How do you backup your hard drives?
 

Do you back them up on too tape, dvd, etc.....? When backing up my hard drives using Windows Backup the file ends up being 9gigs, I'm trying to find a solution/medium to place that file on so I can delete it after making the backup.

I use Norton Ghost. Backs up to DVDs if you need.

I image my hds with acronis image

Ghost to dvd as well as I keep one back up on an external drive
Specially since externals are so damn cheap now.

Apple Backup

another 500GB disk

I don't image.
I should

320 GB to Floppy Disks...


^^

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I have "raid 1" of two 320gb hdd. Makes data copying a little slower, but i can be sure that my data is more safe than with one disk.

Acronis True Image 10 to external drives. Works like a dream.

I have a RAID5 array as my "master" drive. One drive can fail in that without losing the data (or interrupting the continuity of my work, too much)

Remember RAID isn't a replacement for backups. I back up regularly to a second RAID0 array, and also a removable hard drive. To lose my data completely the following sequence of events would have to happen (without any replacement/rebuild in the meantime)...

- two drives in the RAID5 array fail
and
- one drive in the RAID0 array fails
and
- the external drive fails

BTW the advantage of using a hard drive is that you can do incremental backups - it will append files that have changed since your last backup. My backup file is typically 400GB and takes about 12 hours to do a full backup so the incremental option is very handy. :)

I backup my important files from time to time on dvds

i have mp3 it my hard dryve

That's a little overkill for me, that is why I would rather backup to a non-live medium like tape or dvd - and I can have months or years worths of full backups without having to worry about space. I need at least up to 6 months worth of backups because every now and then a file that you hardly use gets corrupted and if you only have backups up to a month or 3 backwards you won't be able to restore that file when you finally figure out it's bad.

But hey if it works for you thats great! :)

Whats wrong with floppies...

O and bump!

.

It may be slight overkill, but my motherboard supports everything so all it cost was the $ for the hard drives, which when you consider the importance of continuity (how much is a day or two's worth of downtime, and potential data loss going to affect you?) isn't really that much.

Now, back to you. :)

If your data backup file is only 9 gigs then why not use a HD? 500GB will store over a year's worth of full weekly backups, or you could do a full backup once per month plus incrementals every few days (or however much you feel is necessary). Even a 300GB drive would probably be sufficient for this, and it's gonna cost you like $150.

using dvd and external drives

got one external hard drive, and about to buy another. Waiting on the 1tera to drop a little more

Acronis True Image to an external HDD.

Ghost and dvds

extrenal harddrives

Mirror to external/network drives using various tools depending on what kind of backup and also backup network boxes to other drives in the box.

TrueImage is more than useful :thumbsup

I save it to ext hds and store them.

External HDs and by cloning them

with a little prayer once in awhile

I dump from the desktop and both laptops to an external Western Digital drive (as well as CDs/DvDs).

Also have two 180gb WD drives on RAID.

Camera originals are too irreplaceable to not make multiple backups for safety.

haha tape, does that still exist? I use a RAID shadowed drive, harddrives are so cheap, I also have a few externals for dvds I load up when needed and a 2257 drive incase of inspections.

That's why I'm "mildly" fanatical about my backups. I don't depend on my images to make me $$$, but there's a shitload of time and work that has been involved in creating them. Some (such as images of my daughter growing up) are priceless and cannot be recreated.

Nice to know that one day my grandkids will be throwing it all away as I'm carted off to a nursing home. :1orglaugh

I have a drive image of my hard drive with a fresh OS installed. Then I have a cron job that rsyncs contents of my work directories to a NAS. I lived thru 6 drive failures in the last 6 months and haven't lost a thing other than my time.

add a poll, ghost vs true image!

Cloning HDs...

RAID 1 (mirroring) on the home server side.

Scheduled backups via the 7zip.org with the AES encryption (+-50 GB now, and growing fast) to the external USB HDD and once per month, i'm burning the one set of the backups, to the TDK or Verbatim DVDs and storing it in the alternative location, to avoid losing data via the fire damage...

Which program do you using fot the incremental backups?

It's any free open source with the command line support?

I wonder if there's anything that can do a near realtime incremental backup: once a file on my PC is changed, closed and "untouched" for a given period, it is automatically archived. Kind of like auto save, but for every application and file on your PC.

If you dont mind using windows server 2003 it has shadow backup that does exactly that takes snapshots of your hd as often as you set it you could set it to make 3-4 snapshots a day :)

RAID 1...

you are looking for the bad technology, use proper technology...

If you need real-time backuping use the RAID 1 or RAID 5

I already use RAID, but that doesn't provide any sort of incremental journalling or "off system" functionality.

IMHO RAID is for availability, it will keep you going if a drive fails but it's not intended to be a backup. My power supply could go bonkers and fry all the drives.

Sounds like NT Backup? That's also supplied with Windows XP although it is not installed by default. One issue I've noticed is that an incremental/shadow backup sifts through every directory and saves the structure even though files haven't changed, I suspect it's because it is saving the "last accessed" data and the previous run of NTbackup modified that by traversing through. Vicious cycle, and a waste of CPU and HD space. :)

I use Nortons Ghost and back up to an external hard drive.

Never liked windows backup, shadow copy is seperate from the backup software that microsoft puts on the servers its more for in case you delete something thats important then to make backups to media you cant choose where the data is backed up windows hides it so you cant delete it by mistake :)

The only options i remember in shadow copy is how often and how much space can windows use :)

RAID 1 isn't backuping, but create backup each second is stupid, you are not in the bank, so RAID1 + daily backuping to the LAN + weekly backuping to the other location (DVDs or HDD) must be good for the all adult business...

Don't try make this backuping too complicated, it will fuck you up...

until I get an external HD I have to use dvds

Got a 500gb western digital my book here that gets back up fully every month and weekly increments.

I put it in reverse.

I put it in reverse.