Backup Question

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Bob

I am going to start backing up my disk using the backup utility that
comes with Win2K. This is in addition to creating two archives with
Drive Image Pro.

The reason is if I have to recover using an archive, I need an easy
way to bring my disk up to date. I am not an expert with backup
utilities so I am asking you all for your advice.

I believe I want an incremental backup at selected times after I make
the archive (which is usually every month). So I imagine using the
backup utility weekly. Therefore to get started I need to mark
everything on the disk as "archived" each time I create a new archive,
so that only incrementally new files will be backed up when I use the
backup utility. When I make the archive disk, I plan on deleting the
old backup file because it is now out of date with respect to the new
archive.

Please comment on how to do all this properly.

Thanks,


--

Map Of The Vast Right Wing Conspiracy:
http://www.freewebs.com/vrwc/

"You can all go to hell, and I will go to Texas."
--David Crockett
 
I am going to start backing up my disk using the backup utility that
comes with Win2K. This is in addition to creating two archives with
Drive Image Pro.

The reason is if I have to recover using an archive, I need an easy
way to bring my disk up to date. I am not an expert with backup
utilities so I am asking you all for your advice.

I believe I want an incremental backup at selected times after I make
the archive (which is usually every month). So I imagine using the
backup utility weekly. Therefore to get started I need to mark
everything on the disk as "archived" each time I create a new archive,
so that only incrementally new files will be backed up when I use the
backup utility. When I make the archive disk, I plan on deleting the
old backup file because it is now out of date with respect to the new
archive.

Please comment on how to do all this properly.

Thanks,
Click to expand...

No one is responding to this simple question. Is that because this is
the wrong forum to be asking questions about backup strategies? If so,
please recommend a forum where I can discuss this matter.


--

Map Of The Vast Right Wing Conspiracy:
http://www.freewebs.com/vrwc/

"You can all go to hell, and I will go to Texas."
--David Crockett
 
No one is responding to this simple question. Is that because this is
the wrong forum to be asking questions about backup strategies? If so,
please recommend a forum where I can discuss this matter.
Click to expand...
hi bob,
on solution may be to run raid with a removable caddy and 3 hard disks
[identical if possible]
you will need two identical caddies, 3 identical hard disks and a raid
controller card
disk one is your working disk
disk two in the removable caddy
disk 3 is stored outside the computer [preferrably off site]
set up two drives in the removable cradles from the caddies
install one cradle in the computer
setup your raid mirroring array [hard disk one will mirror to hard
disk two] your failsafe back up is the 3 rd drive...every week or
whenever you want to back up just swap the removable drive and rebuild
the array...in the event of a disaster...[destruction of the computer]
you have an exact copy of your working drive stored away from the
computer ready to plug into the machine...you will have lost your data
since the last swap.......be aware that another computer will possibly
not boot into windows using that disk unless it has the same or
similar motherboard....in that scenario your files etc will be easily
transferred to new drive.....

i would not trust microsoft products to back up data in the light of
the huge security issues with MS software demonstrated daily

this is an expensive way of doing it but IMHO an ideal way to backup
without having to worry about incremental backups and refreshing
archives etc....the two disks in the machine will always be identical
and if one fails the other can be booted from.....once it is all setup
all you need to do is swap the drives weekly and allow the time for
the raid to rebuild....
relloman
 
i would not trust microsoft products to back up data in the light of
the huge security issues with MS software demonstrated daily
Click to expand...

I don't trust MS either, but in the case of the backup utility that
comes with Win2K, it is not screwed up because it is a clone of Backup
Executive.

Regarding those daily security issues, it is inconceivable that a huge
company like MS could have overlooked those issues when they were
widely reported sometimes years in advance. The buffer overrun issue,
responsible for multiple sucurity problems with MS products, was well
known literally years before the first major attacks surfaced. Sun
Solaris, for example, had been fixed fully 3 years before.

The reason MS products are vulnerable is because MS knowingly and
deliberately shipped them that way. When the bottomfeeders find the
smoking gun one day, there is going to be hell to pay at MS.


--

Map Of The Vast Right Wing Conspiracy:
http://www.freewebs.com/vrwc/

"You can all go to hell, and I will go to Texas."
--David Crockett
 
I don't trust MS either, but in the case of the backup utility that
comes with Win2K, it is not screwed up because it is a clone of Backup
Executive.
Click to expand...

A more manageable way (assuming you aren't looking for corporate grade
backup) is to do this:

- Install a USB2 or FW external drive
- Install imaging SW (I like True Image 7, others like Ghost or Drive
Image)
- Make a full image once a week and incremental images daily.
- Once a week (or whatever floats your boat), copy the full image to
DVD. Store these away from the main computer, even offsite if you
care that much.

