Server 2003 Backup

[davenportkurt]

All,

I have a file server running Windows Server 2003. I have installed a PCIe USB 3.0 card and purchased (2) 2 TB Seagate external drives (also USB 3.0).

I tried using NTBackup for just copying files (500GB) but it was going to take forever and was interrupting work.

Would Xcopy or Robocopy be better/faster? What would be a good option without purchasing expensive backup software?

 

[imagoon]

Make sure your hardware is set up correctly. NTbackup may not be the best backup solution but it is more than capable of maxing out a gigabit network so disk to disk it should be fine. Without knowing the exact specs on those disks, for easy math of 50MB/s write speeds you would be looking at 170minutes or about 3 hours raw, add in some over head and I would expect a 3-4 hour backup easy. Also xcopy is typically slower, robocopy about 'even' with ntbackup. Also remember NTbackup is backing up some stuff that xcopy and robocopy can't, such as the system states, security descriptors and metadata. On a server these parts are important also or you will find yourself building/configuring your server from scratch even if you have a snap of your data.

edit:

This isn't the storage forum so you might get better answers there.

 

[davenportkurt]

Thanks ... I am going to try posting it over there.