backing up to USB HDD...how do *you* do it?

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PopeKevinI

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I've got a business customer who uses a business management app on a standard PC. Yesterday his OS crashed (Win98SE, but he has a reason for using the OS at the moment). I spent all last night getting the PC back in working order, and this morning I gave him a quote on some backup options.

First things first, he's getting an Adaptec 1200A RAID controller and a second hard drive. A mirrored drive will do the most to save him a lot of grief. Just putting that out there so you know it's part of the plan.

I also wanted to give him the ability to take a backup off-site. Tape is too expensive, DVD-R isn't a realistic option, and the files are too big for an USB flash drive (>2GB). So, we're going with using a USB 2.0 hard drive (80 GB, same size as his internal drive).

What I'm wanting to know is, how would you go about backing up data every night? I've got a copy of Norton Ghost I can use to image the entire drive, I'm just wondering if there is a better option I'm not thinking about. I like the idea of a total image; it'd be that much easier to recover from a catastrophic loss like the building burning down.
 
I prefer how Acronis True Image handles backup and imaging tasks. Give that a try. You might also go with a 250GB drive and keep as many as 3 full images at a time. You'd be suprised how many times a backup job will complete but when its crunch time it's corrupt. If you have 2 other images to fall back on you'll be the hero, even if he lost a day.
 
I've seen somewhat high failure rates on some of those USB drives just because they tend to get jarred around alot more. I'd *almost* recommend backing up to two seperate drives AND keeping very, very, cannot live without, business will die without, data on something like some dual layer dvd-r's as well.

I'd sell them on a 2 tier scheme for backups, 1 a weekly/semi-weekly backup on to the usb harddrive and doing a nightly backup of current work onto a dvd-rw. If they wanted, and requested a bit more on the backup, I'd do a rotating scheme of backups to 2 usb harddrives.
 
Use a 2.5" drive for the external. They're more expensive but more shock-resistant.

 
I use Ghost 2003 with a external 120GB WD.

As long as your careful in handling the drive you should have no problems.. If your clutzy enough to damage a HDD then I would reccomend an external DVD burner. Besides, they've really come down in price.
 
Acronis is great i have an 80gb for my main drive and i have 3 250gb ext drives, backing up is easy plus, doing a mirror of two of the exts is awsome :D
 
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