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Backup System

E

Erasmus354

[H]F Junkie
Joined
Mar 12, 2004
Messages
9,450
Ok I am doing a favor for a friends dad. He runs a business and is trying to setup/fix his current method of backing up files. He has two external Maxtor One Touch II harddrives which he uses/used to backup his data. He used to have one, and it was configured to automatically back up. He moved his office and bought another one and now the drives dont work anymore.

Anyways, one of the drives needs to be reformatted, which I am doing now. My problem is I am not too experienced with backing up data. He says he is fine with copying the files himself if I can just get the drives to work, that isn't a problem I just know there has to be a better way. So I am asking for advice from people who know a bit more about this stuff.

What he wants to ideally do is have one drive connected and one drive at home. He would take the two back and forth switching them out so that he always has an up to date backup in the office, and one at home. That way incase one were to get stolen he has a backup in another location.

Is there some software that you all would recommend which would make the backups easy and hasslefree? He doesn't mind spending a bit of money. The only problem I can think of is the fact that the two different external drives would be recognized differently. Any input would be greatly appreciated, especially fast input ;)
 
No need to spend any money! :)

Windows backup works great. It can be scheduled, and can do incrementals or full backups. Quite a few options. Assuming the external gets the same drive letter every time its plugged in, it should work flawlessly.
 
Thanks for the quick reply, I was just looking at the windows backup utility.

The drives do get the same name and letter each time, Local Drive (F:). I wasn't sure if the drives having different files would mess anything up.

I also found that he has Dantz Retrospect Express installed on the computer, this can also schedule backups. So....which would be best? Windows Backup, or the Dantz. With the Dantz it has the incremental backup, would the different drives mess that up at all? Finally if I/he decides to use the windows utility there are a ton of options for saving the information (normal, copy etc...) which one should I choose?

I noticed that when I was browsing through the job scheduler for windows backup it wanted to save the backup as backup.bkf or something like that. If something were to happen to some of his files does he have to restore everything? Or is there a way to access just a single file through explorer with the backup created by windows backup?


Sorry for all the questions, I am kind of a noob when it comes to these topics.
 
whooo I think I figured it out

Using the Dantz software I configured it to do an automatic backup, keeping a history of files. I ran the backup on one HD. Then when I plugged in the other one and tried to back it up it said the hdd wasn't available. I went into the settings and the old f: was grayed out and the new one was available. I checked the new one, leaving the old one checked and it is now backing up to the second hdd.

The nice thing is with these maxtor one touch drives, you press the button and it runs the backup program, so you dont need to wait for the scheduled backup. Hopefully the drives will work interchangeably.
 
Sorry for the delay getting back. Had a long reply typed up but had to close the browser. Sounds like you have it figured out now :cool:

Just to answer your other question about windows backup after the fact, .bkf is basically glorified .zip. You can browse an archive and extract whichever files you want to a directory of your choice. Im not familiar with Dantz so Im not sure if it will choke when you swap drives... maybe someone who is could chime in.
 
Ok well it looks like a few days answered my question. The dantz program does seem to choke when swapping drives, sort of. It seems to look for the most recent backup so it knows which files have been updated since then. When it cant find it it throws an error message. However if after you tell it to backup again manually it goes on its merry old way.

I think I am going to scrap dantz and use Windows Backup Utility. However, I wont be around to help this guy out after tomorrow, so I dont really have time to test it and make sure it is working. The two drives are both recognized as F: Local Drive, when they are plugged in. One is FAT32 and one is NTFS though. If I configure the Backup Utility to do a backup to F: , will it care which drive is plugged in, or will it do the backup the same regardless?

Also, which option for the backup would you guys recommend? Normal, Copy, Incremental, Differential, or Daily?
 
First, reformat that FAT32 drive to NTFS. FAT32 is not a stable file system over long term usage.

Normal: First time and yearly. Pointless and waists backup space otherwise. Does a full backup of everything.

Incremental: Weekly if not monthly. Backs up anything additional that's been created since the last normal backup.

Differential: Daily. Backs up any files that have changed since the last normal backup.

Copy and Daily I don't know what those have for settings so I really can't comment on them.
 
The_Mage18 said:
First, reformat that FAT32 drive to NTFS. FAT32 is not a stable file system over long term usage.

Normal: First time and yearly. Pointless and waists backup space otherwise. Does a full backup of everything.

Incremental: Weekly if not monthly. Backs up anything additional that's been created since the last normal backup.

Differential: Daily. Backs up any files that have changed since the last normal backup.

Copy and Daily I don't know what those have for settings so I really can't comment on them.
Click to expand...


Thank you very much! He is doing daily backups, or once every other day since one drive is kept at his house. He constantly rotates them back and forth so each drive is no more than one day out of date. So it seems the differential backup is the one I want.....

However, if I do the differential backup, will that have problems with two different drives being used, with only one connected at a time. The drives are rotated so that they sort of leap frog each other with the updates.

The drives are each 300GB, and he is only backing up files which amount to about 6GB right now, so he can hold a lot of restore points before it starts deleting old ones.
 
As long as both drives are set as valid media it shouldn't be a problem. A simple test would be to create a file and back it up to one fo the drives. Change it and back it up to the other drive. Delete the file and restore it from the second drive.

That will let you know for certain whether or not you'll run into any problems. that and a single text file takes no time to backup. ;)
 
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