Data Back Up Project?

[Keebler Elf]

I've been tasked with backing up a bunch of hard drives at work and it's looking like it will be a chore. I was gunna get my admin to do it but she's a technophobic and I can't risk her screwing it up.

I've got about 6 drives to backup and they each have hundreds of folders and god knows how many files. Looks like somewhere between 5-10GB (best guess).

I'm going to try and reduce the number of backup drives by using larger capacity ones.

Any suggestions on how to best go about doing this?

I've heard about cloning software but is it just as effective to Select All > Copy in Windows Explorer and go have a nap while it finishes?

 

[enyaw]

I agree with the larger capacity drive. Why don't you pick up a 2t external and run weekly backups on it? ie a schedule. Something like western digital/Hp my drive/back up?
Set up raid on the system in question
Use cloud storage, or make a disk image of the said drives

some options.

 

[OddSox]

Just stick an external USB drive on each computer - 500gb run $50 or less these days. Then http://windows.microsoft.com/en-ca/windows7/products/features/backup-and-restore assuming you're running Windoze. Macs have 'time-machine' which is even easier to set up. "Select All > Copy" is a bad idea.

Less hassle than setting up a central drive and networking, and you'll have extra space on the externals for local storage too.

 

[bishop]

Pass the buck to someone else, there are 2 scenarios:

1:
One the drives fails so they come to you for the backup, your backup is good and you just did you job, no bonus, no thank you.

2:
One of the drives fails so they come to you for the backup, your backup is bad, you get all the blame.

What is the long term plan for backups? Will they constantly bring the drives to you for backup? If so then that is not a good long term solution.

I am techsavvy but there is a world of study regarding backups and whatnot that I have no idea about, so please take what I say with a grain of salt. Ideally the setup would be to have a central backup/file server that has redundant storage, on each computer some backup software would on a dialy basis backup data to the central backup/file server. Each computer has a connection to the backup/file server via ethernet.

I have a home office, my setup is a 2 bay NAS (network attached storage), the unit has 2 hard drives, each drive keeps a copy of the data so if one drive dies then I can take out the dead drive, plug in a new one, and my NAS will automatically begin to replicate data to the new drive. I have backup software that on a nightly basis backs up everything to my NAS.

There are alot of subtle issues you have to deal with such as, do you want to encrypt the backups, backup/file server privileges, backup schedule, type of backup (full, incremental, differential), backups need to be backed up too so you can go back in time and pull out older data, etc...

You should hire someone who is an expert at this stuff to set everything up, backups are vital to any company and cheapening out will eventually cause more harm than good.

Alternatively you could subscribe to one of many online backup services, every computer will automatically backup data in almost real time over the internet to backup/file servers that is run by professionals.

 

[checks]

rsync is your friend. Can use it to copy entire directory structures to local or remote drives. Its a unix/linux tool, but it will work under windows as well. Once you are setup, it would be as simple as typing

rsync -options source destination

It will scan the entire source you specify and copy everything. It can then be run multiple times and scan for changes and only copy the changes over. A very powerful tool, which can seem intimidating, but it fairly simple to use. Setup a network drive somewhere and copy backups to there. Or do it locally and then store the drivoses somewhere else when finished. I've obviously skipped that step of the operation as I'm assuming you at least know the basics of backups. Otherwise, I don't think this is really the place for such mission critical advice.

 

[pussyluver]

If you are talking about backing up pc's vs servers, windows 8 has a great passive backup system. Just set it up ( easy to do ) plug in an external drive and it does it all in the background constantly as you work and change files. It also has file history which means if you revised a budget a nu,ber of times, you could go back and see what an earlier version looked like.

Each user would need their own drive.. But as someone said, don't cheap out on backups...

 

[Garrett]

The problem with most of the solutions here is they are redundancy or synchronization based. This is not a proper backup solution.
Once you introduce an error on the source, it will get propagated to your "backup". You have no way of going back in time.

You have a lot of options here, and some can be quite cheap. Are you saying you only need to backup 5-10GB overall? That is a trivial amount of data and would make things very simple.

Bishop raises an important point as well. A lot of backup systems fail when it comes time to use it. You have to test you are able to recover.

 

[Keebler Elf]

Sorry, 5-10 TB.

 

[SkyRider]

Bishop raises an important point as well. A lot of backup systems fail when it comes time to use it. You have to test you are able to recover.

If I use an external HD for home backup, do I have to periodically "exercise" it to make sure it is working?

 

[Garrett]

You shouldn't have to, but if you periodically plug it in to back up more data, then your exercising it. Always keep an ear out for how the drive sounds. If you hear any clunking sounds, get a replacement soon.

This is the problem. If you lose your primary, and plug in your secondary and that is bad too, you are done. If you wait until you need your backup to test it, you are on thin ice. You may also have to worry about bit rot. If you are keeping media files you probably do not care. Financial data, you may. This is why there is a big difference between syncing a drive, and having a backup solution.

 

[Anynym]

If I use an external HD for home backup, do I have to periodically "exercise" it to make sure it is working?

Short answer: yes.

Long answer: do you want to wait until your original drive fails to find out that you had a major corruption on your backup drive six months ago?

Hard Drive vendors sell specialized devices for backup and file server applications, and even provide software to make the process easier for you. Google "NAS", or "Western Digital NAS", or "Western Digital MyCloud" for a few ideas.