Network data backup?

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coder_t2

[H]ard|Gawd
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Dec 31, 2005
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Hey guys, I am looking for a way to hook up a HardDrive to a network and have it automatically backup files from every computer set up to do it everyday. I am thinking a NAS or some kind of low end computer would be able to do it, but what kind of software?

Essentially I want it to be able to backup my documents, music, and other important files on my computer and my fiances. Then every night, or the next time I turn on my computer, I want it to notice if any files have been added or changed, and I want it to do a backup. Nice and automated. If it's cheap enough I would even like to set up things like this for family friends.
 
If all your desktops are Windows boxes, WHS is what you're looking for. Go buy one of the prebuilt WHS boxes from HP or Acer or whoever else and you're set to go with a nice integrated solution.
 
I'll second the WHS route. Great backup software. HP has added some cool media and Mac integration features in their WHS. Easy to setup. Also great for streaming content and storing media.
 
Absolutely. WHS is great for this. I barely keep anything on my desktop anymore. All of my music, videos, pictures and such live on the WHS. As far as backing up networked computers, it's pretty sweet. If you have three Windows XP machines to back up, the space taken up on the server is not equal to the total amount of space used up by those three computers. If several computers require the same file, and across the computers, the file has the same size and modified timestamp, the server stores just one copy of that file, and just keeps track of which computers need that file. That can save loads of space.
 
Cool. I'll have to look more into this. Could I build my own WHS Box for cheaper? Or maybe just install WHS on an old computer I have lying around? It looks like it just a computer running WHS, so I am assuming everything is part of the operating system. Pretty much looking to do this as cheap as possible. But I am really excited about this so far.
 
I'm not sure if you could do it cheaper. Maybe. But those boxes tend to be a nice small form factor that would tough to achieve, and the pricing is pretty competitive with what you could do on your own. Definitely you can install it on a random box laying around, I don't use it so I can't tell you what the practical minimum requirements are, but given that those boxes are Atom, and given the task it's doing, they should be low. You're going to want GigE though.
 
Yea, I wasn't sure if Gigabit Ethernet was going to be necessary or not. But I'm not going to be backing up a lot of stuff. Probably just some documents and music files. So aside from the first backup, maybe 20MB of difference at a time. I think 100Mbit should be able to handle. What I'd like to do is use the laptop in my sig to replace it. It's low power (not sure if WHS box is allowed to sleep and work), and way more powerful than those atom boxes. I don't think I would get much for it on ebay, maybe $100, so I'd rather use it as WHS box. Cause the cheapest box I saw was $450.
 
I don't know about 'way' more powerful, but it probably is faster. I don't see why it wouldn't work, but IME laptop hard drives are orders of magnitude more prone to failure than desktop ones, and I'd probably want to plug in an external drive and use WHS's duplication if I were going to use that setup.
 
Yea I was thinking of plugging in an external HDD. Cheaper too for more space. So really no obvious issues with putting WHS on this laptop and doing what I want to do?
 
I don't think so as long as you've found it to be stable running continuously for long periods of time. Some laptops have really poor cooling and don't deal well with this.
 
That would probably work fine. The only issue is going to be adding drives. Another consideration is that once you start storing media, you will probably start using your laptop to be a streaming target for files stored on the WHS. The biggest drive I have physically installed in any non-server machine now is 120GB, and all are SSD's. Streaming media will make you want GigE.

My old WHS used an E6420. My "new" WHS is going to be an i7 920 which is WAY too much CPU for the WHS. Only reason is because WHS is in a VM running Server 2008 R2, and I want to encode media on it. The new infatuation is a box around an i3-530 which is cheap and phenominal. Really is blowing my Atom/ION box out of the water at this point.

My reccomendation would be:
1. Evaluate cost/ possibility of WHS on the laptop.
2. Evaluate cost/ features of a HP MediaSmart (this is the easiest method)
3. Investigate the cost of building a new i3-530 system/ upgrading the current desktop you have (in sig) and using old hardware for the WHS.
 
Ok. The laptop runs for long periods of time. I have had it run stuff for 6+ hours before. Overall I am looking for something real simple. Just to make a backup (second copy) of data that can't be replaced. So, documents and music. It;d also be nice to have documents centralized, so I don't have to make 3 copies of something on all my computers if I am working on it.
Also, at this point in time, I have no desire to stream media. I have a HTPC set up and all my media is on there. It acts as a PVR and holds some movies.

Now my last question would be, could I do automated backing up using an OS I already have. Which are Win7 Pro, Vista Business, and XP. This would save me another $100 on not needing to buy a WHS license. Because with those OS I could set up any Hard drive like a networked drive, if I am correct. So I would think either Windows, or a 3rd party software would be all that's needed to set up automated backing up.
 
