What's the best way to keep data safe?

[Zoinks]

I've just had a "c0000218 {Registry File Failure}" after a reboot in Windows XP. This is a 2 month old drive. After years of never backing anything up, I think its finally time to make my stuff more secure.

So what's the best way to do it? RAID seems to be more expensive but easier. You never have to worry about anything - its all taken care of automatically. The only down side is that if windows get corrupted or you get a virus, you'll get it on both hard drives.

A second drive and a backup program running every night is probably a bit cheaper and will allow some control over what and when you backup.

Any recommendations?

 

[boomerang]

I use a second HD (third actually, as I run a RAID 0 array) and backup daily using Acronis. Very nice piece of software.

I create an image of the entire drive so I can restore completely in case of a problem.

 

[Zoinks]

So why do you think that setup is better than a mirrored RAID?

Do you have Acronis run automatically every day or do you do it manually? My windows is still screwed up - it seems one of the benefits of your setup is that if things get screwed up you have a good copy backed up. But only if you don't write over your good copy by accident.

 

[yadda]

Here is an inexpensive way to do backups. Granted this is not a full system backups. This is only for "data" type backups.

Use "Robocopy" from the Microsoft Windows 2003 resource kit and you can set up a scheduled job to copy/mirror two directories on different computers. It works out well for me.

Y

 

[islandtechengineers]

the best and safeest way to have your stuff secure is to run both a raid array and have an external backup setup. got a dvd burner, tape drive or cds?

I've got servers on a raid array with an auto (DAILY) tape backup going = but that data is VERY important.

 

[boomerang]

A mirrored array is not suitable for backups for the very reasons you spoke of in your first post. A mirrored array is protection from a HD failure.

Having said that, at my wife's office I have a RAID 1 with daily tape backup. One of the drives in the array is in a removable enclosure that gets moved to the safe every evening. The tapes go home with someone. That RAID 1 has kept her up and running twice now over a four year span. This is a small business with less than 10 employees, but her data is of course, important to the business.

As for Acronis at home here, I have 3 folders, Image1, Image2, and Image3 on my backup drive and I have three backups scheduled. [Mon., Thurs., Sat.] [Sun., Wed.] and [Tues., Fri.] to the respective folders. It will always first delete the previous backup, so I always have three full backups on hand. You have various levels of compression to choose from so you have to do a little science on the drive capacity you will need.

You can schedule day and time backups, shutdown backups, network backups and others I can't recall. Most importantly to me, it is the only software I have tried that WILL restore to a SATA array. They all did the image, but would not successfully restore.

You can download a demo version of the software that is totally crippled but will allow you to check out the GUI. You have to register which I don't care for. But in about 4 weeks, they emailed me with a discount offer on a purchase of the software.

 

[Blain]

By cloning to a 2nd drive...
That should do away with any "restore" shouldn't it... since you create an exact duplicate of the 1st?
Wouldn't you just install the 2nd drive in the place of the 1st, and hit the ground running?