This allows you access to older files from the DVD copies, if you need
them, and allows very quick recovery in case of HD crash.



Neil Maxwell - I don't speak for my employer
 
- Make a full image once a week and incremental images daily.
Click to expand...

That's essentially what I am going to do but I will use Drive Image
Pro to make a carbon copy to an IDE drive in a removeable bay and I
will use the Backup utility provided with Win2K (which looks almost
identical to Backup Executive).

You mention doing an incremental backup, but that costs a lot of disk
space if you are modifying the same large files every day. I am
thinking about doing a differential backup.

I will use the scheduler to do the daily backups at 12:00 am each
night. And then once a week I will do one manually where I have turned
off as much as possible. The backup process won't backup up locked
files caused by applications being open - such as the firewall, spam
filter, et al - the things that reside in the tray.

Comments please.

--

Map Of The Vast Right Wing Conspiracy:
http://www.freewebs.com/vrwc/

"You can all go to hell, and I will go to Texas."
--David Crockett
 
A more manageable way (assuming you aren't looking for corporate grade
backup) is to do this:

- Install a USB2 or FW external drive
- Install imaging SW (I like True Image 7, others like Ghost or Drive
Image)
- Make a full image once a week and incremental images daily.
- Once a week (or whatever floats your boat), copy the full image to
DVD. Store these away from the main computer, even offsite if you
care that much.

This allows you access to older files from the DVD copies, if you need
them, and allows very quick recovery in case of HD crash.
Click to expand...

I'd suggest doing your dailies/hourlies using a regular
file-level backup program like Second Copy 2000. Which
is extremely easy to recover files from (it's a straight
file copy to a 2nd folder tree).

Extremely lightweight software that has been very
reliable for us.
 
I'd suggest doing your dailies/hourlies using a regular
file-level backup program like Second Copy 2000. Which
is extremely easy to recover files from (it's a straight
file copy to a 2nd folder tree).

Extremely lightweight software that has been very
reliable for us.
Click to expand...
raid may be woth looking at if you are going to buy extra drives
it will keep a mirror image of you hard disk at all times
you can swap your second drive weekly or daily if you have them in
drive caddies.....you wont have to do much except rebuild the array
each time you swap drives...
you will need:
3 identical hard drives
2 removable disk caddies
raid controller card
45 minutes to set up the hardware
30 minutes to build the array


relloman
 
Previously rello said:
(e-mail address removed) says...
Click to expand...
[...]
raid may be woth looking at if you are going to buy extra drives
it will keep a mirror image of you hard disk at all times
you can swap your second drive weekly or daily if you have them in
drive caddies.....you wont have to do much except rebuild the array
each time you swap drives...
you will need:
3 identical hard drives
Click to expand...

Usually not needed. But if they are different size, you have to do
the array creation with the smallest ones.
2 removable disk caddies
raid controller card
Click to expand...

Or software-raid if yous OS has got a devent one. For hardware-RAID
you have to keep a spare controller, because otherwise a controller
failure will make your data very hard to access.
Low-cost mainboard-raid is probably not a good idea.
45 minutes to set up the hardware
30 minutes to build the array
Click to expand...

Make that 2 hours for large drives. For smaller ones (80GB, e.g.)
the times are realistic.

Arno
 
Or software-raid if your OS has got a decent one.
Click to expand...

Looking at Help for Win2K Pro, the claim is that RAID is available. I
have not chased this down, however, since I am not ready to employ
RAID in my system.

Can anyone comment about the availability and performance of RAID for
Win2K Pro and XP Pro.


--

Map Of The Vast Right Wing Conspiracy:
http://www.freewebs.com/vrwc/

"You can all go to hell, and I will go to Texas."
--David Crockett
 
Bob said:
Looking at Help for Win2K Pro, the claim is that RAID is available. I
have not chased this down, however, since I am not ready to employ
RAID in my system.

Can anyone comment about the availability and performance of RAID for
Win2K Pro and XP Pro.
Click to expand...

Officially RAID 0 is supported for drives other than the boot drive. There
are hacks to enable RAID 1 and RAID 5, but those hacks have no official
support and there's no guarantee that a future patch won't break them.
 
raid may be worth looking at if you are going to buy extra drives
it will keep a mirror image of you hard disk at all times
you can swap your second drive weekly or daily if you have them in
drive caddies.....you wont have to do much except rebuild the array
each time you swap drives...
you will need:
3 identical hard drives
2 removable disk caddies
raid controller card
45 minutes to set up the hardware
30 minutes to build the array
Click to expand...

I want to make sure I understand the procedure for making backups with
RAID1.

You have 3 drives, called A, B and C. You have 2 removable bays,
called #1 and #2. You start out with the configuration A1, B2 and
build the first mirror.

