Is an external HDD the only good method of personal backup?

[Special K]

I have a script that calls rsync and backs up all of my important stuff to my school's fileserver. I use task scheduler to have the script run every day at about 5 am or so. For redundancy I have 2x250 GB HDs in a RAID 1 array.

I don't know what I will do once I graduate and lose access to my school's filesever though.

 

[boyRacer]

Originally posted by: Special K
I have a script that calls rsync and backs up all of my important stuff to my school's fileserver. I use task scheduler to have the script run every day at about 5 am or so. For redundancy I have 2x250 GB HDs in a RAID 1 array.

I don't know what I will do once I graduate and lose access to my school's filesever though.

Don't graduate.

 

[lozina]

USe GMail. It's simple to send yourself emails and it's free. couple of gigs mailbox space is enough for important documents.

 

[loup garou]

If you want to pay for a service, there are lots of online backup services.

 

[randomlinh]

Originally posted by: archcommus
My data is important, some of it moreso than other parts, but I want all of it backed up regardless. For my personal files there is literally no practicality to using DVDs. Once I burn it, the contents are set in stone, and months from now, I may very well have a very different array of documents than I do now. Thus that DVD will be useless to me. IMO, a backup needs to be an exact reflection of my current documents and not archives of stuff I no longer even have or use. The only way I see to make a 100% up-to-date backup daily is to use an external drive.

EDIT: And IF, and only if, a UPS will 100% prevent damage due to surge, then an internal backup drive would be sufficient and I wouldn't see an external really being necessary at all.

the point of a short archive for me is more of a "oh crap, that document i deleted last week... i actually needed it." hasn't happened *knock on wood*.

however, very few things are 100%.. and even if a UPS were, I would not have my backup in the same machine. Hell, I really don't want it in the same house.. but a secure remote backup option.. heh, isn't quite economical for me

 

[DeeKnow]

at current prices, CDRs are essentially free... what is so hard about backing up all your data files to CDR and tossing it in the filing cabinet?

 

[archcommus]

Wow I think some people here are really missing a lot of the points I made in the OP.

The goal is to find the best EASY and CONVENIENT method of backing up ALL data daily, without taking an hour to do it. Do you realize that, by burning CDs or DVDs, you would have to burn ALL of your documents every single day, even if 90% of it is exactly identical to the last time you backed it up? How is that an easy way to back up at all? The ONLY purpose of optical media for backup is for things that are huge and never change - games, movies, etc., as someone else already mentioned.

Gmail? Either you don't understand what kind of backup I'm talking about, or you're kidding. I can't figure it out. Sending myself 10 MB archives to back up 20 GB of data? Umm...no.

A fileserver in a remote location does sound VERY nice, but I just can't see swallowing $20+/month when there are plenty of good local options. Afraid of some catastrophe occuring at home? Just use two external drives and keep one in the car or something.

So optical = no. Paying for a service is nice but also = no. As stated in my OP, external drive seems to be the best option.

For those of you who use optical, allow me to ask, how much of your data do you back up? How often do you do it? How long does it take you? I see no practicality to a method of backup that requires a) relying on CDs, b) does not allow you to change contents, and c) effectively creates "archives" over time instead of a nice exact mirror of your current data.

I really don't see much of a need for redundancy, either. Even in that case, an external is still necessary.

 

[PlatinumGold]

Originally posted by: archcommus
Good as in, can be used to back up data daily and safely.

DVD-Rs cannot be used to back up daily, unless you have an unlimited supply of discs.
DVD-RWs can be changed daily but are not nearly as convenient to alter as the contents of an HDD are.
Tape is not practical for personal use.
Any internal backup (RAID, or just a second drive without an array, etc.) is susceptible to damage due to power failures or surges.

So what else besides an external drive allows for convenient daily backups that are completely safe?

Iomega REV drives. best backup.

35/90 gb media. drive is much faster than any cd/dvd writers or tape (faster than the old iomega zips) and media is a bit cheaper than HD's.

