Backing up data on Win2000

[Mercedes King]

I hope I'm posting this in the right place... I am at a
complete loss and would greatly appreciate any assistance.
I work for a small company in Syria where it is virtually
impossible to find good I.T. help. As such, although I
really don't know what I'm doing, I'm the I.T. person
because I happen to like computers and normally manage to
figure things out.
As it is, we have data split on two drives, both of which
are on my computer.
I began backing it up simply by copying the whole lot and
burning it onto CD. Then I started to zip it and
continued burning it all onto 1 CD. Now that will no
longer fit so I looked into the backup utility in Windows
2000 but I can't find any way to compress the data short
of buying a tape drive and I ended up with a file that was
1.4GB!
So, can anyone tell me what your average little company
without a great deal of resources does to back up "lots"
of data?
The policy is that we burn 2 CDs with the same data every
week and old copies are maintained. Do I simply continue
doing what I'm doing using more than one CD for each back
up and just go through a ridiculous number of CDs or is
there a more efficient way to go about this?
Thanks to anyone who can give me a hand with this because
it's driving me mental.
mercedes

 

[Lanwench [MVP - Exchange]]

You can use NTBackup to back up to a file, not a 'device' like a tape
drive....then burn that file to CD, I imagine. Or you could buy an external
hard drive (Iomega or somesuch) and backup to file on that device (but of
course that's harder to store offsite, which you really ought to do with at
least some of your backups). Personally, I'd invest in a tape drive and use
scheduled NTBackup jobs ....don't know about pricing in your area, but I
recently spec'd out an external SCSI-attached DDS4 20/40GB tape drive
(bundled with a SCSI adaptor, cable, and terminator) for about $800 USD from
Dell....

 

[Carl Fenley]

I'm sure there could be better solutions, but a solution I have used for the
few small networks I needed to backup was to simply buy a large hard drive,
slave it on the server, and back up the server and the clients to the new
drive.

I hope this helps.

- carl

 

[Colon Terminus]

Replace your CD writer with a DVD writer.

 

[Steve N.]

Why would NTBackup not be able to backup to a supported and properly
installed tape drive? Maybe you meant something else, but your
information seems contradictory.

Steve

 

[Lanwench [MVP - Exchange]]

It can absolutely back up to a tape drive - the OP is talking about running
a backup to CD.

What I said is: "You can use NTBackup to back up to a file, not a 'device'
like a tape drive" meaning you can back up to something *besides* a tape
drive. I can see that I didn't word that very clearly.

 

[Steve N.]

Ok, yeah the wording threw me. No prob.

steve

It can absolutely back up to a tape drive - the OP is talking about running
a backup to CD.

What I said is: "You can use NTBackup to back up to a file, not a 'device'
like a tape drive" meaning you can back up to something *besides* a tape
drive. I can see that I didn't word that very clearly.

Why would NTBackup not be able to backup to a supported and properly
installed tape drive? Maybe you meant something else, but your
information seems contradictory.

Steve

Lanwench [MVP - Exchange] wrote:

You can use NTBackup to back up to a file, not a 'device' like a tape
drive....then burn that file to CD, I imagine. Or you could buy an
external hard drive (Iomega or somesuch) and backup to file on that
device (but of course that's harder to store offsite, which you
really ought to do with at least some of your backups). Personally,
I'd invest in a tape drive and use scheduled NTBackup jobs ....don't
know about pricing in your area, but I recently spec'd out an
external SCSI-attached DDS4 20/40GB tape drive (bundled with a SCSI
adaptor, cable, and terminator) for about $800 USD from Dell....


Mercedes King wrote:


I hope I'm posting this in the right place... I am at a
complete loss and would greatly appreciate any assistance.
I work for a small company in Syria where it is virtually
impossible to find good I.T. help. As such, although I
really don't know what I'm doing, I'm the I.T. person
because I happen to like computers and normally manage to
figure things out.
As it is, we have data split on two drives, both of which
are on my computer.
I began backing it up simply by copying the whole lot and
burning it onto CD. Then I started to zip it and
continued burning it all onto 1 CD. Now that will no
longer fit so I looked into the backup utility in Windows
2000 but I can't find any way to compress the data short
of buying a tape drive and I ended up with a file that was
1.4GB!
So, can anyone tell me what your average little company
without a great deal of resources does to back up "lots"
of data?
The policy is that we burn 2 CDs with the same data every
week and old copies are maintained. Do I simply continue
doing what I'm doing using more than one CD for each back
up and just go through a ridiculous number of CDs or is
there a more efficient way to go about this?
Thanks to anyone who can give me a hand with this because
it's driving me mental.
mercedes

 

[Enkidu]

I'm sure there could be better solutions, but a solution I have used for the
few small networks I needed to backup was to simply buy a large hard drive,
slave it on the server, and back up the server and the clients to the new
drive.

I have a USB external disk drive. That sort of setup could probably be
used too.

Cheers,

Cliff

 

[Mercedes King]

Don't know if anyone ever checks back but I just wanted to
thank everyone VERY much for their advice.

mercedes

 

[Lanwench [MVP - Exchange]]

Oh, most people do check back. And you're most welcome. ;-)