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In need of a HD Back up solution ?
- Thread starter stax
- Start date
Stax,
I must assume that since you have 5 that they a fairly populated. But what I cannot believe is with that much data/files that you or anyone would have the time to access and alter all of these files.
With some file manipulation and a few procedural changes you could safely have a functional back-up of all this data "relatively" on the cheap.
Move files you only access (no changes) to specific drives lets say three of the five. Of the two left keep your files to be accessed on the second drive and your main drive as your working drive.
Procedure: Copy any file to be altered to the working drive and make your changes keeping it on this drive.
If you procure a tape backup drive/software you can then create backups of the seldom altered drives and store. On your own schedule backup the working drive. And aslo on your schedule move altered files back to their original locations. There is Software that will do this based upon criteria that you provide like "most recent" date.
This is one supplier of this type of software, and they call theirs "Differential Backup"
Acronis
Hope you find this helpful
rvnguy
"I know everything..I just can't remember it all
I must assume that since you have 5 that they a fairly populated. But what I cannot believe is with that much data/files that you or anyone would have the time to access and alter all of these files.
With some file manipulation and a few procedural changes you could safely have a functional back-up of all this data "relatively" on the cheap.
Move files you only access (no changes) to specific drives lets say three of the five. Of the two left keep your files to be accessed on the second drive and your main drive as your working drive.
Procedure: Copy any file to be altered to the working drive and make your changes keeping it on this drive.
If you procure a tape backup drive/software you can then create backups of the seldom altered drives and store. On your own schedule backup the working drive. And aslo on your schedule move altered files back to their original locations. There is Software that will do this based upon criteria that you provide like "most recent" date.
This is one supplier of this type of software, and they call theirs "Differential Backup"
Acronis
Hope you find this helpful
rvnguy
"I know everything..I just can't remember it all
- Thread starter
- #3
Thanks Rvnguy, that's a very creative tip. But i don't think i can make that work in my situation, i have trouble with organisation.
To answer your question about the amount of data... I work in audio and the project folders and sample libraries take up big chunks of drive space. I regularily go to most of the drives, some are in constant use.
So it looks like i've got to spend on this
Is tape back up a simple operation ? to back a terrabyte up presumably i would need a lot of tapes and time ?
Shaun
To answer your question about the amount of data... I work in audio and the project folders and sample libraries take up big chunks of drive space. I regularily go to most of the drives, some are in constant use.
So it looks like i've got to spend on this
Is tape back up a simple operation ? to back a terrabyte up presumably i would need a lot of tapes and time ?
Shaun
stax,
Well I don't know if you are like most of us, but we generally have 2-3 large drives with 20-50% in use. As you have 5 I assume you are utilizing more of this space than most users.
I would make efforts to organize yourself, to the best of you capabilities. And not just Kiss this off as I can't. It will benefit you professionally as well as personally. A bit of well placed organization will pay benefits in time saved.
While not specifically a backup solution, you might consider setting up your storage as an RAID 5 Array. I take it you are concerned about losing the information that you have. RAID 5 provides for data redundancy and if you lose a drive though failure you can replace it and the data will be rebuilt. This differs from your current state where if you lose a drive you also loose the data contained thereon.
This could be deployed in your current case with the addition of a Raid Controller card, or another possibility is a "Network Attached Storage" device; NAS for short.
Buffalo makes a good device that can be populated with dives to achieve 1.6TB of storage.
Buffalo NAS
Tape is not a particularly difficult operation but is somewhat slow. There is a convention (organization) for effectively excecuting backups though.
Quick Overview: A full backup is generated. Daily incremental backups are then run that only backup changed information.(usually much quicker) and then weekly a full backup is done. Tapes are then rotated. For a 200GB drive using compression there will be 1-3 tapes with a low end tape drive. There are tape drives that have higher capacities and higher initial cost that could contain 200GB on one tape volume. Tapes are also expensive.
Drive Example
None of this is specifically thrifty. But one must ask themselves what losing a large block of data would cost, If the data is critical you can employ the services of a data recovery firm and this costs on the order of 1-3K US. Not cheap but again if the data is needed & there does not exist a backup???
