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Backup for External HD

G

gwrober

Golden Member
I currently just had my 250 ext. sata drive crash on me. 🙁 Lost about 100 Gigs of stuff. (still working on recovery...). I was using the drive as a briefcase between home and work.

I had been worried about how to properly back the drive up, but I never got the chance. I haven't determined the cause of the crash yet.

BUT it makes me ask, what is the best way to backup and external/portable hard drive? Leave it connected to a pc and include it in a backup schedule, I guess? I can't afford a tape drive for backups, so backing up to DVD once a month has been the standard here. Yes it's slow, but at least I get backed up!

Does Acronis allow backing up of external drives? I use it for my other pc's...if it does, I can just connect it and make sure the drive is on during my scheduled backup day...


Thoughts?
 
If you get 2 of these drives, you can mirror one to the other by using ghost.. you can either ghost to another drive or ghost to an image..

Of course if you ghost to image, you can save it at the end of each day...

ie 1 TB hdd = holds 4 250 gb images or more (compression).. Of course if your 1tb drive fails, you're sol

Get 2 external drives, ghost from one to the 2nd one daily... Takes long but better than losing data..

 
I'm planning on going to two large internal SATA's in the near future, and raid them for redundancy. We use the computers for our home business, and keep a lot of graphic files of different types stored. So speed isn't the top concern, but data security/storage is.

I thought about buying a used file server, with a tape backup, but don't have the funds. The desktop I use is currently sharing out a drive. My wife uses her laptop, and I have mine. I usually use mine to remote my desktop, as it's more powerful. I have been currently making DVD backups with acronis, but as our file stores grow, I use more and more DVD's each time. the last time I backed up the wife's laptop, it took 5 DVD's.

Which leads me to think I should back up to hard disk, but I'm worried about data retention! I did find some NAS devices that RAID, but they're kind of pricey too.
 
As you've discovered, having only a single copy of important data is a bad idea. Portable hard drives are particularly vulnerable to damage from accidental knocks.

If you have limited funds, the cheapest and easiest solution is to back data up to another hard drive. You can build or buy large external hard drives quite inexpensively. You can currently buy 750GB hard drives, and 1TB drives will be available for $400 by the end of March.

The best option for you will depend on your situation. Just remember that the BEST backup is one that's disconnected and away from where you keep your primary data.
 
Originally posted by: RebateMonger
As you've discovered, having only a single copy of important data is a bad idea. Portable hard drives are particularly vulnerable to damage from accidental knocks.

If you have limited funds, the cheapest and easiest solution is to back data up to another hard drive. You can build or buy large external hard drives quite inexpensively. You can currently buy 750GB hard drives, and 1TB drives will be available for $400 by the end of March.

The best option for you will depend on your situation. Just remember that the BEST backup is one that's disconnected and away from where you keep your primary data.
Click to expand...

I'm moving from my scsi setup to a sata setup in the near future. Somewhere in there I'll have a large capacity drive for backups. I had the 250 external for transferring files/portability, but I'll go smaller next time so I won't lose so much during the transfer...
 
I'm planning on going to two large internal SATA's in the near future, and raid them for redundancy. We use the computers for our home business, and keep a lot of graphic files of different types stored. So speed isn't the top concern, but data security/storage is.
Click to expand...

Just keep in mind that RAID does not replace backups. It only helps in the case of a single drive failing. Other things you need to worry about:

multiple drive failures (think things like your PSU or MB blowing up and taking out both drives at once)
data corruption (viruses, bad hardware, bad memory, etc.)
user error (things like deleting the wrong files, or deleting something you think you backed up but didn't)
true 'disaster' situations (home or office burns down/floods/hit by tornado/etc.)

Important data should be backed up. If quick recovery is important, look at nearline backups (like an external hard drive you could use to restore quickly to another computer.) Irreplacable data needs additional offsite backups in a relatively 'secure' location.
 
Originally posted by: Matthias99

Just keep in mind that RAID does not replace backups. It only helps in the case of a single drive failing. Other things you need to worry about:

multiple drive failures (think things like your PSU or MB blowing up and taking out both drives at once)
data corruption (viruses, bad hardware, bad memory, etc.)
user error (things like deleting the wrong files, or deleting something you think you backed up but didn't)
true 'disaster' situations (home or office burns down/floods/hit by tornado/etc.)

Important data should be backed up. If quick recovery is important, look at nearline backups (like an external hard drive you could use to restore quickly to another computer.) Irreplacable data needs additional offsite backups in a relatively 'secure' location.
Click to expand...


Good points - I had wanted to RAID for some time now, so it looks like I may have to implement a few new measures at once!

I'll go RAID.
I'll invest in Undelete. I have a trial version I can play with. We use it here at work too.
My backup system is going to have to change - I'm still reeling from the external drive loss, but I'm certain that it had a lot to do with the fact that the drive gets carried everywhere, so I probably had an offline head crash or something.

I've seen the network attached drives, I may use those for backups and file storage. But then, if I lose the drive, I lose both storage and backups....
 
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