Suggestion for a backup device...

[mitchelt]

Hi!

I develop and maintain a bunch of web sites for my clients, and was wondering what you thought the best solution would be for a backup device.

Things to consider:

- Some sites are updated 1-2 times a week
- Some sites are rarely updated
- I currently maintain 22 web sites

Whichever backup device I choose, I would like to do an incremental backup, so I dont have to constantly backup the whole directory...if that makes sense?

Would it be a good idea to use an indivdual rewritable cd for each web site, and possibly have 2 cd's for each web site as a backup?

Any comments would be appreciated! I am playing with fire for not having thought about this years ago, I've been VERY fortunate with not losing/crashing a hard drive.

Thanks.

Mitch

 

[LED]

I try and Ghost (copy) my drives weekly and it doesn't take much time and another Hard Drive...

 

[mitchelt]

Yes, but I want to avoid using a hard drive as the backup device.

 

[mitchelt]

bump...anyone?

Mitch

 

[Lord Evermore]

How much data are you talking about? If there's a large amount of data for the initial backup but not much ever changes, then CD's would be fine once you get past the initial large amount of time needed to swap discs for the first backup, especially if the amount of data that changes is small enough that you could do multiple backups onto one disc and not need to change it often.

If there will always be several discs worth of changed data, then CD's can get to be an annoyance.

Hard drives are actually a good backup medium, if you use them right, and they're cheap enough now to not be terribly expensive compared to other media. CD's of course are cheapest (and there's really no reason to use CDRW, since for one thing they're slower than CDR's if you have a good burner, and they're more expensive).

I've yet to find a good backup application that works with CD's.

The best solution I've found is to use a hard drive (5400 RPM, cheap but good brand) in a firewire enclosure. Tape drive is a reliable, proven backup system, but it's pretty expensive. You can do a firewire hard drive setup for under 200 dollars, with pretty fast backup speeds.

If you prefer CD's, I'd suggest using a backup app that can write to a file (assuming you have enough disc space), then burn the file to a disc. If you can, make two copies of the disc since that means more reliability (or use two burners to make two copies at the same time, with Nero for instance).

Again depending on how much data is being backed up, it may be a waste to use a single disc for each site. If you lose the drive, you'll need to restore them all anyway, but if a client blows their own files away, it might be easier to locate the last backup if they each use individual discs.

 

[Rimnet]

very obvious, you use a tape drive for this kind of situation. expensive, but really the only way to turn. You COULD get a DVD writer, but tape drives would be a better choice IMO.

 

[HalfCrazy]

I got a WD 20gig hdd setup as a hot-swap able drive. Which I use to store some of my backup file's and plus a few downloads on. Plus make it more easy to transfer the really big files.

 

[mitchelt]

Thank you all for your suggestions.

If I backed up everything for my clients, I would be at 470Meg for everything.

Perhaps an external hard drive would work, I would go with USB 2.0 instead of Firewire, seeing that my new system will have the newer USB and I don't want to spend anymore money on a Firewire card.

Mitch

 

[Lord Evermore]

Tape drives are not the "obvious" solution anymore. I spent a long time trying to determine what would be best for me, and an external hard drive (or a hard drive in a rack 5.25" bay with hot swap, or even better, a rack mounted in an external enclosure so you can use multiple drives) is the cheapest and most reliable, and also quite fast.

Tape is pretty slow, and gets expensive to buy multiple tapes if you don't want to keep overwriting the same one or appending to it, not to mention the high cost of the drives. I can back up my entire 25GB system to the drive at 6MBps with compression, whereas tape drives generally top out at 2MBps maximum with compression (1MBps actual data throughput without compression, whereas my backups can run 10MBps or faster actual throughput if I don't use compression).

CD's are as reliable or moreso than a tape, if you put them into a case and store them in a safe, dark place. And even a fast CD is faster to burn than a tape drive.

USB2.0 is also a good choice for the external interface, since it will be more available soon. Just make sure you don't go buy a "USB2.0 hard drive". Get an external enclosure separately, and a hard drive (retail or OEM). You get ripped off buying the already assembled stuff. USB2.0 is apparently a good rival against even drives on ATA66 from one test I saw.

A hard drive may be overkill in this case though. Burning two copies of a CD might be a better choice, if you have a burner already. It's hard to find anything smaller than a 20GB hard drive, so it's kind of wasting space unless you're going to be backing up that same amount of data every time, and always keeping previous backups.

 

[mitchelt]

It would be nice to save multiple backups by date.

At about 400meg a backup I could get 50 or so backups on a 20Gig drive.

"external enclosure separately"...where do I find one of those, and would that include all of the internal connections to make it a USB drive?

Thanks!

Mitch

 

[Lord Evermore]

Here's one

CompUSA, kind of expensive

Another

Use Google and you can find a lot of others. Although the prices for some "prebuilt" USB hard drives aren't too bad by comparison now, though you'll be hard pressed to find anything as small as 20GB prebuilt.