Backup HDD

[corkyg]

HDD prices are getting so low, that they become the best solution for system backup.

Here's a setup I created for a client today . . . got a pair of 20 GB IBM HDDs for $97 each. To that I added a mobile rack and put one of the drives in it. It has a nifty on/off key switch. Rack cost . . . $24.

I clones her existing two drives (6.4 GB and 4.3 GB) on to one of the 20gb drives. Got it all optimized and all programs run.

Then I booted with Drive Copy 3.0 floppies and cloned the #1 20 GB drive to the #2 drive in the mobile rack mount. (External hot pluggable.)

When that was done, we turned off the #2 drive with the key switch and she booted off of #1. To test the back up drive, we turned off #1 in BIOS and booted to #2. Perfect!

A weekly re-clone with DC3.0 takes no more than 15 minutes and everything is synch'd and up to date. Any trouble . . . just switch drives.

This would also work for booting two different OS's. It also lets you be fearless in trying new things. Just reclone first and then install anything. If it mucks up the system . . . switch drives and you are right back where you were in a couple of minutes.

Beats tape, CDRW, CDR, etc. Cheaper, faster and better. Backup software is a dinosaur.

 

[Vincent]

One drawback to using removable hard drives is that they are more fragile than tapes. If you drop a mobile rack your heart will probably start pounding, whereas if you drop a tape on the floor you don't have much to worry about.

This is even more important if you regularly transport your backups off-site.

 

[samgau]

You could always use ghost, it supports multiple partitions and you can compress the image file....for example, we have 80 identical workstation, so we made a ghost image of the parent machine, burnt it to a cd and clones all the others from it, anything goes wrong, ie tampering, hacking etc, we just plop in the cd and in 10 mins we are done. At home, I have the base install of my machine ie, os, drivers and basic software ghosted to an image file that i keep on a spare HD, so i can use it in case of a major crash. Also all my data files are burnt to cd...anyway that me