Backup software that can do this:

[Korialstrasza]

Hey guys,
I'm wondering what you would recommend for my situation.
I have three storage locations total. 2 file servers and an external hard drive.
I would like the software to fully backup server A to server B every night. Then, do a full backup from server A to the external HD once a week.

Any recommended software for this? Simplest is preferred, I don't need anything crazy.

Thanks guys!

 

[GeorgeHR]

xcopy with the right switches.

Use the task scheduler to start it up.

 

[Korialstrasza]

Awesome!
This is a reliable method right?
Some of this data is pretty important.

Thanks!

 

[Ravynmagi]

I tried xcopy for something similar that I am doing, but I couldn't quite get it to do what I wanted (or figure out how to make it do what I wanted at least).

For me, what I wanted to do is mirror everything on one hard drive to another every night. So I wanted something that would not only copy everything new from one drive to the other, but also remove any files I had removed from the original hard drive too.

I found Robocopy does this perfectly.

Here is what my batch file looks like...

robocopy e:\ y:\ /mir /log+:c:\storage1.log /ndl /np /tee /xd e:\recycler /xd "e:\system volume information" /r:0 /w:0
robocopy e:\ y:\ /mir /log+:c:\storage1.log /ndl /np /tee /xd e:\recycler /xd "e:\system volume information" /r:0 /w:0

This script will mirror the contents of drive E: to Y:. The /mir command looks for anything new or changed on the E: drive and copies it to the Y: drive. And anything that is on the Y: drive that is no longer on E: will get removed. The next few commands are just how it creates the log file. The /xd commands tell the script to skip the recycle bin and system volume information folders. And finally the last two /r and /w tell it not to retry or wait on a file if there is an error (such errors being a file is in use or no space left on the destination).

The reason I have the script listed twice in the batch file is because the script does not necessarily copy new files from E: to Y: or remove files on Y: that are no longer on E: in any particular order. So I've had situations where it would try to copy a lot of new stuff first after I had already deleted a lot of other stuff, so it would run out of space on Y: before the script got around to removing old stuff from Y:. So all those files that error out on the first run because there was no diskspace on Y: during the first pass, will get copied on the second pass after Robocopy removed the files on Y: that no longer were on E:.

Robocopy is in the Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit, which can be downloaded from Microsoft.com and works fine on XP. It's also included with Vista.

 

[unhappy_mage]

Would you like to have daily copies of your files, or is the most recent copy all that's important? Do you have any databases with which you'd have to worry about consistency? Is this for business or home?

If all you need or want is the most recent copy of things, xcopy may work okay. Any more complicated than that, and real backup software is a must. It doesn't have to be fancy---Windows Backup is fine for most things, or step up to Dantz Retrospect, which is included with many backup drives.