I use Nero 6 Ultra Backup feature with the external 750GB Seagate drive.

To protect it from fire/theft, I would have to use some kind of On-line backup services.

But how safe can one feel about sending your sensitive info to any of the websites...?

 

[dclive]

Another thing I didn't mention on Windows Home Server - it has an agent that runs on all the 'client' machines on your LAN. From that point onward, you don't need to even think about backups - it will monitor your backups, monitor your server, monitor your client machines (firewall off? It will tell you...) and much, much more.

Very, very slick software. RC1 beta's still free if you want to try it... connect.microsoft.com....