 

[FoBoT]

network share on a server

 

[Vegito]

Originally posted by: archcommus

Tape is not practical for personal use.

Why ? I have a dlt vs80, drive is cheap.

 

[biostud]

what about RAID1 on a UPS powered computer, wouldn't that prevent electrical failures?

 

[archcommus]

Originally posted by: Vegito

Originally posted by: archcommus

Tape is not practical for personal use.

Why ? I have a dlt vs80, drive is cheap.

Thought it was overly expensive, and besides how is it more practical than an external drive?

Originally posted by: biostud
what about RAID1 on a UPS powered computer, wouldn't that prevent electrical failures?

Not 100% though. What if the UPS fails? You wouldn't know if it does its job well or not until a surge or whatever actually happens.

External drive not plugged in = no chance of getting hit by a surge.

 

[bhanson]

Originally posted by: archcommus

Originally posted by: Bigsm00th
use RAID1, get a UPS, and make a backup of the raid array on an external drive. problem solved.

What's the point of the RAID array when you need to have an external backup anyway? One backup is enough, because if one of the two drives fail (main one or backup), you can just make a temporary copy elsewhere (say to my laptop) to continue to have two good copies until you can replace the drive.

A RAID array is NOT a substitute for a backup solution. However your ?one external drive? method is slightly flawed.

What happens if a file becomes corrupt on your main computer, and then you copy it over to your backup solution? That's right, you're screwed. This is why it is important to have multiple copies of your data, with complete copies at regular intervals.

For you I would suggest keeping your external hard drive as your primary source of backup, but once a week burn two copies of the entire archive to DVDs. Leave one at your house and take the other to a friends house or at work.

This way you've covered your rear end in most situations, and it's not much more difficult, nor costly than what you're doing now.

 

[sdifox]

Originally posted by: archcommus
Well I am talking about personal use so talk of servers and such is rather pointless. But yes, let's assume it's data that is definitely important to you, that you want backed up once per day. No method involving discs would be easier than using an HDD. And how is an external safer than an internal? Well that's rather obvious, it's not hooked up to power so it's not susceptible to damage due to surges, etc., unless it happens WHILE you're backing up.

If your data is not as important as work data, it does not need backup. Just burn a CD or DVD a day. You can use RW if you think R is too expensive. I sure hope you got good surge protection for your equipment all the time.

 

[archcommus]

Originally posted by: sdifox

Originally posted by: archcommus
Well I am talking about personal use so talk of servers and such is rather pointless. But yes, let's assume it's data that is definitely important to you, that you want backed up once per day. No method involving discs would be easier than using an HDD. And how is an external safer than an internal? Well that's rather obvious, it's not hooked up to power so it's not susceptible to damage due to surges, etc., unless it happens WHILE you're backing up.

If your data is not as important as work data, it does not need backup. Just burn a CD or DVD a day. You can use RW if you think R is too expensive. I sure hope you got good surge protection for your equipment all the time.

Read the thread....please.

DVD is stupid. That would require burning 5 discs daily. What a complete waste of discs and time.

 

[Rubycon]

Originally posted by: bhanson

Originally posted by: archcommus

Originally posted by: Bigsm00th
use RAID1, get a UPS, and make a backup of the raid array on an external drive. problem solved.

What's the point of the RAID array when you need to have an external backup anyway? One backup is enough, because if one of the two drives fail (main one or backup), you can just make a temporary copy elsewhere (say to my laptop) to continue to have two good copies until you can replace the drive.

A RAID array is NOT a substitute for a backup solution. However your ?one external drive? method is slightly flawed.

What happens if a file becomes corrupt on your main computer, and then you copy it over to your backup solution? That's right, you're screwed. This is why it is important to have multiple copies of your data, with complete copies at regular intervals.

For you I would suggest keeping your external hard drive as your primary source of backup, but once a week burn two copies of the entire archive to DVDs. Leave one at your house and take the other to a friends house or at work.

This way you've covered your rear end in most situations, and it's not much more difficult, nor costly than what you're doing now.

