Mxsmanic said:
Over the past few years the capacity of disk drives (and the amount of
space typically used on them) has greatly increased, and now it is
getting more and more difficult to figure out how to back up these
drives.
What type of hardware (and software) do you use on your systems for
backup?
Up to now, I've used HP DDS tape drives (DAT drives) for backup. But
DDS2 is limited to 4 GB, and DDS3 is limited to 24 GB, and that's
getting to be to small to hold even one backup on a single tape (or
even on several tapes in some cases).
So, what else is there? These DAT drives already cost me a fortune in
the good old days, and today they cost nearly as much as the rest of
the computer, when I can find them ... and even DDS4 is still limited
to 40 GB. DLT drives are several times more expensive at the cheap
end, although they do have capacity to hold an entire drive of data.
Are there other practical alternatives? What about external USB
drives, can that work? Old stuff like Zip drives and so on is
history, as it has even less capacity than tape. Archiving to CD or
DVD is also too low in capacity. It's getting to the point that the
only affordable option seems to be some sort of disk-to-disk copy (or
RAID for those who can afford it), but it would be nice to have
removable media that could be put in a safe place.
So what is everyone else building into their new machines for backup?
And do you just use standard backup tools like ntbackup on Windows or
dump on UNIX, or do you use special software purchased separately?
Mxmanic:
No doubt you'll get a slew of responses to your query each one touting his
or her favorite backup scheme, so let me give you my "take" on this
subject....
In my opinion, the best backup system for the average home user and even
small business owner in most cases is having his or her desktop computer
equipped with two removable hard drives and using a disk imaging program
such as Symantec's Norton Ghost or Acronis True Image to "clone" the
contents of their working hard drive to another removable hard drive. There
are other advantages in having two removable hard drives on one's desktop
computer but the most significant one is providing a near fail-safe backup
system. The speed, flexibility and peace of mind you get with this
arrangement far outweighs (for most users) the relatively small additional
cost of equipping one's desktop computer with this hardware configuration.
Note that the removable hard drive mobile racks we are discussing are
designed to be installed in desktop computers and not laptop or notebook
computers. The size, weight, and design considerations of laptops/notebooks
do not allow for this hardware configuration.
Using this setup, backing up your hard drive is simple, straightforward,
fast, and most important of all -- effective. By easily and relatively
quickly making a clone of your hard drive, using a software program like
Symantec's Norton Ghost or Acronis True Image, programs which are
specifically designed for this purpose, you get, what seems to me, the
ultimate backup solution given the present state of personal desktop
computer technology. Unlike backup programs that merely back up your data
files - that is, the files you've created in the various programs and
applications you use - by cloning your hard drive, you're backing up your
operating system, your registry, all your programs and applications, your
configuration settings, your data files - in short, everything on the hard
drive from which you're making (for all practical purposes) a bit for bit
copy.
And you're doing all this in one fell swoop, the result of which is the
creation of an exact duplicate of your working hard drive. And for *added*
safety you can remove this newly-cloned hard drive from the premises, not to
mention making unlimited additional clones you desire for near-absolute
security.
While it is true that backup software programs can backup the files you have
created in your various programs, they are unable to backup your operating
system and (for the most part) the programs installed on your computer. As
others have pointed out more that once, many, if not most, computer users
have invested substantial time and effort in customizing Windows and
configuring their applications to work the way they want to and putting all
of that back the way it was can be a difficult, frustrating, and
time-consuming effort.
So when the day comes - as it *surely* will - that your hard drive fails
because of some mechanical or electrical defect, it's a wonderful feeling to
know that you have a perfectly good copy of that failed hard drive that you
simply shove in the computer, boot up, and you're off and running. Or if you
ever get some miserable computer virus that plays havoc with your system, or
for some unknown reason this or that system file is missing or becomes
corrupt resulting in an inoperable computer, isn't it nice to know that you
have at hand a perfectly good virus-free clone of your hard drive? And then
simply clone that "good" previously cloned hard drive to the virus-infected
one so that once again you now have two perfectly good hard drives. And in
the case where the hard drive is kaput because of some mechanical/electronic
failure, you purchase a new hard drive, simply remove the defective drive
from the removable tray, plop in the new one, make two simple connections,
shove it in the computer and then clone your good hard drive to the new one.
And the added beauty of this arrangement is that you do all this from the
comfort of your computer chair. There's no need to open your computer case
and get into the "guts" of your computer to make complicated cable
disconnects/connects. Everything is done outside of your computer because
each hard drive resides in a tray (caddy) that you simply slide into the
computer's mobile rack.
There's *no* need to partition and format the new drive; *no* need to
reinstall your operating system on the new drive; *no* need to reinstall
your programs and data files. None of this is necessary. By simply cloning
the
previously-cloned hard drive to the new drive you once again have two
functioning hard drives at your disposal. And a simple turn of the mobile
rack's keylock allows the user to boot to either hard drive following the
cloning operation.
As previously indicated, these mobile rack devices are two-piece affairs -
the rack itself and the inner tray or caddy (in which the hard drive
resides) that slides into the rack. They come in all-aluminum models or a
combination of aluminum-plastic ranging in price from about $15 to $50.
Naturally, your desktop computer case will need two 5¼" bays that are
available to house the mobile racks. Mobile racks come in various versions,
depending upon whether the hard drive to be housed is an IDE/ATA, SATA, or
SCSI device. A Google search for "removable hard drive mobile racks" will
result in a wealth of information on these products and their vendors. I'm
aware of many users who have been using inexpensive plastic mobile racks
without any problems whatsoever. Unfortunately, there is no industry
standard involving the design and construction of the racks nor the inner
trays that contain the hard drive.Consequently, there is (usually) no
interchangeability of these trays among the various manufacturers of mobile
racks. Indeed, there is frequently no interchangeability of the inner trays
among different models from the same manufacturer. This lack of
interchangeability may not be an issue if the user will be purchasing a
particular model of mobile rack for a single computer, however, if the user
will have access to other computers, he or she may want to settle on a
specific brand and model of mobile rack that will provide for tray
interchangeability amongst different computers.
As I've previously indicated, the cloning process itself is easy and
relatively fast. Using Symantec's Norton Ghost 2003 cloning program as an
example, with the two removable hard drives connected to the computer, you
simply boot up your desktop computer with the bootable floppy disk (my
preferred method) that contains the Ghost program and after a few key clicks
the cloning process begins. The cloning process is practically automatic and
you need not be in attendance during the actual cloning operation. The size
(disk capacity) or make/model of your hard drives need not be identical; all
that matters is that your destination drive contains sufficient capacity to
receive the contents of your source drive. Incidentally, I've recently been
experimenting with the Acronis True Image program because of the many
favorable reports I've come across about this program. Using a bootable ATI
CD, I find the cloning speed of this program is considerably faster than
that of Ghost. And so far I've run into no problems with the cloning process
itself. Depending upon the speed of your processor and hard drives you
should get cloning speeds of somewhere between 700 MB to 1.5+ GB per minute
(less if cloning to a USB/Firewire external hard drive).
I can virtually guarantee that once you begin working with two removable
hard drives, you'll have but one regret and only one regret. And that is you
didn't have this arrangement on your previous computer or computers. While
the additional cost involved in configuring your desktop computer with two
mobile racks together with the additional hard drive and disk imaging
software is not negligible, I can assure you it's money well spent. Frankly,
when you consider the enormous advantages of having two removable hard
drives on your desktop computer, the additional cost of so equipping your
computer in this fashion practically pales into insignificance.
Anna
