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What is YOUR backing up routine?

C

CaseyJ70

Weaksauce
Joined
Jul 28, 2003
Messages
88
So I have near 100GB of FLACs ATM and figure that it's probably time to start backing them up in case of a HDD failure. I have an old WD MyBook USB 1.1, but needless to say, it's useless for such a job. I have USB 3.0 on my new PC. Should I purchase another MyBook (3.0?) or buy another internal SATA drive? What does everyone else do for backups? Is there any recommended software for doing this?
 
I have a 2TB ZFS Mirror. If one drive dies; I'm still ok. I also have a single UFS 2TB disk that copies from mirror nightly.

Anything super important (docs) also gets shuffled off to a flash drive.
 
CaseyJ70 said:
Should I purchase another MyBook (3.0?) or buy another internal SATA drive?
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Buy another MyBook. Then it'll be the very definition of backup.

My personal backup routine is this: All of my media, pictures, and documents are stored on both my main PC and my WHS server. My most critical documents, pictures, etc are stored on two external drive.

So basically, I'll have three copies of any critical or important file at all times.
 
Crack open the old external, and if it's SATA buy a $20-30 case, connect via eSATA, done. Dealextreme.com is your friend at times like this.
 
CaseyJ70 said:
Anyone else?
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No longer the most convenient, since HDs are now so big and cheap, but I would burn the stuff to DVDs, then use quickpar to create parity back-ups, and burn one (or more) copies of that parity.

That way, you can have the same copies of something go bad at the same area, but still have parity to correct for it.

Frankly, what I liked about this system is even if I had a burn not test as 100%, I didn't care, as I knew 'tween it and the parity back-up, I had plenty of good data to re-build the area(s) that checked out bad on the test. Certainly saved on media, as almost nothing was a coaster, and you could gamble more successfully on cheap media.

With Quickpar, all you pretty much have to do is get 4.35GB (a full DVD's worth) between the data disc and the parity disc off of both discs to repair the data.

If all of your discs are 50%+ bad, well, you're frankly probably just screwed anyway, regardless of how many parity back-ups you kept... But I gambled on this system, and to my knowledge haven't lost any data through it yet!

It's certainly more secure than two identical copies of the same data, IMO.

Quickpar's free, and can work on data on HDs, up to a certain level. While it won't help if one drive just up and dies (no back-up strategy can help that), if you had bad sectors on the same spot on two HDs, you've lost the file(s) on both. (Not sure what the possibilities on that though are...) But, if you have parity of that data, again, you can repair it.

Note: Quickpar does not function like RAID-5, although it might sound like it. It's better. But if you've been on Usenet, you've more than likely used it before anyway...
 
I have a raid5 array on my main server, everything is backed up to the backup folder (stuff on that array as well as my workstation). Very important stuff such as code is backed up in a rotation system, by day of week, sometimes month, really depends on the specific project. I use rsync for most of my backups. For windows I use syncback, and just dump it to a shared drive.

Now you're probably thinking,that's putting my eggs in one basket, and it is, but it does not end there. That's for "quick restore" backups. Like "oops I deleted a file" I can go quickly grab the file from the latest backup. On top of that, I have a a drive dock where I insert a 1TB drive, and depending on what drive is in there, the proper job runs. I just have to manually fire up a script. I ocasionally rotate the drives around. Only 2 at the moment, but I can just keep adding some over time. Usually when I retire a hard drive, it gets put in the backup pool.

Then, twice a month, my most important, irreplaceable data is backed up to a dedicated server outside the country.

Eventually I want to write a web based software to automate all of this, but right now it's pretty much all manual to code the scripts, add to cron etc... the server to server style backups require to generate a ssh key and all that stuff, so it's a bit tedious adding or modifying jobs.

I've thought of going to tapes, but HDDs are WAY cheaper in the short and even long run. They are also simpler. Tape backup systems tend to be much more complex. I still don't fully understand the backup solution at our work.... and half the time it does not even work. I would hate having to restore data at work. At home it's a piece of cake. I think one important requirement to any backup solution is that it is simple. If it's complicated, it is more likely to fail you.
 
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I use a Vantec NexStar 3 eSATA with a 1TB WD HDD. Vantec has also come out with a case for USB 3.0 if you want to go that route. Then I use Acronis True Image for my backups.
 
Ideally you want to buy 2 more drives, internal or external. Than rotate them, so in the case of a power surge while performing your backup, you'll have one drive away, safely unplugged. Other people even buy a third drive and keep one of them in a bank.
In your case, for 100GB you might as well back them up on quality DVD's, you only need 25 of them. And/or combine with the above.
As far as I'm concerned, a single RAID setup isn't a backup. In a surge or PSU failure all the drives in the matrix could be affected.
 
At work:

Backup exec doing backups of my primary (SBS) and secondary (SQL) server every night to a second drive in the SBS server.

SQL Databases and File shares are also staged to my desktop at work. (via SyncToy)

Everything staged to my desktop at work is also sent to my PC at home every night (via Rsync)

Everything staged to my desktop at home is also sent up to carbonite ($55/yr unlim)

For quick disaster recovery, Rdrive Image running on both SBS and SQL boxes every night saving to a non-raid drive in the SBS box, with images staged to my desktop at work.

all automated, with emails to me on pass/fail.
 
prayhands.gif
 
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