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It's that time again to revisit this painful. boring but necessary topic of how we keep our data around.
Currently I am using an external hard drive. I copy the entire hard drive I have onto a larger external. I have never trusted the incremental back-ups. I've been burned in the tape back-up days of yore.
My current hard drive has been pestering me for a permanent vacation and this weekend I am contemplating swapping the old drive with a new one. This new drive is much larger than my old one and even larger than my external. So to keep the current back up method I would have to upgrade to a larger external.
But I would love to hear success stories how others are successfully backing up their data and maybe find a better way.
-------------------- Bob Rochon Creative Signworks Millbury, MA 508-865-7330
"Life is Like an Echo, what you put out, comes back to you." Posts: 5149 | From: Millbury, Mass. U.S. | Registered: Nov 1998
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I can remember when I backed-up files to floppy disks!
Then came the "Zip" drive !!!!
Try to get either to work nowdays.!
Burning a CD, now a DVD, is the norm now.
I have an external 400G HD which I should "ghost" my puters to at least once a week, now only when I remember to do it. But at least it stores all the essential programs etc.
Back ups are essential ... been there, done that after a lightning strike.
But remember, back ups are only as good when stored elsewhere other than your home or place of business. Mine live in the garden shed in a steel box.
posted
Bob, even though your putting a larger hard drive in your PC, you probably won't have enough data to fill up your backup drive right away.
In other words, if your external back-up drive is 350gb.... and let's say on your PC you have a 120 gb drive now and it's 80% full, and you replace it with a 500 gb... you are still only going to be putting that 100gb of data on the new drive. I wouldn't worry about replacing my back-up drive until my amount of data is over 300gb and getting close to the limit of the back-up drive.
That might take a few years...
I'm using an external hard-drive and Memeo which keeps you backed up in real-time. I've been impressed as it hasn't seemed to slow our server down enough to even notice.
-------------------- Jon Jantz Snappysign.com jjantz21@gmail.com http://www.allcw.com Posts: 3395 | From: Atmore, AL | Registered: Nov 2005
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I have 2 drives in the server. One is partitioned for the OS (Windows Server 2003)and for my mapped network drive, which I've named the "Z" drive. The other drive is set up for nightly incremental back-ups. (I was burned once that way too... but it was user error from my former IT guy... so I got over feeling gunshy about that)
My 4 production computers can all see the mapped "Z" drive, and save or retrieve all current files to and from that drive.
Quarterly, or thereabouts, I weed out the no longer current, or commonly reordered job files, and move them to 2 different external archiving hard drives. One is attached to the network, for retrieval of old job files. The other is stored at home.
[ April 03, 2008, 03:18 AM: Message edited by: Doug Allan ]
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I have a second hard drive installed and regularly click & drag all my files onto it.
A couple of days ago, I had to wipe the system and reload everything. A far as programs and OS goes, it's about 20 CDs worth of info, but all "my documents" and the sub folders within it can be restored fairly quickly with a click and drag.
I also make it a habit to to back up those same directories onto the slave drive every month, usually on the first. Any old files will be overwritten and new files added automatically.
From formatted drive to fully functional again takes about 4-5 hours and nothing gets lost but the excess crap I wanted to lose in the first place.
Rapid
-------------------- Ray Rheaume Rapidfire Design 543 Brushwood Road North Haverhill, NH 03774 rapidfiredesign@hotmail.com 603-787-6803
I like my paint shaken, not stirred. Posts: 5648 | From: North Haverhill, New Hampshire | Registered: Apr 2003
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We run a Raid 0 in one computer for all the daily work along with Data Keeper running in the background. Then every Friday it does a full backup to a external drive. All my financials are then backed up monthly to a Separate CD and all new files are then backed up to a DVD quarterly.
So worse case we only loose a couple of days work.. Just happened in FEB. Had a external NAS Box spike and took out both drives. Wasn't a pleasant day.
[ April 03, 2008, 08:08 AM: Message edited by: William DeBekker ]
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We're using a network storage device as a file server. This is a Dlink DNS 323 with 2 350g drives configured in a Raid 1 array. Nice little device about the size of a toaster. Not too expensive and easy to configure. It does not require server software or licences I believe it runs linux internally. The raid 1 array means that data is safe even should 1 drive fail and will permit hot swapping of a damaged drive. The network storage device is protected and on it's own UPS.
The server itself is also backed up (full copy) nightly to one of the workstations which has a 500g harddrive.
I'm looking at backing up to home via internet as well, at this point a full daily backup isn't feasable but incremental backup might be. I have all past years files archived (means no file changes permitted) so in reality the incremental backup would only need to be current years files.
Accounting data is kept on the office computer but backed up at end of day to a flash drive and removed from premises. As well graduated backups are made to the file server nightly, this permits us to go back in daily, weekly or monthly steps should data become corrupt so that we can reconstruct our books from any point in time if necessary.
Backups are all scheduled automatically and don't rely on my memory which is indeed prone to failure.
(note:) William your raid 0 will improve speed, but should one drive fail all data will be lost, in fact in a two drive system you've doubled your chances of failure resulting in data loss.
