Home Backup System

[birthdaymonkey]

I picked up two WD EARS 2 TB drives a couple weeks ago (before hard drive prices skyrocketed thankfully), bringing me up to a total of five 2TB drives and one 1.5TB drive.

My purpose in doing this is to set up an automated backup of all my data across two computers. All the drives that I'm using are 5400 rpm "green" drives (in case that matters).

This is the system as envision it being set up hardware wise:

HTPC (i5 2500k + P8P67-M Pro, 4GB): 2xWD 2TB; 60GB SSD for OS/programs. Win7 HP 64.

This case only has enough room for the two drives and SSD. It's also going to be the place where most of my data is downloaded/ripped and stored primarily. It has a wired connection to my router.

Main PC (i5 750 + P7P55-D, 8GB): 1xWD 1.5TB, 2xSamsung F4 2TB, 1xHitachi 5K3000 2TB, 50GB SSD for OS/programs, 256GB SSD for games. Win7 HP 64.

This is my primary gaming/office work machine. I also plan to have it house the backup drives. Unfortunately, it's connected by a wireless connection, which is reasonably strong (I can get ~7MB/sec copying files to my HTPC) but obviously not ideal... With the layout of my apartment as it is, I have no option of wiring up this computer.

So my plan is to have the WD drives as "originals" and the Samsung/Hitachi drives as backups. Once everything's set up as I want it on the WDs, I'm planning to copy each one directly (using a USB eSATA enclosure) to a backup drive. Since one of the WDs is only 1.5TB, that should give me some extra space on one of the 2TB backup drives, which I'll use to hold a copy of all files on my games SSD and Windows Backup images of my boot SSDs. Everything is shared via homegroup shares.

Finally my question(s):

1. What backup software can I use to automatically check for new files/changes and run a backup routine on a ~weekly basis? I want the backup files to be accessible as normal files, not stored in a backup container. Free would be optimal, but I don't mind paying for great software.

2. Does anyone see any problems with my proposed setup? I know it's vulnerable to theft/lightning/fire as all the machines are in the same apartment, but at least I should be protected from drive failure. I have online backup for the really really important stuff.

I'm planning to build a WHS or FreeNAS box eventually, but I won't be able to get GF approval for this till after Christmas (or possibly later). I need something that will do the job in the mean time and transition to a standalone backup server eventually.

Thank you for reading this far!!

 

[RhoXS]

This is what I do:

First, my approach to backing up my computer is to always have a reasonably recent (2 weeks or so) true plug and play clone on the shelf. If, worst case, my drive suddenly fails catastrophically, all I need to do is replace it with the latest clone. On at least two occassions over the years this approach has made recovering from an otherwise painful experience an almost non-event. This does not allow for a daily update as some other approaches do with incremental backups but it is much simpler.

Second, although others disagree with me, I do not at all like the backup applications that must be installed under Windows. I see these mostly bloated software packages as taking up unnecessary and precious SSD space and they load crap that starts in the background every time the computer is booted. I much prefer stand alone cloning apps that boot off a floppy, CD, or USB memory device. The two I use are the old DOS based Ghost 2003 and a current but excellent free EASEUS product called DiskCopy.

Ghost 2003 is excellent and was my app of choice until recently when I encrypted my drives. For some reason, a Ghost 2003 clone of an encrypted drive (I use Truecrypt) will not accept the password. If the drive is not encrypted, Ghost will work fine with one minor exception. W7 systems require the clone to be repaired using a W7 repair disk but this is a quick an easy task and not really necessary if the drive is only intended to be used if a disaster takes place. If the destination drive is larger than the source drive, Ghost has the big advantage of automatically utilizing the entire larger drive.

Now that I have encrypted my drives, Ghost will not work so I use an excellent free EASEUS product called DiskCopy. It is downloaded as an iso file so it is burned to a bootable CD or USB memory device. It makes true plug and play clones and is not bothered by either encryption or W7 as the older Ghost product is. It also has a much refined mouse driven GUI interface as compared to Ghosts relatively crude but effective DOS based system. However, if the destination drive is larger than the source drive, EASEUS DiskCopy will not utilize any of additional space on the larger destination drive. However, this is easily fixed with another free EASEUS product called Partition Manager. As with Ghost, if the destination drive is just intended to sit on a shelf, this does not matter.

I installed a removable drive drawer made by Star Tech (available from Newegg) and bought an extra drive caddy so I have two backup drives that I alternate. When I am ready to make a backup clone, I simply shut the machine down, insert and lock in the appropriate caddy, and boot up off a USB memory device.

