Whats the cheapest backup system for archiving large amounts of data?

[Arkitech]

I just recently transferred a few hundred of my vinyl albums into mp3's and I've been nervous about a hard drive crash or virus infection. So naturally I've been trying to figure out the best way to back up lots of data cheaply. Anyone have some suggestions?

 

[Sid59]

i use dvd, cd and hdd.

 

[Zinn2b]

Extenal hard drive is a very good solution to this back everything that you don'twant to loose also its added security against hackers $ depends on storage capacity anywere from a$100 and up

 

[boran]

just examine different possibilities and invest in the one that seems the most viable for your money. but know that harddrives DO demagnetize over the years, and DVD's dont live forver either. I'd buy high quality DVD+R (since those R better than DVD-R) tayo yudens for instance. and burn em and then whenever the next standard comes around re-burn them to those. store em out of light etc. and they'll last quite long.

 

[Dogma420]

a usb 2.0 hdd would be great...use one all the time.....

 

[Atlantean]

dvds, and harddrives... with dvds you can make multiple copies of the same thing. WIth harddrives you need more than one to make multiple copies (if hdd crashes you lost the data...)

 

[redbeard1]

This can sit on your network or usb2.0. If your truly paranoid, two of them can be mirrored using their software.

Netdisk

 

[labrat25]

how big we talkin'?

if it's just a couple Gigs... CDs/DVDs are supposed to last 50+ years

 

[modedepe]

Yep depends how many gigs it is. If it's a lot, a hd, either internal or external, would be the easiest. If it's just a few than cds or dvds would probably be the answer. However, I highly doubt you'll get 50+years out of dvds or cds. I've heard you'll get around ten, though.

 

[polloloco]

High quality DVD burner with DVD+Rs should give you about 3 years. At roughly .86 cents apeice for 4.7 gigs of storage how can you pass that up?

 

[ed21x]

If you have the bling, I suggest just getting compact flash cards (at up to 2 GB storage each) and a cheap $20 reader/writer that plugs into your USB port. THe cards themselves have no moving parts and are built pretty tough.

 

[suklee]

How do you guys back up your mail servers? I have a DVD burner (Pioneer A06).

Currently sitting at just under one DVD disc, but I have no clue what to do once it gets over 1 DVD's capacity. Span it over several RWs? Look into backing up to another extenral HD?

I'd like to know yoru backup schedule eg how often it's backed up and if you do full , incremental or decremtnal backup.

Server is running MDaemon 6.8.5 and since December when it went online, the server has accumulated only ~4 gigs of data (for 7 users) I will be adding 15 users in the coming month however so space usage is expected to go up considerably.

edit - what about software? I've only used NERO thus far to burn the entire mdaemon directory to dvd

 

[Need4Speed]

linux, a large hdd, and rsync are the best way to backup lg amounts of data.
I use this method to backup several machine on a 7 day incremental cycle. With that method you can have 7 days worth of data that only takes up a fraction of the space compared to if you were to copy the data manually. Rsync only copies the bits that have changed, not the entire files.

rsync is avail for win32 as well using the cygwin dll, so its easy to use rsync in a multi OS env.

Here is the basic script. The first thing it does is ping the host you want to back up to make sure its online. If it is online, it begins the backup, otherwise it skips that host and then moves on to the next one. Loops this until all hosts have been tried.

#!/bin/bash
# rsync backup script
# make sure all the hosts have rsync installed
# enter the hostname and path of the machines to backup into each array element
# repeat for each host
# example:
#
# host[0]=mail.domain.com
# backup[0]="/home /etc"
#
# host[1]=mail.domain.com
# backup[1]="/home /etc"
# modify days=7 in the loop to the number of days to keep backups for
# example for 3 day rotation:
# days=3
# script will ping each host to see if its up
# if host is alive it will rsync it, otherwise it will poll the next host

host[0]=
backup[0]=""

host[1]=
backup[1]=""

host[2]=
backup[2]=""

# define functions
function check.host { ping -c 1 ${host[$index]} >& /dev/null ; }
function rsync.host { rsync -Raz --delete -e ssh ${host[$index]}:"${backup[$index]}" \
$mirror/backup.0/ ; }

# count number of hosts
element_count=${#host[@]}

# zero out counter
index=0

# loop through host, check if available via ping, backup if online
while [ $index -lt $element_count ] ; do
if check.host ; then
echo "### ${host[$index]} is online, begin backup. ###"
# set backup dir
mirror=/var/mirror/backup-${host[$index]}
# rotate backup files
# define number of days to keep files
days=7
rm -rf $mirror/backup.$days
while [ $days -gt 1 ]; do
let i=days-1
mv $mirror/backup.$i $mirror/backup.$days
let days=days-1
done
cp -al $mirror/backup.0 $mirror/backup.1
# rsync the host
rsync.host
else
echo "### ${host[$index]} is offline, cannot backup. ###"
fi
let "index = $index + 1"
done

 

[suklee]

Umm...

Thanks for the Need4Speed, but Linux ain't really my bag... and I'll need a lot of help trying to understand that script you just wrote.

linux, a large hdd, and rsync are the best way to backup lg amounts of data.

