Back up Question for All

[paul alford]

Now that I have 2 nice systems, both running great, both networked, both have several internal HDs and an external HD backing up the whole deal... what happens if the place catches fire ???? All of my efforts go up in flames, literally.

Do most or some of you guys backup the backup and keep it off premises ? Like a safe deposit box ? What are you putting in there if so ? Another HD (that can fail too) or writing DVD (larger capacity). Yes, pure analtivity (is that a word ?) here but I want to think of all of the options and try to be ready for it with a few extra steps.

I am talking about 30 or so gig so far that would need to be safe guarded but will grow as time progresses.

I really dont feel "online" backups is the way to go either so I dont even want to consider that way.

Any ideas digi-dudes ?

Paul

[onehotrx7]

I keep off site backups on CD - and my negs from 35mm days are in a bank box... dvd would be preferable given the file size you're thinking about, but CD could work - depends how long that 30 gig has taken to accumulate!! :-)

Cheers,
Stuart

[mrchips]

I would use a program like Drive Image. In its latest version 2002 it runs under windows and will make a total image (bootable) on CD of your machine. If larger than one CD it will span the image to as many as needed.

We use it to make images of PC that I adminiter at work. It makes a great disaster recovery solution.

The program costs 69 bucks and is worth every penny.

PS A side benifit is that it allows you to completly copy say a 20 GB drive to a new 60 or 80 and turn right around and boot and use the new drive.

Denny

[Dans_D60]

If you really need to backup 30+ gig then a CD-R (RW) in not the answer. I don’t think you want to span 40 CD’s for a full backup. DVD is better but expensive. DAT tape is very expensive. I installed a SONY SCSII SuperStation with a 20 gig capacity ($179) about three years ago. Like you I have about 30 gig. I do a full backup once a month (two tapes) with an incremental (one tape) backup every Saturday morning. I use the same tape for the incremental backups. And yes, I store the tapes in an inexpensive fireproof file cabinet. Unfortunately, SONY no longer makes this device. Competition from DVD-R. I experienced a complete C drive failure about a year ago. Was able to completely restore minus a few days email messages. Even with my new XP monster system, I still have the older SONY tape backup as a networked device with my older PC on my LAN and still copy my critical files to tape. Not as easy in XP as no new drivers for the SONY. I guess I’ll need to break down and buy a DVD-R!

[walkerd]

I use an external USB 2.0 hot swappable drive housing from ADS with a 100GB drive along with Synchromagic. I scheduled Synchromagic to run every night backing up any new files from my internal drive with all my images. I like this set up as I can quickly unplug the external drive and take it off site.
Synchromagic is extremely powerful. The options are almost endless allowing multiple tasks, multiple source and target drives etc., etc.
Credit goes to Don Cohen at dlcphotography.net for this solution.

Synchromagic:
http://rosecitysoftware.com/Synchromagic/

Doug Walker

[mjordan]

mrchips wrote:
I would use a program like Drive Image. In its latest version 2002 it runs under windows and will make a total image (bootable) on CD of your machine. If larger than one CD it will span the image to as many as needed.

We use it to make images of PC that I adminiter at work. It makes a great disaster recovery solution.

The program costs 69 bucks and is worth every penny.

PS A side benifit is that it allows you to completly copy say a 20 GB drive to a new 60 or 80 and turn right around and boot and use the new drive.

Denny

The problem with Windows is that it now remembers all devices you have in your computer. So when you do a restore like this, or in the case of what I have done in the past, swap hard drives from a slow machine to a faster one, and then re-boot, Windows is going to tell you that you have all kinds of new devices and want you to re-load all the drivers again. If they are devices that are in the Windows CAB files, it's not too bad, but if you have some new hardward that requires drivers not known by Windows, it can be a real pain. Even though it can be done, it's not a load and back to work operation.

But, Drive Image sounds interesting. I've used Ghost before, which also will create an image of your hard drive, but the problem is it needs as much space or more as you already have used up. And unless they have improved it, it also needed to be run in DOS so it could capture the drive image. I'm going to look for Drive Image and take a look at it. Being able to backup across multiple CDs makes it very interesting.

Mike

[rickm]

The real answer as stated before is a portable USB 2.0 or Firewire hard drive.

These devices are inexpensive, fast, and come in huge capacities, so backing up big drives is no problem.

The added benefit is that they can go where you go so you have the use of it anywhwere while you also maintain a full backup.

[reittila]

rickm wrote:
The real answer as stated before is a portable USB 2.0 or Firewire hard drive.

These devices are inexpensive, fast, and come in huge capacities, so backing up big drives is no problem.

The added benefit is that they can go where you go so you have the use of it anywhwere while you also maintain a full backup.

Amen.