[ April 03, 2008, 08:58 AM: Message edited by: Mike O'Neill ]
-------------------- Mike O'Neill
It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value. - Arthur C. Clarke
posted
I use a utility called SyncBack and synchronize the working folders that I have on my shop computer with those on my office computer and my laptop. Megan likewise has a copy of all the bookkeeping on her laptop. The program is set to locate any files that are new or changed and only copy them, not needing to re do the ones already there.
-------------------- The SignShop Mendocino, California
Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity. — Charles Mingus Posts: 6712 | From: Mendocino, CA. USA | Registered: Nov 1998
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posted
We use a system very similar to Mike's but with slightly larger drives (two 500GB drives form the Raid). And rather than do nightly backups to an internal drive, we backup nightly to an external drive.
We have two identical 500GB network drives for backup and keep one at home and the other installed to receive the nightly backup. Once a week we swap them, which takes nearly a minute.
The entire system cost $900 and replaced our $7000 server.
-------------------- Paul Luszcz Zebra Visuals 27 Water Street Plymouth, MA 02360 508 746-9200 paul@zebravisuals.com Posts: 483 | From: 27 Water Street, Plymouth, MA 02360 | Registered: Jul 2003
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It sounds as if many of you simply copy your data onto an extra hard drive. Do you put that extra hard drive in a safe place? If you had a fire or theft, your data would disappear if you don't.
Theft at a storefront for me, therefore the newest dvd goes into my truck.
posted
Well there's a new device on the block for back up you may want to consider. It's made by Apple (dark side scores again) and it's called the Time capsule. From Apple: Back up a lifetime’s worth of memories with the all-new Time Capsule, a wireless hard drive that works seamlessly with Time Machine in Mac OS X Leopard. It’s also a full-featured 802.11n Wi-Fi base station. Choose from 500GB and 1TB models.
500 gig is $299, 1 terabyte model is $499.
Minimum requirements for Time Capsule on a PC is XP or Vista.
And how about Time Machine on their latest OS (Leopard). If a program crashes or you forget to save changes just pick a time and your computer will go back to the time you pick and the file you were working on will be there, even if it's an unsaved new file. How cool is that. Sorry PC users, that feature is on Mac OS only but the Time Capsule looks like a sweet piece of hardware for both Mac's or PC's.
-------------------- Dave Sherby "Sandman" SherWood Sign & Graphic Design Crystal Falls, MI 49920 906-875-6201 sherwoodsign@sbcglobal.net Posts: 5396 | From: Crystal Falls, MI USA | Registered: Apr 1999
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Donna, the RAID on the original drive means you have two current copies of every file, in effect.
The nightly backup gives you a third copy, never more than one day old, in a different location within the shop.
The weekly swap means you have a fourth copy off premises which is never more than one week old. If you're very concerned you could get in the habit of swapping it every day.
The latest off site backup solution is called "SugarSync". It saves real time copies of any file you keep in a "magic folder" and updates everyone who has a copy of the file. It sounds complicated, but it means you can access any of your files from anywhere you have internet access and be sure you and your co-workers are always working on the current version of a file.
-------------------- Paul Luszcz Zebra Visuals 27 Water Street Plymouth, MA 02360 508 746-9200 paul@zebravisuals.com Posts: 483 | From: 27 Water Street, Plymouth, MA 02360 | Registered: Jul 2003
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Friendly little “bump” for some of you to add to the to-do list before departing for Pontiac.
-------------------- Bob Gilliland InKnowVative Communications Harrisburg PA, USA
"The U.S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself." Benjamin Franklin Posts: 642 | From: Harrisburg, PA, USA | Registered: Nov 1998
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I use MOZY and I've been very satisfied with it.
-------------------- Kimberly Zanetti Purcell www.amethystProductivity.com Folsom, CA email: Kimberly@AmethystProductivity.com
“Organizing is what you do before you do something, so that when you do it, it is not all mixed up.” AA Milne Posts: 3722 | From: Folsom, CA | Registered: Dec 2001
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I use Mozy as a online backup service! MOZY saved me about 1500 photos that I had taken last summer on vacation- I only had my laptop, so I backed up my laptop data to MOZY to keep some open room to store more photos, but later I forgot to backup those photos to my other portable harddrive- a few months ago, my laptop harddrive had a physical failure and none of the data was recoverable-
I was able to go to Mozy and see the files that I saved, and then recovered them and stored them on DVD as well as kept a copy on Mozy!
-------------------- Michael Clanton Clanton Graphics/ Blackberry 19 Studio 1933 Blackberry Conway AR 72034 501-505-6794 clantongraphics@yahoo.com Posts: 1735 | From: Conway Arkansas | Registered: Oct 2001
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I believe it runs linux internally. The raid 1 array means that data is safe even should 1 drive fail and will permit hot swapping of a damaged drive. The network storage device is protected and on it's own UPS.![[Wink]](wink.gif)
Friendly little “bump” for some of you to add to the to-do list before departing for Pontiac. 
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