Important backup solution needed

[tristan184]

This is my first post on this forum. I have to solve this problem :

My system has one Raptor 74 Gb on which I have 2 OS?s in dual boot and one Seagate 120 Gb on which I have programs and various temporary files. This temporary files (old 33Rpm discs, VHS digitally converted, home movies, photos are transferred into DVD?s. You can easily understand how important are for me those DVDs. The problem is that now they are becoming too many (more than 20 with a total of 100Gb growing) and organizing my collection is becoming complicated; remembering where the files are etc. Moreover I would like to a faster solution like Hard disks.
I am thinking about substituting my Seagate with a bigger one and buying an external har disk where I will backup the content of the internal Hard disk.(with the side effect to remember what to backup every time).

What solution would you suggest me ? Very important for me is not to lose my files for any hardware failure. Could I make a Raid 1 with 2 storage disks and keep the raptor with the OS?s like it is now ?(not raid). Or I cold install 2 storage disks and backup twice my files ?
Hope somebody can give me a smart solution.

 

[Woodie]

You mention a few options...here's some thoughts.
1. Backup is not the same as redundancy. Backups can carry you through hard drive failures, virus incidents, file corruption, full system destruction. That's what your DVD's provide.
2. Redundancy is where you protect your data from a HD failure.

so, for #1: DVDs or copying files to an external drive are useful. If you have somewhere else you can keep your backups (even if only once a month) then do that. (Storing a copy at your office is great if your house burns down!). DVDs are obviously getting way too small. The external USB2 or firewire drive makes a lot of sense here. Xcopy or zip your data to the external drive at certain intervals, and then store the drive somewhere else. It's often helpful to keep multiple "generations" of backups. Ie, Backup5Jan2005.zip and Backup12Jan2005.zip may have the same files in it...but if one got corrupted on Jan10th, and you didn't notice, you could go back to the earlier set, and restore it from there.

#2: External drive will help, but only to the last time you backed up. RAID is the preferred solution for this. Consumer level raid would be either PATA or SATA...called RAID 1 (aka Mirroring). All your data is duplicated to the second drive at the time it is written to disk. Great for immediate redundancy (there's no backup to run)...but terrible if there's a virus or file corruption, as it dutifylly overwrites your good copy with the corrupted one. ACCKK!! That's why you need both.
So, 2 matched drives, configured in RAID 1 as your data partition. A hardware RAID solution is preferable, as it *should* survive a new OS install on your OS drive. Windows XP (software) RAID will NOT survive a rebuild of the OS. Leave your boot drives alone...they sound FAST and stable.

Topics to research: Setting up RAID 1 on YOUR motherboard, and storage drives.
Backup software (freeware). Backup concepts: Full Backups, Incremental backups, etc. Backup compression options with your hardware/os.

Our backup cycle (at work): Full backup every 7 days, Incremental every night, rotate the backup storage (tapes) every week. So, we can go back in time up to 21 days.

 

[nineball9]

Woody: That is perhaps the most comprehensive, informative and well composed post I have read on the AnandTech forums!

(I worked as a mainframe sysprog/ sr. systems analyst for 15+ years. Our offsite rotation was 6 weeks for general backups, 1 year for full monthly backups, 7 years for financial data, and in some instances, permanent offsite archival. The employee who transported the tapes to/from our offsite vault had a habit of taking the wrong tapes; I finally had to implement a system whereby he could instantly print an listing of offsite tapes at the offsite vault site and do an inventory as well as a list of tapes to take and return.)

Tristan: be aware that no media has an infinite shelf life. Recordable optical media is not a failsafe method of archival and I doubt you want to digitize all your LP's again! For irreplaceable items such as photos, videos, and music for which you no longer have the originals, you may wish to consider creating multiple archival copies and to keep at least one copy far from your home.

As Woody noted, external drives are fast and convenient. However you probably do not want to keep using the same drive repeatedly for all your backed up data; if the drive fails, your home burns down, or your files are destroyed by malware or by some other catastrophic event, then your entire backup/archival methodology has failed.

If you have the bandwidth and the financial resources, archival on 3rd party servers is an option. There are even companies that provide guaranteed archival though these are generally way beyond the financial resources and requirements of a home user! Tape media has a greater capacity than optical media and is equally portable but the drives and tapes are expensive and are slow to operate.

Developing a full backup and archival strategy depends on your requirements (what is the impact of losing data), financial resources (how much are you willing to devote to saving data), and work ethic (how much time and how often are you willing to spend creating/managing backups). For a large company or even a small one, a catastrophic data loss could result in financial ruin; companies like IBM backup terabytes of data every day with the hope that they will never need it. The average home user can live with a less comprehensive strategy.

Good luck!