Yeah, you could use something like SyncToy or any of the myriad other ways of doing an automated backup and that would work fine. WHS just integrates it nicely and handles multiple computers and so on pretty elegantly.

I'll defer to Windows guys to speak more on this :p
 
pjkenned said:
I'll second the WHS route. Great backup software. HP has added some cool media and Mac integration features in their WHS. Easy to setup. Also great for streaming content and storing media.
Click to expand...

The Mac plug-ins on HP's boxes are pretty slick, you can even have the Macs do Time Machine backups to the WHS box. I set one up for a family member in December and was tempted to build my own WHS box (no Macs here so no need to buy a pre-built)... But I don't have a huge need for it just yet. I'm definitely recommending it to any friends w/a family and several computers under one roof tho.

You can definitely do it cheaper, but if you want something ready-made HP's boxes aren't bad. They're pretty quiet, small, and the higher end models are very expandable.

If you want something simpler you can use a program like SyncToy or Brightsparks' SyncBack SE to schedule a backup/sync job over the network to a shared drive on another PC. Using an old laptop for either task sounds a little iffy to me tho... The laptop's own drive will be small and slow, and if you're gonna hook up an external drive to it why even bother? Just hook up the external drive directly to your own computer and it'll be much quicker to perform the backup.

If the systems you're backing up are laptops you're gonna have to remember to leave 'em on when the scheduled backup is set to run anyway... I'm not sure if you stated whether your fiance's system and yours were laptops as well or not.
 
Actually, I am seriously contemplating the exact same thing, I have a little netbook I am thinking of just making into a WHS box. Im gonna use usb HD, ( I have to see if they still do, BUT the one Western Digital Mybook I have actually powers off the HD when the Pc its attached to turns off, a big plus for me) Now, given this machine is 1) based on an atom 2) with USB drives and 3) using the built in 100Mb networking spot, I am not expecting jawbreaking performance.. In fact, the ONLY thing that will go on this one will be the backups of the other windows machines in my house. Let me know how it works. If I had a spare laptop HD laying around Id swap it and do it myself now, but the Netbook came with XP home preinstalled and runs quite nicely as is, so I dont wanna write over that.

@ Impulse. If you have ever recovered a Windows box using WHS youd understand. Simply the easiest way to restore a machine..
 
It's no simpler than creating image backups of your OS drive w/Ghost or a similar program and restoring it when needed... I don't see the downside of using an Atom netbook or a laptop for this IF the systems that it's gonna backup are almost always on; and thus the whole process can thus be scheduled so they store their backups remotely and the whole process is done in the background...

But if the systems being backed up are laptops and you have to remember to leave them on or w/e in order to do this, you might as well just grab the USB external drive, connect it directly, and use Ghost (or SyncBack, or both even) and do the backups directly to the external drive. It'll be much quicker (USB vs Ethernet) and only requires a handful of mouse clicks.

We're now talking about two different things tho, full OS image backups and simple file backups. If he's just looking to keep a couple docs/media folders synchronized (rather than performing full OS backups), the WHS solution would be kind of overkill for two systems. I'm sure you could set up SyncBack or MS' Synctoy to do the same thing when their laptops/desktops or w/e are turned on.
 
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Close. WHS can "wake" a laptop up to back it up. But yeah, if all hes doing is trying to save a few personal files, heck, Id just go with an external drive even. WHS backups seriously cant be beat for ease of use. I have used Ghost, Acronis, DriveimageXL, etc. and WHS is by far the easiest way to recover. Heck, its great even when you just wanna upgrade your OS drive to a larger one. Insert boot disk, a few clicks, and done. I realize Ghost is pretty easy to use ( and its been a long time since I used it) but that bare metal backups feature alone is why I use WHS over everything else. I dont have to worry about it. It does nice simple backups, and I forget the technical term, but if you have 5 machines all running XP or just have a ton of files duplicated across the systems it wont waste space backing up more than one copy. If you add a hard drive, it asks if youd like to back it up. It takes all the thought out of it.

I agree, if all he needs is a couple PC's backed up, and not the OS'es themselves, Id use Synctoy. Its a pretty handy little program. Synctoy, and USB external , and you all set..
 
Forgot WHS had the capability to wake up a system, but will it do so even if the system is completely turned off? Even then, I imagine he'd have to at 'least have it hooked up via Ethernet (which most people don't do w/their laptops)... My point is that if he's only backing up two systems and he has to remember to do anything in order to take advantage of WHS' automation, then it's kinda pointless. W/o a few more details on his exact scenario it's hard to say tho. :p
 
Well this has been pretty informative. To answer some questions. I have a laptop and my fiance has a laptop. All I want to back-up are a few important files. Nothing big. No OS imaging, if an OS needs to be reinstalled, I'd rather do it from scratch so it's nice and clean. So not a lot of data to backup on a regular basis.