One practice I highly recommend is to always use a destination drive of a different capacity than the source drive. No matter what software you use, the catastrophic risk always exists to inadvertently confuse the source and destination drives when making a clone. Obviously, if this occurs, the source drive will be overwritten by the older clone. To avoid this, I always use destination drives of a different capacity so they are clearly identifiable when specifying which is the source drive and which is the destination drive. For example, my C: drive is a 120 GB SSD. The drives I maintain as cloned backups are 250 GB or 320 GB so there is no question which is which.

Also, I found that there is no problem cloning a SSD to an HDD. This is also a way of dramatically comparing how incredibly much faster the SSDs are.

I hope this helps.

 

[birthdaymonkey]

Thanks for your input, RhoXS. I hadn't thought of doing it that way. I was imagining all the backup drives being live on the network in my work computer and regularly updated automatically, but your suggestion definitely has some advantages. If I keep my backup drives offline, then my data would be OK in the event of power surge or catastrophic hardware failure, it could be hidden in a safe place too, or transported elsewhere in the event of emergency... also fewer drives spinning means less power use and noise (I'm particularly sensitive to the hum of spinning disks). The disadvantage would be that I'd have to manually plug in the drives on a regular basis and run the copy software, which would require some discipline.

I couldn't do it exactly the way you describe, as my HTPC is in an SFF case and wouldn't allow a hotswap drive bay. I'd have to get some kind of eSATA (fast) or USB (slow) docking station... something not too expensive, as I don't have much of a budget right now. (Suggestions??)

Also, as I'm dealing with 4 TB of data (my current total...expandable to 6TB), I'd like to have software that would allow me to just update files that have been changed rather than always re-imaging the drives.

EDIT: I guess I'd want something like this: http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product...82E16817153071

Although I'd want something reliable of course. There seem to be quite a few complaints about flaky connectivity/defective hardware in the customer reviews. Still it's got 4 eggs over 487 reviews...

 

[RhoXS]

The so called "cloud" is becoming very popular and some seem to think we all eventually will be forced in that direction. I am sure there are applications for which the Cloud makes sense and, due to the size of your data, you may have no choice. I am totally unable to make that leap (yet). Using the Cloud means, at least how I understand it, I am entrusting my data to someone else to store for me. What happens if they just just simply go out of business or their storage devices get corrupted? Too many times you read about supposedly redundant fail safe systems (like Blackberry maybe?) crashing.

The cloning software I referenced above is not at all fast but does work well. In any case, an eSATA port I think is just a convenient external SATA connection so it should be indistinguishable, I think, from an internal drive.

4 to 6 Tb of data is well beyond anything I know how to deal with. I only worry about the contents of my local disk drives; the primary C: drive is 120 GB and my secondary data drive is 750 GB so I don't know what to suggest.

Cloning is most useful for a bootable drive with a system (e.g W7) on it but obviously can be conveniently used for any drive, even a drive with only data. However, if all you are concerned about is data, you only need to copy the files to the backup location.

 

[birthdaymonkey]

I think I actually have too much data for cloud storage. I do have 2GB worth of personal files (documents mostly) stored online, but to store my whole 4TB+ media library with an online backup company would be insanely expensive... and slow, even with my 30mbit internet connection. That's why I'm looking for a home storage scheme to backup my important (but non-critical) data.

The more I think about it, I think an external eSATA dock that I plug my drives into and backup every week or two is the best solution. I could probably even just use Teracopy and tell it to skip files that don't need to be updated, obviating the need for special backup SW. And I'll keep up-to-date images of my boot drives (only 60GB each) that can be restored through the Windows Backup utility on one of the 2TB backup drives too. In the event of SSD failure, I'd just plug in the dock and restore using a Windows boot disk to a new drive. In the event of HDD failure, I just swap in the most recent backup and RMA the bad drive.

 

[Ferzerp]

Just use windows home server...

 

[trungma]

Try Synctoy by Microsoft. It's free and can synchronise folders and files. Can also mirror files if needed. I'm not sure if it has a scheduler.

 

[Elixer]

If you have very important files, it is best to do multiple levels of backup for those.
For other stuff, a weekly / monthly (depending on how important data is) image/clone of the drive is good practice if you want to get online again ASAP.
I guess it also depends on how much redundancy you want (and how paranoid you can get), and if one HD/SSD fails, and you swap to the backup, that could also fail at any point, so you should make new backups of your backup.

 

[jobz]

I keep one backup hd plugged in, and use cobian to run incremental backup daily/weekly.

Then every month or two, I backup to a 2nd hd. This is like a backup of your backup, as Elixer said. Remember backup hd is still a hd, it will stop working, it's question of when, not if. Advantage is you can take this hd off-site in case something happens to your home.

Last but not least, I use acronis true image to backup windows partition. I do that every couple of months, or sooner if I made big changes to windows.