Backup solutions Options

[cmac]

We've discussed it before, but what are you backup solutions?

I've never backed up and I've been lucky, but I keep hearing horror stories about losing years worth of stuff and frankly I'm becoming paranoid.

To me there's a difference between backup and archive. I'm looking for both solutions.

Backup, to me, is what can keep my current digital data from being lost by a mechanical failure and/or user error.

Archive is the long-term backup. The 'keep this safe in case I need it in 5 years' kind of thing.

I think I would prefer a local solution, as paying someone to store my files monthly seems kind of odd to me, though I guess I already basically pay flickr to store my archives of photos.

Any opinions on Drobo?

[Seeker]

don't rely on a third party

i have two 400 gig external drives that i backup my computer on, one drive i store in a safety deposit box and the other i keep around the house

[cmac]

how often do you backup?

[Seeker]

every two weeks or so, sometimes more or sometimes less depending on what i feel the need is

[impala454]

I have a 1 TB external drive, and a 1TB internal drive. I do most of my work (coding and documents and stuff) on the 1TB internal drive, so if the OS gets blown away I don't lose anything. then about once a month I do a straight copy of the internal drive to the external drive. I'm going to get a fireproof safe at some point and store it in there.

[Spectatrix]

If you're just trying to protect yourself from disk failure, the least-effort solution would be to set up a RAID-1 disk array. For protection from some major catastrophe (fire, tornado, etc.), do like others are suggesting and get an external drive to manually back up really important stuff and store in a fireproof safe or similar.

[Billy]

every two weeks or so, sometimes more or sometimes less depending on what i feel the need is

So you go to the bank every two weeks?

[Seeker]

So you go to the bank every two weeks?

the one at the bank i backup monthly

[Hartmann]

I'm working on a new backup plan since getting married and having to backup two more computers.

I've invested in a 1TB drive and two 320GB drives. The 1TB drive is backed-up once every few weeks while the 320GB drives are used as storage for everything that is important to us.

I also have an S3 account with linkage to a folder on my wife's computers that auto-backs them up and the same thing with my computer.

A safe deposit box is also a good idea and since we visit the bank every couple of weeks we just bring the 1TB drive every couple of times and keep it in a fireproof safe at home.

[impala454]

Yeah my file storage setup has change somewhat recently too. I have a 1 TB networked NAS that is the backup drive, and I set up a secondary PC with a 1 TB internal drive as the main storage. I have a new 300GB raptor as the main drive in my main PC, and will work from it. It will backup to the 1 TB storage, and the storage will backup to the NAS nightly. I'm going to write some kind of simple app to make the nightly backups work. The idea is it lets me turn my main PC off whenever I want and not impede the backup process. The storage PC is pretty fast but I put a cheap fanless video card in it so it runs fairly quiet and cooler, and also needs no peripherals.

[Hartmann]

Yeah my file storage setup has change somewhat recently too. I have a 1 TB networked NAS that is the backup drive, and I set up a secondary PC with a 1 TB internal drive as the main storage. I have a new 300GB raptor as the main drive in my main PC, and will work from it. It will backup to the 1 TB storage, and the storage will backup to the NAS nightly. I'm going to write some kind of simple app to make the nightly backups work. The idea is it lets me turn my main PC off whenever I want and not impede the backup process. The storage PC is pretty fast but I put a cheap fanless video card in it so it runs fairly quiet and cooler, and also needs no peripherals.

How are the NAS speeds compared to say Firewire or USB 2.0? I have a NAS ready drive but I am hesitant to attach it for speed reasons.

[impala454]

I haven't used any USB or firewire hard drives, but really the drive itself is more of a limiting factor than the connection. I mean, firewire and USB 2.0 both have a max of 400Mbps (50MBps)? Not a whole lot of current hard drives are going to get that fast in practice. My 1TB western digital hard drive that I put in the storage PC, will transfer much faster than the western digital NAS box. The NAS box goes about 5-6MBps tops, and so far the storage PC transfers about 30MBps. Not sure if it's a problem with the NAS box design or what, but haven't seen many NAS boxes that show good ratings for speed. If you need a file server, don't count on a NAS just get a cheap computer and put a big drive in it, if you just need occasional backup and want it network connected, the NAS is nice because of the portability/low power/ease of setup. If you don't need it networked then USB should be fine (and probably cheaper).

[impala454]

Just FYI to those that care, I wrote a command line backup app, located here. Just type the command to see the usage. If you have any questions/problems/requests let me know. I will probably make something more in depth later, but it's pretty nice as is, just set up a scheduled task or manually run it whenever you want to back up. It only copies files that have changed or do not exist in the backup dir. It also automatically copies the directory structure. You will need the .NET runtimes installed. If someone wants the code just let me know and I'll paste it up.

[impala454]

Just FYI I updated this, found a minor issue where one file had milliseconds in the last write time whereas the other didn't (hard drive difference I think). I fixed that and also added a log function.