Now this is what I think I want to do. I also have a stand-alone HTPC. So I record, rip, encode, and play everything on this box. It is connected directly to my TV. I think I might just install a 3rd hard drive in for these back-ups and use SyncToy (or some other freeware program) to run the scheduled backups for like 7pm. We pretty much always have our laptops running between 5-10pm, just sometimes they are closed. So I would just have to change the "Closed Laptop" power option to say Keep Running, instead of going to Stand By, and I think I am set. Does this sound pretty workable? And it's dirt cheap!
 
Sounds like it'd work just fine, depending on how much data it is (<5GB) you could use Windows Live Mesh too (which gives you other fringe benefits), at 'least for the in-use files... It's similar in principle to Dropbox (tho they only give you 2GB IIRC). Otherwise SyncToy, SyncBack or some other freeware would do the job just as well (in conjunction to WLM or by it's lonesome if you just wanna have a larger data pool in sync).

I'm sure you could figure out how to set either of them to run on the next boot if it didn't run during the scheduled interval too, and if you're running it daily it wouldn't really matter if you skip a day or whatnot... Just saying, wouldn't really have to change the laptops' power state/lid setting if you don't wanna.
 
I will play devils advocate and say that WHS is a POS and to avoid it. I have had nothing but problems with it every time, from installing it with AHCI enabled and working, to restoring from a backup. If you don't mind slipstreaming a bunch of stuff just to get AHCI working then it might work for you.

If you don't mind deleting your entire backup database every time a drive fails and you replace it, copy the old files back over to it, and then have WHS tell you you can no longer backup this drive, then WHS might work for you.

If you don't mind having a drive fail and then being unable to mount your backup (this is how you access your files that are stored in the backupDB) and then being told that to get your backup working you need to delete it and recreate it (basically dump your backup that your trying to recover from), then WHS might work for you.

Every time I have actually needed WHS for a backup except one it failed to deliver. Sure it tells you if backups fail or are successful, but that info is useless when you can't even use your backups anyways. Its probably the worst $1000 I have spent in a while.
 
I can see how the issues you've had would be aggravating... But a WHS box shouldn't cost $1,000 unless you're going all out with it (not even half that tbh), and slipstreaming drivers into an OS disc is not very hard at all... Can't comment on the rest of the issues you've had as I've only set up WHS for friends/family (not myself) and I'm not sure any of them have had to perform a full restore (altho that's not even remotely what the OP of the thread wanted anyway)... If it was that flaky I can't imagine why people would bother with it at all tho.
 
Impulse said:
I can see how the issues you've had would be aggravating... But a WHS box shouldn't cost $1,000 unless you're going all out with it (not even half that tbh), and slipstreaming drivers into an OS disc is not very hard at all... Can't comment on the rest of the issues you've had as I've only set up WHS for friends/family (not myself) and I'm not sure any of them have had to perform a full restore (altho that's not even remotely what the OP of the thread wanted anyway)... If it was that flaky I can't imagine why people would bother with it at all tho.
Click to expand...

More people are backing away from it as these serious issues continue to come up. Search for the drive mount 81% issue and you will see there is no known cause or solution. $1000 is nothing for a backup system and at the time yes it was all out. C2D, Case, PSU MB with 8 Sata prots and 6 o 1TB drives added up pretty quick.

Slipstreaming WHS is quite a bit more complicated than slipstreaming a regular OS disk due to the layered OS. Here is a link the the tutorial that will help people through it.
http://wiki.wegotserved.com/index.php?title=Slipstream_Windows_Home_Server
 
tomiboy59 said:
Now this is what I think I want to do. I also have a stand-alone HTPC. So I record, rip, encode, and play everything on this box. It is connected directly to my TV. I think I might just install a 3rd hard drive in for these back-ups and use SyncToy (or some other freeware program) to run the scheduled backups for like 7pm. We pretty much always have our laptops running between 5-10pm, just sometimes they are closed. So I would just have to change the "Closed Laptop" power option to say Keep Running, instead of going to Stand By, and I think I am set. Does this sound pretty workable? And it's dirt cheap!
Click to expand...

