Backup System Suggestions?

[trainguy]

Can anyone tell me what computer backup systems they use, to back up approx. 10GB of data?

We have HAD IT with the lousy unreliable tape backup, and we are thinking about using an online service.

Any thoughts?

tg

 

[Focht3]

One option is to buy a 200 Gb hard drive and back up to that. Put it in a separate machine on your network - only accessible by the backup routine/administrator. This requires discipline.

You could also check out the new rewriteable DVD drives, but you'd be on the "bleeding edge" of that technology.

Both of these options have the advantage of speed and random access to data - a big plus compared to tapes.

 

[d23]

trainguy

One thing we do as a company is store back-up off site. The reason is if there is fire, tornado etc... you will have back-up.

For 10 gig I would just use CD's.

Good luck!

 

[pmover]

d23!

a CD stores about 750 MB, and 10GB is needed. that is a lot of CD's, especially if back-up is routinely done.

recommend a large capacity hard drive for back-up.
-pmover

 

[dik]

I back stuff up onto 2 sets of CD's and copy one to my computer at home. An 80 gig hard drive costs about $150CAN. One set is stored at the office and one at home... I use the same approach for my home data, also.

I have then moved all my backed up material into an Archive Folder on the original machine.

Only current information is backed up from that point on. Once two copies are made, then this gets moved to the Archive folder as well as my home machine.

If I require information from the archive, it gets moved to the respective current folder and gets backed up again. The secret to archiving is to make it a 'no brainer'. I use the volume label name BkUp030524 for a backup on May 24, 2003 and a folder with the same name on my home machine. Use either yymmdd or ddmmyy for naming... easier to sort or search, if required.

Bachups are made on a 7 to 10 day cycle (depending if I get it on Friday or Monday) with daily backups to the server... I use multi-session burns for the CD... with the limited work that I do, these are good for a month or so...

For 10gig, unless the data is dynamic... you likely only have to save it once (twice, in my case). On a good day, CD's in this locale are about $.30 each...

Just got a little flack on Friday... I've been backing my projects onto CD... The owner noted on one project that I'd referenced the archive disk as being a CD and not a floppy as per office standards (I've had too much difficulty with floppies, in particular those that are several years old). The owner has 'never' had problems with floppies, although I can provide him a listing of 50+ cad files that have gone to the south pasture. I've resolved this by providing diskettes as per office standard as well as CD's... We're both easy to please!

With early 'doze, I used to use a Make utility that came with most programming languages and archived my stuff using PKZIP... this was a fiasco... If your zip file is corrupted, then all the data was lost.

For CAD files, I used to save the projects as a *.zip and test the archive. With subsequent revisions to drawings, I relabel the files yynnns06.dwg to yynnns06.dw0, yynnns06.dw1, etc. for revision 0 and 1 and these would be saved in yynnns06.zip. With the cost of hard drives and CD's, I still save them as yynnns06.dw0, etc.

I ran into a bit of a hiccup a few years ago when we did the local Latter Day Saints' Church... we had vellums for the various issues, but, the Architect wanted digital images of the various issues... It was a real pain in getting the info. since then, I've stored projects using the above method.

 

[IFRs]

1) use mirrored drives in your server
2) mirror th drive in another location