As I think this is work related, data preservation is not usually a difficult sell. One must just present the facts of what it would mean if data were lost.
Article on Tape with good reasons
Sorry that I have no really cheap solutions for your situation.
rvnguy
"I know everything..I just can't remember it all
Well I don't know if you are like most of us, but we generally have 2-3 large drives with 20-50% in use. As you have 5 I assume you are utilizing more of this space than most users.
I would make efforts to organize yourself, to the best of you capabilities. And not just Kiss this off as I can't. It will benefit you professionally as well as personally. A bit of well placed organization will pay benefits in time saved.
While not specifically a backup solution, you might consider setting up your storage as an RAID 5 Array. I take it you are concerned about losing the information that you have. RAID 5 provides for data redundancy and if you lose a drive though failure you can replace it and the data will be rebuilt. This differs from your current state where if you lose a drive you also loose the data contained thereon.
This could be deployed in your current case with the addition of a Raid Controller card, or another possibility is a "Network Attached Storage" device; NAS for short.
Buffalo makes a good device that can be populated with dives to achieve 1.6TB of storage.
Buffalo NAS
Tape is not a particularly difficult operation but is somewhat slow. There is a convention (organization) for effectively excecuting backups though.
Quick Overview: A full backup is generated. Daily incremental backups are then run that only backup changed information.(usually much quicker) and then weekly a full backup is done. Tapes are then rotated. For a 200GB drive using compression there will be 1-3 tapes with a low end tape drive. There are tape drives that have higher capacities and higher initial cost that could contain 200GB on one tape volume. Tapes are also expensive.
Drive Example
None of this is specifically thrifty. But one must ask themselves what losing a large block of data would cost, If the data is critical you can employ the services of a data recovery firm and this costs on the order of 1-3K US. Not cheap but again if the data is needed & there does not exist a backup???
As I think this is work related, data preservation is not usually a difficult sell. One must just present the facts of what it would mean if data were lost.
Article on Tape with good reasons
Sorry that I have no really cheap solutions for your situation.
rvnguy
"I know everything..I just can't remember it all
Do you have a dvd writer? Zip up files you need to keep and burn the zips to DVD.
Also depending on your OS, you have a backup program already (ntbackup). Not a great program, but one that works. Sounds like you really need to learn to organize.
Also think about one of the new Buffalo Terastation (up to 1.2 Terabytes in a RAID 5 config.) Use it for storage or whatever. How old are your files? You should be aging them out if they aren't used after a certain period of time.
Also depending on your OS, you have a backup program already (ntbackup). Not a great program, but one that works. Sounds like you really need to learn to organize.
Also think about one of the new Buffalo Terastation (up to 1.2 Terabytes in a RAID 5 config.) Use it for storage or whatever. How old are your files? You should be aging them out if they aren't used after a certain period of time.
- Thread starter
- #6
With a potential Gig of data to back up, that's a big challenge. Without knowing more about your setup, it is difficult to provide the best answer. A Gig can take a long time to back up.
If these are disks on separate computers, I'd suggest a reasonable solution would be to buy 5 USB2 (or firewire)250GB external drives and use something like Acronis True Image to create images of the disks. I would estimate that to create an image and verify 200GB data would take around 3 hours. You could leave these to run over night.
If all these drives are on one computer, then look for one of the large Network Attached Storage devices. But I would not want to recommend this route without knowing your setup. It is possible that Tape backup (expensive ) is your best option.
Regards: tf1
If these are disks on separate computers, I'd suggest a reasonable solution would be to buy 5 USB2 (or firewire)250GB external drives and use something like Acronis True Image to create images of the disks. I would estimate that to create an image and verify 200GB data would take around 3 hours. You could leave these to run over night.
If all these drives are on one computer, then look for one of the large Network Attached Storage devices. But I would not want to recommend this route without knowing your setup. It is possible that Tape backup (expensive ) is your best option.
Regards: tf1
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