IdleBackup will backup your designated files anytime your computer is idle. As long as the laptops stayed running, you wouldn't need to schedule it for a certain time. The biggest issue I've had with IdleBackup is that I have it backing up my whole user profile, and I needed to exclude lockfiles and such that were in use when I had the corresponding apps open.
 
tomiboy59 said:
Well this has been pretty informative. To answer some questions. I have a laptop and my fiance has a laptop. All I want to back-up are a few important files. Nothing big. No OS imaging, if an OS needs to be reinstalled, I'd rather do it from scratch so it's nice and clean. So not a lot of data to backup on a regular basis.

Now this is what I think I want to do. I also have a stand-alone HTPC. So I record, rip, encode, and play everything on this box. It is connected directly to my TV. I think I might just install a 3rd hard drive in for these back-ups and use SyncToy (or some other freeware program) to run the scheduled backups for like 7pm. We pretty much always have our laptops running between 5-10pm, just sometimes they are closed. So I would just have to change the "Closed Laptop" power option to say Keep Running, instead of going to Stand By, and I think I am set. Does this sound pretty workable? And it's dirt cheap!
Click to expand...


Sounds like a good plan.
 
Ive had a 300gb maxtor nas for a few years now, I just use synctoy as a scheduled job, that syncs my documents onto the nas every night. Works perfectly and only cost me £50 at the time.
 
Alrighty. It's all set up, and did some random testing to make sure it has access to files, and is working correctly. Couldn't figure out how to give it access to the files without sharing the folders for Everyone. I gave it only read access though. Currently it is backing things up on the C: drive of the HTPC since nothing is on there except the OS. The second HDD is all media. I plan on getting another HDD in the future though since I feel that if a HDD is going to die, it is going to be an OS drive.

One last question. Anyone know where Google Chrome stores bookmarks? I want to backup my bookmarks. Thanks.
 
tomiboy59 said:
Alrighty. It's all set up, and did some random testing to make sure it has access to files, and is working correctly. Couldn't figure out how to give it access to the files without sharing the folders for Everyone. I gave it only read access though. Currently it is backing things up on the C: drive of the HTPC since nothing is on there except the OS. The second HDD is all media. I plan on getting another HDD in the future though since I feel that if a HDD is going to die, it is going to be an OS drive.

One last question. Anyone know where Google Chrome stores bookmarks? I want to backup my bookmarks. Thanks.
Click to expand...

Chrome has a plugin that will store them on google's server so you don't have to back them up and so you can access or append to them from anywhere.
 
Justintoxicated said:
Chrome has a plugin that will store them on google's server so you don't have to back them up and so you can access or append to them from anywhere.
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Oh yea! Normally I prefer to have my own copies locally, but it's just bookmarks, so it's okay to leave them on Google's cloud.
 
Ok here is a question. While I was backing up my music, I noticed that my network utilization was only 40% at max. Why wouldn't it be maxed out at a 100%. This is on my laptop which is Wireless G. My router is some version of the Linksys WRT54G. The HTPC is connect via 100Mbit Ethernet.
 
tomiboy59 said:
Ok here is a question. While I was backing up my music, I noticed that my network utilization was only 40% at max. Why wouldn't it be maxed out at a 100%. This is on my laptop which is Wireless G. My router is some version of the Linksys WRT54G. The HTPC is connect via 100Mbit Ethernet.
Click to expand...

Has to read it(from your laptop) and write(to your HTPC) hard drives ;)

To improve transfer speed try plugging your computer into your Linksys WRT54G
 
Impulse said:
Was it 40% on the laptop or the HTPC?
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40% on laptop. I figured the reading and writing were so fast that the network would be the bottleneck though. I know plugging it in would be faster, but kind of surprised it wasn't using a 100% network utilization. I am just asking this out of curiosity. Could be it that is measuring based off of 54Mbps, and that since it is a therotical max, the actual maximum may be more like 25Mbps?
 
hmm, i just thought of something. what would happen if i shut down my laptop during a backup with synctoy. would it know to redo the incomplete file next time it runs?
 
jumst dump all the music and stuff on the whs server you can then access it thru every computer in the house and outside of the house also thru the internet
 
sneeker said:
Ive had a 300gb maxtor nas for a few years now, I just use synctoy as a scheduled job, that syncs my documents onto the nas every night. Works perfectly and only cost me £50 at the time.
Click to expand...

Be careful with that. Make sure you are using the "contribute" option in synctoy rather then synchronize, otherwise you're not protected from accidental deletions, malware induced deletions, etc.
 
okashira said:
Be careful with that. Make sure you are using the "contribute" option in synctoy rather then synchronize, otherwise you're not protected from accidental deletions, malware induced deletions, etc.
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Yea I set mine up as contribute for that very reason.
 
Question, does anyone know how to backup the settings for synctoy? I am replacing my motherboard and will therefore need to reformat. Thanks.
 
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