When you are ready to create the backup, you remove disk B2 and place
it on the shelp for safe keeping. Then you put disk C in bay #2 and
build a new mirror.

Now let's say your working 2 disks (A1, C2) crap out so it's time to
use the backup. You remove the defective disks and put the backup disk
B into bay #1. You boot the computer successfully, albeit to an
earlier backup version.

I can imagine swapping the 3 disks around in the 2 bays so each has
the same usage time, thereby balancing the MTBF.

Also, would it not be better to get a mainboard with RAID1 installed,
like the EPOX or other kind? If so, then what boards do you all
recommend?


--

Map Of The Vast Right Wing Conspiracy:
http://www.freewebs.com/vrwc/

"You can all go to hell, and I will go to Texas."
--David Crockett
 
I want to make sure I understand the procedure for making backups with
RAID1.

You have 3 drives, called A, B and C. You have 2 removable bays,
called #1 and #2. You start out with the configuration A1, B2 and
build the first mirror.

When you are ready to create the backup, you remove disk B2 and place
it on the shelp for safe keeping. Then you put disk C in bay #2 and
build a new mirror.

Now let's say your working 2 disks (A1, C2) crap out so it's time to
use the backup. You remove the defective disks and put the backup disk
B into bay #1. You boot the computer successfully, albeit to an
earlier backup version.

I can imagine swapping the 3 disks around in the 2 bays so each has
the same usage time, thereby balancing the MTBF.

Also, would it not be better to get a mainboard with RAID1 installed,
like the EPOX or other kind? If so, then what boards do you all
recommend?
Click to expand...

I think depending on 3 disks (2 in a RAID1 configuration and one on
the shelf) is weak because if there is a flaw in the RAID equipment,
you're screwed. If you could test the detached disk on a second system
to see that you had a good backup I would feel a little better.

Is a detached RAID disk identical to a disk produced with a generic
IDE controller ? If not, then you're dependant on having the right
raid hardware to read your backup. It also complicates the task of
restoring specific files from the backup. (or SCSI, if that's
what you're susing.)

I'd skip the RAID-as-a-backup and use the second and third disk to
make multilpe generations of disk-disk savesets using ntbackup, or a
commercial backup product. Each of the disks could have an instance of
NT installed on it, bootable, so if you needed to do a
reinstall-to-bare-irn recovery you'd have an OS ready to go.
 
I think depending on 3 disks (2 in a RAID1 configuration and one on
the shelf) is weak because if there is a flaw in the RAID equipment,
you're screwed. If you could test the detached disk on a second system
to see that you had a good backup I would feel a little better.
Click to expand...

I realize that equipment failure is always a risk, but we usually
presume things work, especially after testing them.

IOW, why pick on RAID equipment? Regular IDE can and does become
defective too. That's doesn't mean we throw it out.

I think what you are saying is that using RAID for backup is fraught
with the same kind of problems any backup system has.
Is a detached RAID disk identical to a disk produced with a generic
IDE controller ? If not, then you're dependant on having the right
raid hardware to read your backup. It also complicates the task of
restoring specific files from the backup. (or SCSI, if that's
what you're susing.)
Click to expand...

Since I asked about mainboard RAID, aren't there any manufacturers who
provide such capability? It would be desirous to be able to read a
RAID mirror with a standard IDE interface.
I'd skip the RAID-as-a-backup and use the second and third disk to
make multilpe generations of disk-disk savesets using ntbackup, or a
commercial backup product. Each of the disks could have an instance of
NT installed on it, bootable, so if you needed to do a
reinstall-to-bare-irn recovery you'd have an OS ready to go.
Click to expand...

If I am going to do all that, I just as well use Drive Image Pro and
make carbon copies.

The purpose of my inquiry was twofold: 1) To solicit advise as you
have provided; 2) To see what the options are.

If someone could provide a highly-reliable IDE-compatible RAID 1
interface, either as a PCI board or on the mainboard, would you then
use it?


--

Map Of The Vast Right Wing Conspiracy:
http://www.freewebs.com/vrwc/

"You can all go to hell, and I will go to Texas."
--David Crockett
 
Since I asked about mainboard RAID, aren't there any manufacturers who
provide such capability? It would be desirous to be able to read a
RAID mirror with a standard IDE interface.
Click to expand...

A lot of times, drives used in cheap IDE RAID1 solutions
(e.g. Promise FastTrak cards) are readable if you plug
them into a regular IDE port. RAID5 is, of course, a
horse of an entirely different color.

Easy enough to test... setup your RAID, and then break
it by moving one of the two drives over to a standard
IDE/SATA interface. (Or even install it in a 2nd
machine.)
 
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