Well come to think of it, it may be worth considering. I do have some spare old computers laying around in the office. If I recommission one of them back into existence, could I throw on [some form of] Linux, a large HDD and use your method?

 

[beatle]

I "mirror" my data to my backup server using ViceVersa. My backup server has a spanned volume of 3 hard drives. Spanned volumes are not very reliable, as you will lose all the data on all the disks, but they can be addressed as one disk, and since this is just a copy of the original, it doesn't have to be ultra reliable. If I double my storage space every time I upgrade (120 to 250 for example) I just put the old 120 into the spanned volume and I maintain a balance between my data and how much space I have to back up to.

 

[TGHI]

Use a tape drive. Get an used one - some tapes can hold 100GB +. It takes a long ass time to backup, though. Or, get an old Jaz drive 1GB+ per disk ain't bad.


TGHI

 

[Atlantean]

DVDs. They are like $1 each at most so for $100 you get 470 gigs of storage.

 

[suklee]

Originally posted by: Atlantean
DVDs. They are like $1 each at most so for $100 you get 470 gigs of storage.

Yes, I have a DVD writer, but what if the server I am backing up requires more than 1 disc?

Would this sort of approach be viable? :-

Full backup once a week (to a HD, or if to DVD, let it span as many DVDs as needed)
Incremental (or Decremental) once every 2-3 days on DVD+RWs?

 

[suklee]

Originally posted by: Kai920

Originally posted by: Atlantean
DVDs. They are like $1 each at most so for $100 you get 470 gigs of storage.

Yes, I have a DVD writer, but what if the server I am backing up requires more than 1 disc?

Would this sort of approach be viable? :-

Full backup once a week (to a HD, or if to DVD, let it span as many DVDs as needed)
Incremental (or Decremental) once every 2-3 days on DVD+RWs?

Actually, when I'm doing full backups and the server's at 80GB, it'd be a b#tch wouldn't it? Maybe best to do full backups to an external HDD, and do the incremental/decrementals onto DVD RW.

Agree/disagree?

 

[Atlantean]

Originally posted by: Kai920

Originally posted by: Kai920

Originally posted by: Atlantean
DVDs. They are like $1 each at most so for $100 you get 470 gigs of storage.

Yes, I have a DVD writer, but what if the server I am backing up requires more than 1 disc?

Would this sort of approach be viable? :-

Full backup once a week (to a HD, or if to DVD, let it span as many DVDs as needed)
Incremental (or Decremental) once every 2-3 days on DVD+RWs?

Actually, when I'm doing full backups and the server's at 80GB, it'd be a b#tch wouldn't it? Maybe best to do full backups to an external HDD, and do the incremental/decrementals onto DVD RW.

Agree/disagree?

ok... you quoted yourself... and you are not the op... he just wanted the cheapest backup system for archiving large amounts of data. I gave him the cheapest way. I never said it was the best way. Why would you back up a server to dvd? That is stupid thats why servers have several harddrives running. He said he is nervous about harddrive crashing and virus's so dvd would be the best option would it not?

 

[suklee]

Err... YES I know you gave the cheapest way.

I was simply adding to my question, why can't I quote myself? I said full backup once a week, then re-thought and considered doing it solely onto external HDDs. What is so hard to understand about that? I even asked if people agreed or disagreed... but I digress.

First of all, why would you NOT back up a server to DVD? Like you said it's the cheapest way.
Second of all, it is NOT stupid. Not all servers have several hard drives running...

Did you even know you answered this thread on 2/09?

Originally posted by: Atlantean
dvds, and harddrives... with dvds you can make multiple copies of the same thing. WIth harddrives you need more than one to make multiple copies (if hdd crashes you lost the data...)

I think you misunderstood... go back and read the thread again starting from my post on 3/11.

 

[Mday]

Tape.

 

[WackyDan]

I think Hard drives are the most inexpensive large scale Back up device you could go with... Tapes are slow and can be a pain and not work in the end. In the IT space these work well, but many shops I deal with are moving to platter based storage.

HD is the best for foolproof access to your data should your main drive fail.... Just make it a large external or two.

 

[Atlantean]

Originally posted by: Kai920
Err... YES I know you gave the cheapest way.

I was simply adding to my question, why can't I quote myself? I said full backup once a week, then re-thought and considered doing it solely onto external HDDs. What is so hard to understand about that? I even asked if people agreed or disagreed... but I digress.

First of all, why would you NOT back up a server to DVD? Like you said it's the cheapest way.
Second of all, it is NOT stupid. Not all servers have several hard drives running...

Did you even know you answered this thread on 2/09?

Originally posted by: Atlantean
dvds, and harddrives... with dvds you can make multiple copies of the same thing. WIth harddrives you need more than one to make multiple copies (if hdd crashes you lost the data...)

I think you misunderstood... go back and read the thread again starting from my post on 3/11.

hehe I forgot that I had already answered it... I didn't realize how old this thread was.... also didn't realize that it had been bumped for another question.

EDIT: Oh and as for your question if you are wanting to back up a mail server then yes an external harddrive would be the best and easiest way to backup the data... if you wanted you could use dvd-rws or dvd+rws... but it depends on how much data you have.