Use Veritas 10 to back up every night to big hard disk, SAN, etc that has at least SEVEN times the capacity of your backup selection list. Set OW protection flag to seven days with append allowed. What this will do is give a true week's worth of backups always available. This is great when someone deletes a file on Wed and calls MIS Friday afternoon requesting a restore. The backup operator goes back to Tuesday night's backup and restores the file.

Hard drive 1:1 is fine if you're ok with having only a day's worth of backups. Very rarely does anyone have more than a few GB at MOST of truly important stuff they cannot lose.

 

[PlatinumGold]

Originally posted by: archcommus

Originally posted by: sdifox

Originally posted by: archcommus
Well I am talking about personal use so talk of servers and such is rather pointless. But yes, let's assume it's data that is definitely important to you, that you want backed up once per day. No method involving discs would be easier than using an HDD. And how is an external safer than an internal? Well that's rather obvious, it's not hooked up to power so it's not susceptible to damage due to surges, etc., unless it happens WHILE you're backing up.

If your data is not as important as work data, it does not need backup. Just burn a CD or DVD a day. You can use RW if you think R is too expensive. I sure hope you got good surge protection for your equipment all the time.

Read the thread....please.

DVD is stupid. That would require burning 5 discs daily. What a complete waste of discs and time.

and you completely ignore all references to the iomega rev because of?

 

[Steve]

I have an Onstream ADR 30GB tape drive (SCSI), five tapes, two more coming in the mail, all for under $100. All in the past ~two weeks from eBay.

 

[Philippine Mango]

Originally posted by: BobDaMenkey
Tapes are expensive initially, but a decent value after that. Just back it up at the end of the day.

Although the ease of use of an external HDD to back stuff up is really nice. I have my dad using one to back up his work computer at like 2am after the virus scan at midnight.

Yea but tapes are notoriously unreliable and you don't know if the data on there is ok or not. Plus they're EXTREMELY SLOW!

 

[Philippine Mango]

Originally posted by: bhanson

Originally posted by: archcommus

Originally posted by: Bigsm00th
use RAID1, get a UPS, and make a backup of the raid array on an external drive. problem solved.

What's the point of the RAID array when you need to have an external backup anyway? One backup is enough, because if one of the two drives fail (main one or backup), you can just make a temporary copy elsewhere (say to my laptop) to continue to have two good copies until you can replace the drive.

A RAID array is NOT a substitute for a backup solution. However your ?one external drive? method is slightly flawed.

What happens if a file becomes corrupt on your main computer, and then you copy it over to your backup solution? That's right, you're screwed. This is why it is important to have multiple copies of your data, with complete copies at regular intervals.

For you I would suggest keeping your external hard drive as your primary source of backup, but once a week burn two copies of the entire archive to DVDs. Leave one at your house and take the other to a friends house or at work.

This way you've covered your rear end in most situations, and it's not much more difficult, nor costly than what you're doing now.

Thankyou!

 

[loup garou]

Originally posted by: PlatinumGold

Originally posted by: archcommus

Originally posted by: sdifox

Originally posted by: archcommus
Well I am talking about personal use so talk of servers and such is rather pointless. But yes, let's assume it's data that is definitely important to you, that you want backed up once per day. No method involving discs would be easier than using an HDD. And how is an external safer than an internal? Well that's rather obvious, it's not hooked up to power so it's not susceptible to damage due to surges, etc., unless it happens WHILE you're backing up.

If your data is not as important as work data, it does not need backup. Just burn a CD or DVD a day. You can use RW if you think R is too expensive. I sure hope you got good surge protection for your equipment all the time.

Read the thread....please.

DVD is stupid. That would require burning 5 discs daily. What a complete waste of discs and time.

and you completely ignore all references to the iomega rev because of?

Technically, Rev drives are just external HDs too...the heads are just separated from the platters. I like em though, best thing Iomega's made in a long time. Anyone know if they work with newer versions of Backup Exec?

