Backup solutions?

[kainoa]

Allright folks,

 

I have to come clean about something...i dont regularly backup my hardrive. Not weekly, monthly, annually, nada. I do alot of independant work, as well as store a whole lotta personal stuff, family photos, data, etc. Therefore, if one of my drives fail, im toast as well.

 

So, i'm looking for suggestions/advice on backup solutions. I do have a DVD Burner, so that's probably my best bet. Does anyone know of a real easy solution to backup all the crap on my drives onto a single DVD (multiple ok, but not preferred). I guess ideally I would pop in a blank DVD, hit a button, backup all the crap in my drives, and voila. It would also need a really good interface for retreiving/restoring stuff as well.

 

Any insights? TIA!

[Sawyer]

My experiance is that I have trouble getting everything onto 1 dvd and doing the multiple dvd thing is something I have been bad at. I use Norton Ghost to backup my hard drive onto an external hard drive that has other misc stuff. It works for me & I actually do it, I can set it up to run overnight and then its done but I bet there are better ways.

[Frosty]

I use a 4 drive RAID 5 for easy access back-up. DVD for permanant archive.

 

The RAID beeps and mails me if a drive fails, as it did last week. I have a spare on hand to swap in if something happens.

[bigcahunak]

Make your life easier - thats the key for good backup. why?

Simple - cause if the backup process has to depend in anyway on you doing something - it ain't a good backup!

Cassettes were good but are too old/ slow for our times.

DVDs are good media, but not for safe daily backup.

My advice is an external HDD (USB 2.0 or FirewireB) with any simple incremental backup program. It will backup all your new/changed files, keep logs, let you restore different versions of your changed files (its a great option even when you manually doing it - you'll always get cought...) If you feel like burning the original full backup file for archiving purposes, and occasionally the incremental files - thats even safer (fire in the house, theft...).

Its very unlikely you'll lose both HDDs at the same time.

On line backup to a remote place is best, but for home use like you desribed, I think an external device should be sufficient.

[Trick]

I have a double backup system and use Dantz Retrospect Professional.

When I startup in the morning my workstation and all my renderdirectories on nodes are backed to 2x 200GB USB Drives. In the evening all most important stuff needed to recreate anything is backed to an Iomega Rev external drive which can handle 90GB compressed. Since this is the most portable format I can take it with me wherever I go. In Retrospect any medium can be spanned over multiple media. Until now I did not need to, because final project backups (after which everything is removed from the systems) are made to DVD-R AND REV. The REV copies go to a safe. They also include Quicktime-Animation "compressed" files of all single rendered frames. This may seem exagerated, but once you learned it the hard way, there is NO escape...

[mbr]

So you like that REV drive? It looks good, but I am always hesitant to jump onto a new product that is only supported by one company (although Iomega's got a great history for this).

 

I have a Maxtor 250 gig ext. drive that I do backups on (not organized well, but it's backed up). Then I have DVDs that I use as periodic backups (I'll back up each proejct at important points, then when it's done). I don't have faith in the longevity of DVDs, though. I've had a few go bad just from a few scratches.

 

The Maxtor is great. I'll be getting the newer one, that comes with Restrospect, which is a pretty good deal.

[Michael-k]

Real men dont do backup, they cry the day everything is gone

[luckytohaveher]

Get another HUGE drive with a removeable bay.

 

Then get go to: http://www.xs4all.nl/~lploeger/TreeComp3.htm

Use TREECOMP to 'sync' your data files (and source install programs).

 

Store the removed HARD DRIVE in a safe location! What if you were robbed, had a fire, etc. The only risk then is if you are exposed to an Electro-Magnetic Pulse from a nuclear blast which would wipe both drives, but that would dictate a very bad day anyway!

 

I never backup the operating system or installed files (C Drive). I have never seen that work to any level of comfort. More importantly, I use the 'oppurtunity' of a crash to reinstall my O.S. (on a non-data dirve) and eliminate all viruses, spyware, and other registry junk that slows down my system. I have seen up to 20% more performance after a fresh format and reinstall.

 

I hope that helps.

[kainoa]

Thanks so much for all the input and suggestions. The External HD solution sounds very efficient and easy. I'll take a look into the software recommended here as well as Backup Magic recommended by Jeff a few years ago. Any other comments are welcome.

[bjornkn]

I use a triple backup system, where the two first parts are automatic.

I'm using "Second Copy 2000" to backup all the folders where I store data that I need to keep. Every 10mins it checks to see if there's anything new, and then copies it to the backup disk, archiving the last versions if I tell it to. Those backups are going to a different internal HDD. Then a few times every day it automatically backs up everything important to a HDD on a different PC on my 2-PC LAN.

Then finally I do manual backups to CD or DVDs.

Works very well, and I haven't lost a single important file in years

I am getting sloppy with that last, tedious manual backup to CD/DVD though..

[Trick]

MBR:

 

I also was hesitant about the REV since it is an Iomega product. But it simply is the best medium around: it's much faster then tapes and is much more portable then Harddisks. Since only one of my final backups are stored offsite, I can take REV-disks with me wherever I go. Since I have a dual backup system I can afford to "test" out the REV's. There are times that a lot of machines are rendering weeks and weeks, so I'm not going to risk losing data (equals losing/disappointing clients) by some "accident" on my site; even if it's a matter of hours...

[Jeff Mottle]

I'm using an external USB HD in combination with Acronis True Image now. I do incremental Mirrors of all my drives now. I do one full mirror once a week and then incremental for the other days. It's great becuase I can mount any one of the mirrors as it's own drive and pull the files off in real-time.