let's say you keep your business records on your computer, or something that you really can't afford to lose.  how would you keep everything backed up?

To start with, Mirror-RAID every computer you own with important stuff on it.  Then back up to a network drive (there are plenty of cheap network storage appliances out there these days, and they're worth their weight in gold), and also back up to external USB hard drive.  

Keep the latter USB drive stored somewhere off-site (or keep your network drive off-site).

That way you're protected from drive failure (RAID), computer failure, ("oops!  wiped the wrong file!  @!#!X"), and theft/fire (stored off-site).

Backing things up is a way of life.

If you don't have that much data to backup and have plenty of fat pipe, you can check out some of the online backup services... you back up to their network, and you're done.

Quoted: To start with, Mirror-RAID every computer you own with important stuff on it.  Then back up to a network drive (there are plenty of cheap network storage appliances out there these days, and they're worth their weight in gold), and also back up to external USB hard drive.   Keep the latter USB drive stored somewhere off-site (or keep your network drive off-site).

Can you briefly explain the Mirror-RAID and network storage?

The extra external drive I understand, I've been needing to do something like that for a while now and just haven't pulled the trigger.

RAID is "Redundant Array of Inexpensive (or Independent) Disks."  Basically, a mirrored RAID (or RAID 1) is a set of two disks where the information is "mirrored" or duplicated on both disks.

This requires two identical hard drives in your computer, and a "RAID controller."  Fortunately, motherboards frequently come with RAID controllers built in these days.  You set up the RAID when building the computer, and if a drive goes Tango-Uniform, you still have all your data (it's mirrored on the other drive).  You replace the failed drive, and the RAID array rebuilds itself (copies the data from one drive to another, restoring the redundancy, and hence your data security).  Mirrored RAID basically saves you from hard-drive failures.

Network Storage is a similar idea, except it's usually some form of hard-drive-containing appliance that connects to your ethernet network, and is generally accessible to all the computers on that network (access controls can be put in place to restrict access).  Not only does it give you a common place to save files (and share files among different computers), but many "network storage appliances" come with built-in RAID features (so, like your RAIDed computer, your common data-storage location doesn't get taken down by a disk failure).

There are a bunch of manufacturers of network RAID appliances... Buffalo is one, but I'm partial to Netgear (they used to be Infrant, and make a nifty linux-based network appliance... Netgear bought them out).  They're about the size of a toaster, and you just slip in a set of SATA drives, and you're off (they hold up to two Terabytes, IIRC).  You can also add drives as you go, and the appliance can automatically expand to fill the space provided by the new drives.

I'm a network storage fan... I'll never go back to sneaker-net.

i guess it depends on how much data you have, and how valuable it is.


you can use a dvdrw drive,  and backup your data to cd-r's or dvd's if needed


you can use a usb harddrive (as already posted)    capicity of the drive is limited on how much you can spend.  some come with software that backup your data,   once YOU tell it what to backup.   some do this just by touching a button on the front of the bay.

tape backup  


raid backup   expensive,  can be hard to setup.   but very effective

i used one of these  a couple weeks back to backup a buncho info for a friend of mine.  works great,  backup automatiically to a raid 5 enclosure

raid 5 is what you want. also, keep in mind raid is not a backup. what you do to the filesystem simultaneously happens  on all drives. there is no readily available second copy of a file on any of the "other" drives if you accidently delete it. the computer sees them as a single device.



discipline, regular backups, and off site storage are essential for a strategy. the concepts are siimple, but so many people have trouble actually implementing them.

wow, I think everything on both of my current hard drives would fit on 100gb

maybe the network storage is overkill for me?

It really depends on what your needs are and what you want to protect against.

RAID will help protect you from hard drive failure. It will not prevent corrupted files, virus damage, deletion.

Backing up to a USB or network drive is another good method for backups. Keeping files on a storage device your can take offline (unplug) helps prevent unauthorized access or corruption due to viruses etc. This is also a cheap method. However, if you keep the backup device at the same place your computer is you risk physical destruction in fire, flood, etc.

There are some internet services that backup data over your internet connection. Some allow you to install a program on your computer that silently runs in the background and slowly transfers files to their storage vaults. These all have varying degrees of service and storage capacity. But they are nice in that your files are stored off site on systems that likely have hardware backups, redundant systems, and differing geographic locations. These services also frequently offer revision control so if you make changes to a document and later want to undo those changes you can download an older copy of the document. The downside is you are trusting another company with your data. Is it encrypted? Can hackers or the government access your files? All in all these are probably a good bet if you want something cheap and easy.

-Foxxz

what about having two usb external hard drives.  and then rotate them out.  keep one hooked up and back up your stuff every day, and then every couple of weeks (or whatever) rotate it out with the one kept off site.

any obvious holes in that idea, other than cost I guess.

Quoted: what about having two usb external hard drives.  and then rotate them out.  keep one hooked up and back up your stuff every day, and then every couple of weeks (or whatever) rotate it out with the one kept off site. any obvious holes in that idea, other than cost I guess.

How many computers are you backing up?

How much data do you really need to backup?

How often are you going to backup?

Answer those for me and I'll give you a plan of how you can do it.

-d

Drobo

Simplest thing to use if you have XP Pro, if NT Backup. Free backup software, works good for home use. XP Home has it, but it isn't installed by default. You can schedule it with the scheduler built into the Win OS's. Mind you, this is for small stuff at home.

-d

I've been using the mozy.com service fairly succesfully.

Cheap, unlimited storage, seems to work well. Restores are a tad bit slow but it basically requires no effort on my part to back the data up and get it out of my house...

I use a self booting Windows XP cd with Ghost on it, back up to an external USB drive.  My whole hard drive can go tits up and all I have to do is buy a new hard drive, restore the ghost image and I'm back in business