Best backup solution for my needs?

[nicholarse]

Hi guys, I've just put together a file server with around 500GB of data on it that I'd like to backup every night, also ideally I'd have a backup of the backup. What would be the best way to go about doing this? Another thing, when you backup does it take an image of the drives or just copy the data?

Thanks, Nick.

 

[unhappy_mage]

I'd build another machine, preferrably, that stores data on hard drives and has the capability to copy files to long-term storage - DVD burner or tape.

It depends on which program you use, but mostly they just store the data. You're not going to get a bit-for-bit copy from restoring a Ghost image, but for most purposes that's good enough.

 

[mattm]

Is your OS Windows or *nix/bsd?

 

[nicholarse]

OS is windows 2003.

Tape is a bit out of my budget unfortunately, I'm thinking maybe a couple of large external firewire drives?

 

[h_2_o]

i will probably get flamed for saying this but look at getting a linksys nslu2 and put some big drives on it. nope it is not the fastest in the world but it is affordable and works well. Plus if you like hacking it is great for that too.

 

[-(Xyphox)-]

OS is windows 2003.

Tape is a bit out of my budget unfortunately, I'm thinking maybe a couple of large external firewire drives?

that would work, use ghost or some other backup program to backup,

 

[Rocco123]

OS is windows 2003.

Tape is a bit out of my budget unfortunately, I'm thinking maybe a couple of large external firewire drives?

External drives, sure. Good for temporary storage, not good for long term storage.

The reason mage recommended tape or DVD burner: #1 Data is not logically connected to said computer, in case of a virus or other data corruption and #2 Data can be physically located in a different place than said computer. YMMV. If you think the data is only important enough to place on another computer or external HD, then that's OK. You're the best judge of that than anyone here.

Either way, it would be good to do a full tape/DVD backup every month or so, if time permits.

Recommendation? Spend a few bucks and get a used business-class tape drive, or go for something like Iomega Rev. You'll end up spending less time on swapping DVDs. I don't have any personal experience with Iomega Rev, it's just something I've seen/heard of being used. I've only had experience with HP/Dell tape solutions, but that's a tad expensive for consumer use.

 

[nicholarse]

Thanks for pointing out the Iomega Rev drives. What would you suggest, just get one device and multiple 140GB drives?

 

[Rocco123]

Thanks for pointing out the Iomega Rev drives. What would you suggest, just get one device and multiple 140GB drives?

Yeah you only need one drive, then the media cartridges. I think they come in 30 and 90 GB cartridges. You could maybe pick one up used on ebay in the low 400s, maybe a little extra for a 6 pack of media.

It's obviously a little more expensive than other solutions, such as backing up to another PC or other HDs, but backing up to tape is always safer.

 

[Soldur]

Not knowing anything about your desired retentions periods or other relevant requirements, here is my stab at it. Since the tapes may blow your budget, this sounds like a good candidate for a ghetto backup IMO. If I had 500GB of data that was very important, this is how I would do it.

Last time I was at BestBuy there was a 500GB external USB 2.0 drive for around ~$200 (I didn't need that much space so I bought a 160GB external drive). You could probably also buy your own enclosures and drives to save some extra cash and assemble them yourself.

I would buy 3 external drives and rotate them sequentially by day. Net cost would be around $600 dollars or $.40 cents per gig. Using my 160 GB drive on USB 2.0 I am able to average sustained transfer speeds of around 1 gig per minute so to backup 500GB you would be looking at around 8 1/2 hours.

 

[Farva]

Not knowing anything about your desired retentions periods or other relevant requirements, here is my stab at it. Since the tapes may blow your budget, this sounds like a good candidate for a ghetto backup IMO. If I had 500GB of data that was very important, this is how I would do it.

Last time I was at BestBuy there was a 500GB external USB 2.0 drive for around ~$200 (I didn't need that much space so I bought a 160GB external drive). You could probably also buy your own enclosures and drives to save some extra cash and assemble them yourself.

I would buy 3 external drives and rotate them sequentially by day. Net cost would be around $600 dollars or $.40 cents per gig. Using my 160 GB drive on USB 2.0 I am able to average sustained transfer speeds of around 1 gig per minute so to backup 500GB you would be looking at around 8 1/2 hours.

the only problem with that for a backup solution is, "what if the drive dies?" thats the whole point of a backup solution that is less likely to die (ie - tape, dvd).

 

[-(Xyphox)-]

External drives, sure. Good for temporary storage, not good for long term storage.

The reason mage recommended tape or DVD burner: #1 Data is not logically connected to said computer, in case of a virus or other data corruption and #2 Data can be physically located in a different place than said computer. YMMV. If you think the data is only important enough to place on another computer or external HD, then that's OK. You're the best judge of that than anyone here.

Either way, it would be good to do a full tape/DVD backup every month or so, if time permits.

Recommendation? Spend a few bucks and get a used business-class tape drive, or go for something like Iomega Rev. You'll end up spending less time on swapping DVDs. I don't have any personal experience with Iomega Rev, it's just something I've seen/heard of being used. I've only had experience with HP/Dell tape solutions, but that's a tad expensive for consumer use.

I have some experience with the iomega drives, they are awesome and easy to setup

 

[Soldur]

the only problem with that for a backup solution is, "what if the drive dies?" thats the whole point of a backup solution that is less likely to die (ie - tape, dvd).

"What if the tape breaks?"

"What if the one of the 100 DVDs I had to use is unreadable?"

It's all a calculated risk based on how much money you want to spend and the ease of use / reliability / robustness. That was just the way I would do it.

No matter what I would definately stay the hell away from backing up 500GB onto DVDs >.>

 

[nicholarse]

Think I'm going to go with the Iomega Rev drive. Thanks everyone for all your help.

 

[Johnboy12358]

Something that I was thinking of doing with my setup whenever I build was to build a dedicated file server, with some odd number of drives in a nice little raid 5 (software or hardware, not sure yet). Then I would put together another server, close to identical, if not identical, and I would set up rsync between the two so that one would sync with the primary one. More expensive than other methods, but it is just an idea as of right now

 

[nicholarse]

But the problem with that is what is you have a power problem, or the whole room catches file etc

 

[Soldur]

All these what-ifs...

Man, if you are that worried about it, just shell out the cash for a good tape drive and get enough tapes so that you can do weekly, monthly, and yearly full backups. Then get a few tapes to rotate in for daily incremental backups.

Then, buy some kind of cheap server to use as a backup server. Put this server in a location that is outside of your computer room and connect it via a gigabit backplane to the server(s) that you want to back up. This would minimize the damage if the whole room catches file (fire?). This would also elimnate the quandrum that you would find yourself in should the room catch fire in-between tape changes...