 

[sdifox]

Originally posted by: archcommus

Originally posted by: sdifox

If your data is not as important as work data, it does not need backup. Just burn a CD or DVD a day. You can use RW if you think R is too expensive. I sure hope you got good surge protection for your equipment all the time.

Read the thread....please.

DVD is stupid. That would require burning 5 discs daily. What a complete waste of discs and time.

You need a backup software, coupled with your choice of storage device, and do incremental backup everyday and then complete on the weekend.

Backup software can do incremental, and put out to whatever device you have to backup with. So DVDs are not as dumb as you think, since you will not be burning 5 a day.

Use erasable media if you don't care about archival. I recommend archival anyway since you could lose your up to date document and have to go to an older backup and reapply whatever changes you have.

But if you want real time, looks to me RAID is your best choice. Get a RAID 50 and you are set. Easierst thing.

 

[PlatinumGold]

Originally posted by: loup garou

Originally posted by: PlatinumGold

Originally posted by: archcommus

Originally posted by: sdifox

Originally posted by: archcommus
Well I am talking about personal use so talk of servers and such is rather pointless. But yes, let's assume it's data that is definitely important to you, that you want backed up once per day. No method involving discs would be easier than using an HDD. And how is an external safer than an internal? Well that's rather obvious, it's not hooked up to power so it's not susceptible to damage due to surges, etc., unless it happens WHILE you're backing up.

If your data is not as important as work data, it does not need backup. Just burn a CD or DVD a day. You can use RW if you think R is too expensive. I sure hope you got good surge protection for your equipment all the time.

Read the thread....please.

DVD is stupid. That would require burning 5 discs daily. What a complete waste of discs and time.

and you completely ignore all references to the iomega rev because of?

Technically, Rev drives are just external HDs too...the heads are just separated from the platters. I like em though, best thing Iomega's made in a long time. Anyone know if they work with newer versions of Backup Exec?

but you can have multiple media and hence have multiple copies of the backup in different places.

a single hd is just that.

that's like saying Zip drives are just external hd's. not accurate. the fact that it has removable media is significant.

as for me, instead of any backup software, i use xcopy command, batch it, then schedule it in windows scheduler. it's been working for me.

 

[loup garou]

Originally posted by: PlatinumGold

Originally posted by: loup garou

Originally posted by: PlatinumGold

Originally posted by: archcommus

Originally posted by: sdifox

Originally posted by: archcommus
Well I am talking about personal use so talk of servers and such is rather pointless. But yes, let's assume it's data that is definitely important to you, that you want backed up once per day. No method involving discs would be easier than using an HDD. And how is an external safer than an internal? Well that's rather obvious, it's not hooked up to power so it's not susceptible to damage due to surges, etc., unless it happens WHILE you're backing up.

If your data is not as important as work data, it does not need backup. Just burn a CD or DVD a day. You can use RW if you think R is too expensive. I sure hope you got good surge protection for your equipment all the time.

Read the thread....please.

DVD is stupid. That would require burning 5 discs daily. What a complete waste of discs and time.

and you completely ignore all references to the iomega rev because of?

Technically, Rev drives are just external HDs too...the heads are just separated from the platters. I like em though, best thing Iomega's made in a long time. Anyone know if they work with newer versions of Backup Exec?

but you can have multiple media and hence have multiple copies of the backup in different places.

a single hd is just that.

that's like saying Zip drives are just external hd's. not accurate. the fact that it has removable media is significant.

as for me, instead of any backup software, i use xcopy command, batch it, then schedule it in windows scheduler. it's been working for me.

I meant in terms of technology. Anyways, you can purchase multiple external HDs to the same effect. Don't get me wrong, I love Rev drives, but there's nothing particularly special about them. The "disks" are a bit more rugged than an external HD though.

 

[jjessico]

Pick up a cheap, used SCSI card off FS/T. Then buy a remanufactured/refurbished Dell DLT Tape and some DLT tapes off Ebay. They hold 40GB a pop, they are fast, and reliable as hell.

You'd probably be invested less than $450 total and I would (and do) feel more comfortable with that solution than a backup HD.