Help with backups

[carmen]

Could someone advise me on what is the best way to backup all my data on the
network.

I have 60 gig of data that changes nightly and is quite important. I would
like to do nightly backups and keep several copies of the backup just in
case one has failed. I don't think burning to DVD would work as I would
need 12 DVD per night and the time involved wouldn't be practical.

 

[R. McCarty]

Check into one of the on-line backup services. Prices are generally
tied to how much data is backed up, as a monthly charge. One that
I recommend to small business customers is Backup Solutions.
http://backupsolutions.com/
*Their small business plans only extend to 30-Gigabytes, but can't
image that all of that content changes daily, so incremental backups
wouldn't be as large.

Most every other solution would be more of a Home based type of
backup like Acronis True Image to an external drive. If it's really
important data it should be stored off-site in case of a fire or other
disaster.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Could someone advise me on what is the best way to backup all my data on the
network.

I have 60 gig of data that changes nightly and is quite important. I would
like to do nightly backups and keep several copies of the backup just in
case one has failed. I don't think burning to DVD would work as I would
need 12 DVD per night and the time involved wouldn't be practical.

Is this a small home network? If you're looking for the best, and not
the cheapest, there's a new Microsoft product called Windows Home
Server, just coming out, that may meet your needs. Go to
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/windowshomeserver/default.mspx

or http://tinyurl.com/34a7vl

 

[Paul Knudsen]

Could someone advise me on what is the best way to backup all my data on the
network.

I have 60 gig of data that changes nightly and is quite important. I would
like to do nightly backups and keep several copies of the backup just in
case one has failed. I don't think burning to DVD would work as I would
need 12 DVD per night and the time involved wouldn't be practical.

You'd want a really sophisticated tape system for something like that.

You could do a full backup on, say, Saturday night, and incremental
backups every other night. Store the full backup off-site.

 

[createwindow]

This is easy. Grab "robocopy" from Microsoft.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/technetmag/issues/2006/11/UtilitySpotlight/

Read the robocopy.doc that comes with the resource tools.

The beauty is the first copy / backup will take a long time - but
subsequent copies will finish in minutes! As only changed data is
copied.

Use the /MIR option (mirror). I assume you are backing up to a network
share.

Cheers,

CreateWindow

http://mymessagetaker.com
The while-you-were-out message taking program you have been looking
for!

 

[carmen]

Thank you to everyone that has responded. Not all the data changes daily so
weekly full backups and nightly incrementals would work. Offsite backups
are also my preference. I do like the idea of online backups, but of
course, the question that arises is security and privacy of my data.

For Paul who suggested tapes, would you know of a system that you could
recommend?

The home server is also something I was looking towards, and will probably
migrate towards it, but I'd still like a way to get the data offsite so as
to have an offsite backup if the need ever arose.

 

[DL]

Any decent offsite backup features full encryption, the downside being that
if there is a problem with your backup the supplier may not be able to
recover it for you.
Many large bus.use remote offsite backups managed by third parties so I dont
believe security is neccessarily a problem.
60gb of initial backup to offsite will take a heck of a time.
I only have 5gb offsite, & cannot remember how long initial backup took, but
nightly increment is usually less than 15 mins.
And I have recovered data without problem, my supplier includes snapshots ie
about 5 of the last file changes are stored